Thunder Bay, Past, Present and Future! Imbalanced Truths! Copy one With the upcoming municipal election perhaps now is a good time to evaluate the progress of this new city, Thunder Bay, where one plus one equals ONE; life is not always dealing with apples. The heading of the front page of The News Chronicle, Name Official Now, Population 107,000. I had the opportunity to show a visitor from out of town a copy of The News Chronicle from January 2, 1970 and our first Mayor, the late Saul Laskin, not only Thunder Bays first mayor but also the brother to the Supreme Court Judge, Boris Laskin and a member of the larger Jewish community of Thunder Bay. The title of the paper was, Name Official Now - Population: 107,000. The visitor exclaimed, that is the same population the city is now ... I did not realize this fact. She was right. To look back on our history one general comment has been our inability to think critically, to think with discrimination, between poor, good, better and best. Someone we have accepted that all is good, if we say it is, and all will be good if we say it is and be optimistic. If we are planning, we must be able to discern The Truth of the matter, rather merely the politically colored truths that while looking and sounding appealing, are simply some peoples truths are relative to their position. Some property owners will profit from developments next to theirs other may not. Victoriaville is a good example of the expectations not meeting projections. More to the point of history of Thunder Bay, is that its history, its past, reflects greatly on its present and future. Most of us remember the plebiscite that asked the community which of three names they wanted, Lakehead, The Lakehead, and Thunder Bay. The choices were imbalanced, with more people voting for some form of Lakehead, the vote was unfairly split and the winner of these imbalanced choices was Thunder Bay; so it was, and is. Somewhere along this time frame, and new voting system was established for the City of Thunder Bay. To address the wide geographic area of this city, and to allow newcomers an opportunity to get elected, the city opted to have Council consist of seven ward councilors, five at-large councilors, and one Mayor. If you look at the details critically, you will notice that the majority of the voting public CANNOT vote for ward councilors as they are elected from within only their ward. Historically this has meant that some councilors are elected without one vote, and some with as many as 3,000 votes. Yet the problem is that these ward councilors, who are only elected by a minority of the city, have greater power as a voting block than the Mayor and the five at-large councilors. The ward system was supposed to allow new candidates to get elected, by offering a smaller playing field, however, name recognition for current ward councilors still exists, as there are no term limits. Then again we often find ward councilors elected in one small ward, chairing committees for the city. Logically this system is flawed. The representation is unequal relative to electoral votes. Historically, the new city corporation has entered into several major capital expansions or developments within the city. Projects like Urban Renewal, Old Fort William, Victoriaville, Charity Casino, Magnus Theater, Thunder Bay Regional Hospital, and the Redevelopment of the Waterfront and now the upcoming Multi use Convention Hall. If we can learn from history, I do not believe Urban Renewal was successful at redeveloping the downtown core, except to house local public offices. Old Fort William, was built in a questionable location, on a flood plan, and not on or near the original site, the east end and the Kam River. Victoriaville, with the benefit of hindsight, was flawed in its closure of the main street of was once the downtown of Fort William. I personally was told by some business people of that area that as soon as that decision was made, they simply moved out west, seeing that this was going to cause problems. The ‘Charity Casino with its projected up to 200 busloads of tourists did not live up to its sales pitch of helping develop the downtown area. Had the City maintained ownership of the Casino the profits from this venture would have helped greatly; the province opted to give us some 5% of the machines; another classic example of an imbalanced truth. Magnus Theater was one exception to local developments. It respected the history of the area, building onto the historic school. Let us remember that this was not the original plan. The original plan called for CONDOS to be built in that area, together with the park across from the Library. Thunder Bay Regional Hospital, was decided by plebiscite, and the vote opted for a totally new centrally located site, with the added cost of a 25 million-dollar contribution by the City taxpayers. Not enough attention was placed on the design of the hospital, nor the amount of beds, and surgical time offered by this new hospital. Not on the table was keeping the two former hospitals McKellar and the New Hospital on the Port Arthur Site functional. Why was the Port Arthur site torn down ? Could it not have been used for housing ? The re-development of the waterfront, was based on the design by a company from British Columbia. While the plan had some good ideas, the major complaints had focused on too much congestion, no respect for the history of the train station, the Marine Memorial, and poor priorities, as the big boat pier was placed in stage five, while stage one included a skateboard park. (Nice idea however not balanced with the past theme of the park, as it should have been placed in an area of sports/recreation, and possibly partially glass enclosed to offer its availability during the winter months. The ‘Morse Code Lighted beams were a good to poor choice, (however a traditional Lighthouse would have been a much, much better choice. The CONDOS on the Lake have shown a great disrespect of the privately built condos across the street. The congestion on the waterfront, (wait till the marketplace is built) will detract from the parkland setting that was the original and in my view the best use of this parkland. It seems that ‘nothing is sacred to some developers and even to the City Corporation itself. The history of Thunder Bay will contain a page on the shut down of a spring fed lake located high in Mount MacKay, a high quality water source, that was gravity fed. Decommissioned in favor of expanding Bare Point, with its increased pumping costs, only to be countered with a proposed building of windmills on a beautiful landscape. The logic of that move confuses me. Now we face this new proposed Multi-event / Arena Centre in the downtown area. The concept of a Convention Hall was suggested by me in the 1997 election. However this project includes an arena which we dont need. The Convention Hall Concept should be developed together with other Convention Halls in the City or the City will compete unfairly with the private sectors; there is no need for this. To be direct, we do not need another Gardens, we cannot afford to spend the 110 million on this project, and even the best projections suggest we will lose money on this project for 10 years at least. Then there is the issue of where to build? This lot is far too small to build for now, and to expand in the future. It does not have the parking space for the expected draw. I can see the Prince Arthur Hotel acquiring the land to build their own convention hall but for the City of Thunder Bay with not having the money to do basic infrastructure, road maintenance and the like, this is many other opportunities, alternatives that would be better investments for the corporation, and the citizens of this city. Congratulations to the Chambers Report by Dr. Camillo Lento and Dr. Bahram Dadgostar from Lakehead University, that clearly shows the extent of over taxation in the City of Thunder Bay and the relative comparatives for this city. In the areas of residential, multi-residential, commercial and industrial the tax 55% higher, 147% higher, 56% higher, and 46% higher than the provincial averages. The quality of life of many people in this city has been seriously and adversely affected by these high rates of taxation and the ballooning costs of City Water. In the field of local Business Improvement Associations my experience with them shows a clear opportunity for some people to use and manipulate them for their personal benefit. Case in point the Bay and Secord Area where the multi-cultural origins of the area has helped remove The Italian Cultural Centre from that group. Speaking of this area from my observations the businesses in this area we not contacted in regards to the addition of ‘bottle necks to the repair of Algoma Street. This idea from Toronto, not only serves to slow down traffic, perhaps in some areas good thing, however it causes bottle necks on traffic when buses are stopping for their stops, or when regular traffic makes left hand turns. One local owners said these were driving traffic away from the area; I would agree. Traffic on the streets is not competing with citizens walking in the streets, and a complex maze of bike lanes on busy streets that was suppose to be bike/walking lanes to improve the quality of life. My first letter to the editor was printed on July 15, 1989, in the Chronicle Journal, was in exposing how imbalanced truths were in fact contributing to community social problems in this city. They were in fact a form of half-truths, newly discovered by research in the City of Thunder Bay in 1987. The letter tried to explain how a good idea can become a bad idea with THE TRUTH of the system becomes imbalanced. Only fitting that a city, whose name was born out of an imbalanced plebiscite would eventually be responsible for showing how relative truths, while true, can be counterproductive, and mislead us to the wrong conclusion. Finally in 2013, some civic leaders in this City, in particular the Police Chief, has recently gone on record suggesting that our social programs should not be pointing fingers and dealing with ‘half-truths, but rather we should be looking to find the causes of our problems. Finally. Yes indeed, finding a cause suggests a cure, and prevention is the best of cures for most of us ! Hopefully some day Thunder Bay will be known as the Capital City of Truth, with the help of Con-College, and Lakehead University; or should that be The Lakehead University ? In the meantime it is hoped that in the next up coming municipal election, beyond its coloured signs, its catchy slogans, that candidates stick to the issues, and as much of The Truth that we know of, we have to begin to pay attention to the details, and basic priorities, and perhaps change our direction. Caesar J. B. Squitti, L.U. H. B. Comm.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:36:07 +0000
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