Canada. Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that everyone has “the freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

Sadly in the City of Cornwall and SD&G this is a sad joke. It goes beyond freedom of the press and charter rights. I mean, in the 2014 election we had the Chamber of Commerce President essentially say poop to the charter and inflicted conditions that one would expect from China or Russia during the debate it hosted. Oddly enough he’s no longer President of the Chamber and his own business died with him complaining on social media about minimum wage increases. Even more sadly, in this last election candidates for council could not debate.

It also means not getting info from our MP, our MPP, fire calls, and many times police information that should be available to the media.

I’ve endured a lot of abuse during the ten years that this newspaper has existed. This year truly is my last, at least at the helm, but we’re at the stage now where it may be time to file a major Conspiracy lawsuit against the city and some of its minions. The irony of this is that its the taxpayers that have to pay the bill for that which is why I have held back doing so for several years.

We have a former mayor on video stating quite clearly that city lawyers conjured up some voodoo suggesting that this newspaper was a blog instead of a newspaper as justification to boycott it.

As silly and entertaining as that may sound to some with an IQ over 72, it’s been repeated literally hundreds of times on local social media. (we keep screen caps)

What we’ve also seen is threats made to our sponsors, sales reps, even people that have publicly supported CFN. Again, there are reasons why Cornwall finished 124 out of 125 in the CFIB Community Entrepreneur City rankings in Canada.

We have someone that clearly defamed us suggesting we write manufactured/fake news. That’s like saying a priest is a pedophile. If he isn’t there’s no winning that case. It all comes down to the damages. This special person asked for the city to help him create a legal defense fund by selling comic books which most likely were leftovers from his free comic book days. He’s claimed to have sold over 10,000 of them as well as claiming that any leftover cash would go to local charity.

Only in Cornwall could something as backwards and upside down, especially as he refused to settle for a slim portion. IE he could’ve written a cheque and sent thousands to charity, but instead risking taking a hit that could run well over the small claims court limit because of how he has conducted himself since the suit.

When you look at who’s publicly supported him you can see the rings and tentacles and where they lead.

What we essentially have had is someone that chose to invest in this city and start a newspaper when there was a huge need for local news coverage over ten years ago.

It flourished so quickly in fact that other media used their positions in the community to try and intimidate and attack us. For example Scott Ferguson was the Chamber Prez who told a sitting city councilor that Seaway Radio was a pirate radio station and he’d get it shut down.

It wasn’t and then we covered his alleged shenanigans with one of his own announcers that was exposed shortly before he shuttled out West.

CFN was an ideal when I created it. Sadly, this community let me and ultimately itself down. Those that needed a true free media voice the most are really the one to blame.

Here’s one tiny example. A local struggler by the name of John Lister couldn’t afford an ad. I offered to let him supply me with some artwork in exchange for his ad which he jumped on. In fact he created our most famous image of Bernadette Clement as Marie Antoinette over the Beaver killing scandal in Guindon Park. (ironically people have attributed the art work to the allegations that she’s a closeted lesbian who’s had a long term relationship with Diocese poo bah and fellow lawyer Kimberly Walsh)

Mr. Lister made a huge thing of publicly dumping his ad, the one he didn’t essentially pay for, to gain a few brownie points.

Whether it’s fear, ignorance, or hopes of some mystical gains that rarely occur (although one former sponsor KAV productions(they recently did the Fire Services Bohemian Rhapsody farce video) said that Bob Peters and friends gave his firm close to $100,000 in business after pulling his ad from CFN)

After all we know that:

Bad people don’t like bad things being written about them, especially if they are proven to be true.

And that’s the thing. In over 13,000 stories published this newspaper has never had to apologize or payout for a single one. We apologized once because while drinking late into the morning with the Kilger campaign at Winner’s Sports bar, we allowed a viewer comment to go through that apparently offended Ed Lumley (one of the chief players and profiteers in robbing this city of its own Electric Company) who has been fingered by numerous sources as the top of the food chain of the CFN boycott.

We’ve shown some of the worst of this community. There are reasons a city so close to Montreal and Toronto, with huge access benefits and opportunities has failed as epically as Cornwall Ontario.

Just are there are reasons that instead of exploiting one of Hollywood’s biggest stars who grew up here, Bob Peters has to crawl up one Randy Sauve’s bum and flog extras from TV shows at an event that is supposed to be a tourism showcase for Cornwall. (It isn’t by any means).

I mean, shouldn’t we be renaming Brookdale or Pitt, Gosling?

This is a city that has literally lost over 100,000,000 ad impressions that could’ve been used to help promote Cornwall in the last three years alone on CFN. Would any reasonable person, knowing the cost of 100M impressions via our competition or social media not see the immense value of that, especially as most of our competition can’t organically serve up that many slots? And of course social media ads are based on what you scroll buy so essentially viewers see the boycotters competition instead of them.

That’s crazy!

This writer has seen many of the dragons fall or die. There has been no overwhelming community crying for their loss. Most times quite a number of people are relieved, but they’re replaced by others. It’s how corruption works.

While some may cheer my own personal “divorce” from Cornwall; many others understand. There’s a large chunk who live in this city, most not from here, who simply enjoy their homes, but spend their time and resources outside of it. Simply not wanting anything to do with the local mess.

There are even people that grew up here that do the same. How many times have you seen Bob Peters or his bud Sue Stewart at a local grocery store or shopping?

We have a small group who’ve corrupted this city, but it’s a bigger lot that simply have allowed it that’s truly at fault.

There’s a lovely Asian curse that says may you get what you wish for, and for many here in Cornwall it’s coming home to roost in spades.

I’m actually enjoying this last year. CFN isn’t shutting down or leaving, but it’s time that the silent majority showed some support.

While it’s difficult to find sales reps, the bottom line is that in 2019, if you really want “real” news, and not whitewashed or politically corrupted news, it’s more important now than ever to support it.

It’s why if you’re still reading this story at this point you need to STOP.

And immediately go and send an e interac donation to info@cornwallfreenews.com and please include a message.

We need replacements for me by the end of the year and that will cost money.

You see the bad guys and girls have created this strange situation where because we’re digital we clearly know what you like to click on, and by far what you hunger for the most is the exposing of the local corruption.

We have an archive with over 30,000 files in it now. We’re ready to start to publish those because frankly there are no innocents when you are dealing with people that would do to this community what they have ultimately done.

After all when pedophiles and people like Gilles Latour are more publicly welcome than a charming fellow like myself we’re past the looking glass.

Recently someone asked if we’d cover their ribbon cutting ceremony. I asked if there was an ad buy attached to it and they responded that they had bought social media ads. I suggested to them that they contact their social media and ask them to cover their ribbon cutting.

The news is here if you want it, but you have to support it happening. People lose touch of how important media are to a community; like art and culture; without them you have… Pembroke, or Cornwall.

That means coughing up some cash once in awhile. It means publicly supporting this newspaper. It means asking businesses where you shop why they are not advertising with us.

It means boycotting politicians like Eric Duncan that refuse to speak with CFN even though he wants desperately, more than anything in his entire life to be a MP. But if you don’t get that our audience are the voters that you want to support you then you shouldn’t be running.

It means showing support when City Hall refuses to answer basic questions that you want us to get you answers for.

It means standing up for yourself, your community, and if more people do that the sun may shine again one day in Cornwall, and SD&G.

It’s your call, but at the end of the day nobody can’t say we didn’t say anything to you.

j

3 Comments

  1. CFN is the best news in all of Cornwall and SD&G put together. Every day this is the paper that I click in first and gee I haven’t touched the Ottawa papers in a dogs age. I must be getting old and sick – well I am sick since a couple of days. Yesterday I was thinking MY GOD I WILL BE 80 YEARS OLD IN 12 YEARS. Honestly Jamie has the very best paper.

  2. Dash here, dash there. Bounce the ball here, bounce the ball there. It’s still slight of hand.

    But the song remains the same.

  3. Some think they know what I’m referring to, most don’t. But c’est la vie!! And no I won’t.

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