Toronto Ontario – Show of hands: how many of you expected the Ontario government to lose the constitutional challenge of its Bill 5, which aimed to reduce the size of Toronto’s city council? No one? Exactly. No one – no one who has been paying attention, at least – expected Doug Ford’s government to lose. Municipalities […]
February will be the tenth anniversary of this newspaper. That’s a long time and a lot of hard work. It’s resulted in over 1 million human pageviews monthly. LINK Sadly, CFN never became the creative fount of positivity I envisioned when I started this venture in February of 2009. You can’t do creative marketing […]
Cornwall Ontario – Shock and Awe as an Ontario Conservative government takes a page out of Quebec politics to chop up Toronto City Council. The only issue this writer has are the optics. Surely there are other councils, like the one here in Cornwall which are not serving the public equitably. Many in the public […]
Cornwall Ontario – The Ford government just issued a release outlining the failings of our educational system which seemed to focus more on Sex Ed than Math. It seems that many would have our education system replace parenthood (although in far too many circumstances you can’t blame them) than simply teach our kids the importance […]
Cornwall Ontario – Democracy dies when people don’t tend to it. That means voting. It means being active more than just at elections. It means becoming aware to some degree of what the monkeys at City Hall get up to. I mean we have a city clerk that can’t even get candidate contact information correct […]
Cornwall Ontario – Lawyers can be a smart bunch, cagey too. It’s rare to get them “on the record” unless they want to be on the record which is why it’s so much fun to get them to chat off the record when the opportunity arises. “Flipper is as good a politician as she is […]
Cornwall Ontario – It’s odd, some of the requests we get for assistance. As this newspaper is about to celebrate our tenth anniversary of somehow surviving in this culturally toxic town it never stops to astound me how entitled some people think they are? Our first two years we essentially said yes to everyone no […]
Cornwall Ontario – For many of us journalists we know no hours. We can be working days straight at a time. We can work at odd hours. Many of us have no set schedules. CFN does not have public offices. When I need to meet someone we do it in public spaces. There are security […]
Cornwall Ontario – So I was chatting with a friend who’s nearly 80 and she’s planning to sell her home and leave Cornwall. She shared a few more of her friends were leaving too. Another friend in her 40’s shared that she’s moving to Ottawa and then shares that she has about a half dozen […]
Media can be a bewildering thing. We are flooded with content through the day. Local, regional, National, happy stories, tragedies, tales of injustice, and crime. Yet at the end of the day we filter all that down to a few stories on a good day. With 4 utterly pointless candidates for mayor and 32 […]
Dear Doug, I sit here in my office of my struggling Independent media outlet. An outlet that was fair and friendly with you during the election. Even though we’re the largest in our market with large audiences in other key Ontario markets we received zero advertising from your campaign or the PC party during the […]
Cornwall Ontario – From offers of hand made suits by Montreal tailors and volunteers it was very tempting to run for office in Cornwall this election. When I ran in 2014 I had one clear objective which I was very proud of the results contrary to what Hugo Rodrigues likes to spew. I wanted […]
Cornwall Ontario – Another major fire in Cornwall Ontario. Another round of appeals for help from “victims” who’ve lost everything. It’s tragic, but for many it’s a self inflicted wound that also impacts the community. In Ontario renters insurance can be had for as little as $15 per month. That’s a package of cigarettes or […]
Cornwall Ontario – One of the biggest problems in Cornwall is the utter failure of charities due to really bad politics. The United Way for example boycotts this newspaper. They also kept missing their funding targets so they no longer have them. Instead of acting like a responsible charity and pursue their mandate they fail […]
Cornwall Ontario – So I was having a beverage with a gentleman I was expecting to run for mayor of Cornwall Ontario. He was bright, successful, connected to the community and had the gift of gab. He was clearly far superior to the only person to put their name forth so far, one David Murphy, […]
Cornwall Ontario – The problem with a lack of community leadership is that issues can bite you in the bum before you realize what hit you. Corruption and political impotence do not lead to a successful community. While the ol rumours and allegations about a certain former mayor’s love for a good game of cards […]
Cornwall Ontario – In the 2014 Ontario municipal election CFN viewers were credited with being the change in Cornwall. Out went one long time corrupt Mayor and politician along with half of his council, and in came a mayor who allegedly stood against the corruption including having resigned during the term as councilor. We now […]
Cornwall Ontario – Justin Trudeau has been an interesting politician. Tailor made for the strange age we live in. He’s visual more than substantial. There have been no great ideas or National directions emanated from him during his entire political career unlike his father, whom whether you agreed or notas PM, clearly was a leader […]