Pause for a moment, sit back and be thankful to have Canada to call home.
Born 141 years ago as the Dominion of Canada, this country has grown to one of the greatest in the world, and we are fortunate to live here.
Taken in the global context, our issues at times seem petty.
Free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of opinion: we may take these for granted, but we enjoy each and every one of them.
Too many people around the world aren’t as fortunate.

District residents have a unique opportunity this week to literally see our past come to life with the arrival of the David Thompson Brigade—a group of 160 modern-day voyageurs paddling 16 25-foot north canoes from Rocky Mountain House in Alberta to Old Fort William at Thunder Bay.
The brigade was scheduled to arrive in Rainy River today (Wednesday), then be in Emo tomorrow before heading upstream to Fort Frances on Friday, where their welcome at Pither’s Point Park will coincide with this year’s “Relay for Life” event.

Sewer and water only is important to voters when they don’t have those services. Politicians realize this, knowing that once the pipe is buried, it is invisible to the electorate.
It is much more fun, and provides more recognition, to build arenas and resurface roads that remains visible to the public.
Last year, residents began learning how fragile our sewer and water system is. Through many councils’ benign neglect, a great deal of Fort Frances’ infrastructure is now surviving on emergency critical care.

A great outcry roared across the land last week.
No, it wasn’t over whether Foreign Affairs ministers should be dating women linked to organized crime. It did not revolve around legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gases or the Liberals repeatedly skipping confidence votes in the House of Commons to avoid triggering an election.
Skyrocketing gas prices? Nope. Crumbling infrastructure? Wrong again. The war in Afghanistan? Yeah, right.

The guilty verdict delivered last Thursday afternoon in Don Smith’s second trial on obscenity charges, along with the drug raid Friday that led to five local residents being nabbed, certainly created the most buzz around town over the past week.
In the Smith trial, the jury, having viewed the evidence, concluded the material was “obscene,” although it can be argued what he produced and distributed is no worse than other stuff that’s rampant on the Internet these days, let alone what’s often seen on the big screen, in video games, and even music videos.

As politicians continue to bicker over how best to tackle—and reverse—the ever-worsening impact of global warming, it’s great to see young people are taking matters into their own hands to make our world a “greener” place.
Here at J.W. Walker School, a very active environmental club, consisting of more than 40 members in Grades 2-7, addressed town council at Monday night’s meeting to pitch the sale of rain barrels to local residents as one way to promote water conservation.

We’ve all seen the commercials on TV—you know, the one where two young children are looking down on their mother passed out on the couch in mid-afternoon next to a bottle of booze on the coffee table.
Or youngsters cowering in their bedroom at night while their parents scream at each other in an alcohol-fuelled argument.

The forest industry may be the prime victim of the economic woes hurting Northwestern Ontario these days, but the tourism industry certainly is a close second.
Back in 2001, the peak year of the past decade, the tourism industry brought in more than $300 million to the area while employing almost 10,000 people, according to figures from the North Western Ontario Tourism Association (NWOTA).

First the good news.
The 2006 census data Statistics Canada released last Thursday showed the median income for families in Fort Frances jumped 15.3 percent to $75,934 since 2001 (when adjusted for inflation)—a whopping hike compared to a national increase of 3.7 percent and a provincial increase of just 1.4 percent over that same time frame.
There were other promising numbers, too. While women, on average, made just 71 percent of what men earned here, that figure was a mere 53 percent five years ago.

The perception that you “can’t fight city hall” is nothing new, but it certainly has become an even more prevailing attitude among local citizens of late. We hear it in the coffee shops—and see it in the poor turnout for municipal elections and at many public meetings.
But a group of local residents proved Monday night that you can, indeed, fight city hall—and hopefully their success in preserving the Nelson Street park as “green space” will spur others to take more interest in issues and decisions affecting their lives or neighbourhoods.