This is the last week of November. December begins on Friday, and then winter arrives three weeks after. You’re probably thinking about Christmas, but you should probably also be thinking about cold and flu season. We’re about to hit our peak with the flu, especially with all that holiday socializing coming soon, so do you have your flu shot? It’s okay if you don’t because this is the perfect time to get it! Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #399 – It’s Not Too Late to Get Your Flu Shot”
By the numbers $43,335 per year for two years is probably the smallest ask of this budget cycle, but the work that money will fund is actually pretty important: Attracting new doctors to Guelph and Wellington. For many of us that live here, Guelph is a destination that sells itself, but the competition for a small number of new doctors is fierce and Guelph-Wellington is one of the last municipalities to have a formal plan to get them. Is it too late for us to get in the game? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #398 – Doctors Wanted”
Ever wonder what your life would be like if you didn’t have easy access to a digital device. How would you get the news? How would you sign up for your COVID-19 booster? How would people reach you? For many of us, crossing the digital divide is easy, but for other people in our community it’s hard to cross that Rubicon, and now there’s a group in Guelph that is dedicated to helping people build a bridge. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #397 – Fixing the Digital Divide”
This Saturday is Remembrance Day, our annual opportunity to stop and remember Canada’s war dead who made the ultimate sacrifice and the ones that came home. But not all wars are remembered equally. For instance, the Korean War has long been characterized as “the forgotten war”, so on this 70th anniversary of the unofficial end of the Korean War, how can we make sure that the forgotten war gets remembered? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #396 – Un-Forgetting the Korean War”
Silence has been around for 11 years now. In the fall of 2012, it was founded to provide an outlet for the presentation and creation of new, creative and non-idiomatic music in the fields of improvisation, electro-acoustics, post-rock, jazz, chamber music, computer music, noise, ambient, sound art and more. Silence’s niches have niches, but how are they managing in the midst of all the post-pandemic challenge? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #395 – Silence is Golden”
Maybe you’ve heard the term “dark tourism”, there’s a whole Netflix series about it, but you don’t have to go abroad to somewhere famous to get a taste of dark tourism. Would it surprise you to learn that we have a hot little dark tourism industry right here in Guelph? As we approach Halloween on Tuesday, perhaps it’s time we appreciated just what kind of a sorted little town we have here, historically speaking. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #394 – Guelph, After Dark”
This week’s podcast is dedicated to you, the people, who sent in questions for this Guelph Politicast mailbag over the weekend. Guelph is filled with lots of curious people who are deeply concerned about issues and politics, and some of you came up with some very deep and probing questions for this first mailbag edition since well before the start of the pandemic. Get ready for 45 minutes of one annoying person talking! Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #393 – You’ve Got Mailbag!”
This is one of those episodes that’s based on events that predate many of us that have come to call Guelph home in the last few decades. It’s also a story about land issues, and the desire to protect sensitive land from development. It’s had a lot of names over the years including the Kortright Waterfowl Park, the Niska Lands, and the Hanlon Creek Conservation Area, but the story around this property is just as complicated to sort out. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #392 – Caution’s Creek Part 1: The Past”
Since it closed in 2000, the Ontario Reformatory, and the 108 hectares that surround it, have been the source of much conversation, optimism and fantasy. We got the Guelph Innovation District Secondary Plan, we’ve got a Heritage Conservation District Study, and now we’ve got a project to turn the area into a national park. Is creating a national park the end game for the OR Lands we’ve been looking for? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #391 – A National Park (If We Can Keep It)”
For years, Guelph has been a hotbed of protest, a very politically inclined city on a variety of issues including climate change, poverty, workers rights, equality, Black Lives Matter, and the systemic abuse of Indigenous peoples. Last Wednesday, direct action was on display again as people gathered in Market Square, but this was a protest completely unlike any other in a number of ways, and we need to take a moment to unpack things. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #390 – How to Cover a Protest in 2023”
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