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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-02-07, Page 5So Wiarton Willie and Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see their shadows on Saturday and we can expect spring at any moment. Gee, I was hoping they’d see their shadow and we’d have only six more weeks of winter. I don’t know about you but this whole Groundhog Day tradition has left me with more questions than answers over the years. Why Feb. 2? Why a groundhog? Since we almost always have at least six more weeks of winter anyway, why bother? I learned a whole lot about the tradition from a story in the most recent issue of Canada’s History magazine. I’d never have guessed that the tradition actually dates back to medieval Europe. Feb. 2 is significant because it was Candlemas Day which was the midpoint of winter. “Half your wood and half your hay should be left on Candlemas Day,” went one saying at the time. Another predicted, “If Candlemas Day be bright and clear we’ll have two winters in the year.” A tradition developed that if a hibernating animal such as a bear, badger or marmot – depending on where you lived in Europe – emerged on Feb. 2 and saw his shadow, he’d climb back into his comfy quarters for another six weeks. European settlers imported the tradition to North America. In Canada it was most often the bear that was the animal of choice. Down in the U.S. the Pennsylvania Dutch, who had settled in the early 1700s, chose the groundhog, a cousin of the European marmot, as their hibernating animal. The term “Groundhog Day” began showing up in U.S. newspapers in the mid-1800s and by the 1880s, Punxsutawney was marking Groundhog Day. The tradition of the bear predicting the weather stuck around for a time, but the flood of American influence meant the groundhog eventually became the symbol of Feb. 2. There was resentment in some areas of Canada where they didn’t even have groundhogs but on the other hand it was a lot safer to have a groundhog whisper in someone’s ear than a bear, grumpy at having his sleep interrupted. Canada eavesdropped on Punxsutawney Phil, with no predictor of our own until 1957 when Wiarton Willie arrived. Many years ago I sat with Skinny Wyonch after an Ontario Community Newspaper Association golf tournament and heard the unofficial version of the creation of the Wiarton Willie Festival. Wyonch (don’t ask me his real first name – within the industry he was just known as Skinny or Skin) was the editor and publisher of the Wiarton Echo, having taken over from Bill Smiley. Older readers will remember Smiley’s hilarious column Sugar and Spice that appeared in most local papers along with 150 others across the country in the 1960s and 1970s. According to Skinny, a bunch of local guys, including Smiley and him, were sitting around over drinks and decided there needed to be some sort of mid-winter fun in town to lift people’s spirits. The official version of the beginning of Wiarton Willie on the festival’s website is that Mac McKenzie sent out invitations to friends and summer residents to join in a Groundhog Festival. Most of the invitations were ignored, but one fell into the hands of an editor at the Toronto Star who sent a reporter and photographer north to cover the event. When the news crew arrived in Wiarton they saw little sign of a festival and after asking around, they were directed to the Arlington Hotel. There they found a roomful of friends (I’d bet Wyonch and Smiley were there) drinking and laughing. When the Star writer asked where the Groundhog Festival he was told this was it. Now newspaper staffers usually enjoy a chance to drink and visit and so the reporter and photographer joined right in. But the next morning they realized they had to do something to justify the cost of their travel and accommodation. With their new-found buddies they went outside and punched a hole in a snowbank from which the Wiarton Willie had supposedly emerged. To add a little reality they borrowed a white fur hat and stuffed it into the tunnel to represent Willie. By the next year, the Festival became a little more serious – if one of these Groundhog Day festivals can ever be described as serious. Mostly they’re just a bit of fun to brighten the mid-winter blahs. As for the groundhogs’ predictions, nobody who lives in northeastern North America can expect spring to begin in early February. That may have been a possibility in Europe but not here in the land of polar vortexes. No, we’ll just soldier on for another six weeks of winter (or longer). We may be helped by the lighter moments of watching a groundhog supposedly talk to somebody who’s very glad the groundhog eventually replaced the bear for predicting spring. Other Views The importance of being accurate Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk Never trust a groundhog’s prediction Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense If you asked a reporter what he/she is most concerned with, it would be accuracy. Making sure you have the correct information in a story is more important than its structure, flow and anything else, which is why it makes it so difficult to write when people provide us with inaccurate information. One of the worst offenders can be local council members. Whether it’s forgetfulness or hyperbole, councillors, as a group, have a bad habit of shouting out facts and figures that, to the untrained ear (and sometimes even the trained ear) can cause all sorts of problems. In my experience, I’m not being unfair here. I would be hard-pressed to point to more than a couple council members in my 12 years of covering four different councils who aren’t guilty of this. Guilty is a pretty loaded term though. We all make mistakes, and many councillors have been excited about an issue, spoken passionately and occasionally cited a less- than-accurate fact. While I am calling for people to be better, I’m not doing so in a vindictive way. The more we put the right information out there, the tougher it will be for those looking to present a slanted view of issues in our communities. Whether it’s announcing something prematurely, throwing out inaccurate facts and figures or confusing terms like tax rate and taxes, council members need to make sure they know exactly what they’re talking about before they address an issue. And just a side note here, I’m not asking for anything that I don’t expect of myself. I pore through documents and yes, occasionally a dictionary, and I have people read my stories before they go to print to make sure that I haven’t inadvertently confused a tax rate increase with actual taxes (dollars and cents). To be honest, budget season is probably the worst time for this issue. There’s always a little bit of confusion about budgets going up and down and how that relates to taxes. See, odds are your taxes go up every year. That doesn’t mean the municipality has increased your taxes though, it might mean that your assessment has risen. So every year, when a budget is presented, there is more money for the council to use thanks to increasing assessments and still not call for an increase in the tax rate. Take Central Huron, for example. Thanks to increasing assessments and the money given to the municipality by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission (OLG), the municipality has been able to claim for years it hasn’t had to increase the tax rate. That doesn’t mean that individuals haven’t been paying more taxes, it just means that Central Huron staff and council were able to keep their spending increases within the municipality’s budget due to assessment increases alone. Morris-Turnberry has had, in recent years, properties with decreasing taxes despite slight increases to the budget. That’s because the tax relief given to agricultural properties is being reduced every year, meaning Morris-Turnberry, an agricultural municipality, is getting more and more tax dollars from assessment. As a result, some residential properties may have actually seen an overall tax reduction in recent years. I feel like I got a little off-topic there, but it’s an important example to provide to show you that being a reporter or a journalist is more than just parroting what people say; we need to have a foundation of knowledge to support it. That’s why I ask that the people making the decisions have that same knowledge. The problem arises when someone says, “Well we’re looking at a 13 per cent tax increase,” when really, they mean something entirely different. They could be talking about a 13 per cent budget increase, which in itself could then be split among wards if there are area-rated expenses. From there, that could actually mean a three or four per cent increase in tax rate above assessment increases which would then cause taxation increases of varying amounts depending on each property. It’s confusing, but if I’m expected to know it, I expect councillors to know it as well. Again, budget time is when many of these pitfalls rear their ugly heads, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only time it happens. Whether it’s announcing something is approved or going ahead while another body still needs to approve it or tipping council’s hand by revealing information too early, then having to ask the press to forget they heard that, it all needs to be addressed. Some people may think this is just a gripe and that I’m whining, but the reality is that these gaffs are hurting councils as much as they are hurting the media. While we may know what council is trying to refer to, those in the gallery (or watching online) don’t, and the errors can make it difficult not only for journalists to report on issues, but for council to get the right wording out as well. Really, Red Green said it best: “I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.” Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2019. PAGE 5. Fahrenheit 451 What are the odds that the first time you sit down to count how many columns you’ve written over the years, that number would perfectly coincide with a famous book title with a number in it? That, I can’t tell you – no one has ever bothered to do such a thing before I did last week, but now, here we are, arriving at column 451 right before our very eyes. I was listening to a podcast last week that made me consider a retrospective column. It was The Ongoing History of New Music with Alan Cross – a historical music podcast looking at music from, essentially, the late 1980s and beyond – and he chose to look back on the event of his 500th show (this episode, however, was mined from the vault, as it had originally been broadcast back in 2006). He took the opportunity to look back at the very concept of the show (he didn’t want to do it at first and felt in no way qualified) and then revisit the very first show as well as others along the way. Fahrenheit 451, of course, is the name of a classic Ray Bradbury novel. Dystopian in nature, the novel tells of a future when books are banned and “firemen” burn any they find. The title of the book is said to refer to the temperature at which a book will burn. However, other than the fact that this is my 451st column for The Citizen, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Fahrenheit 451. Sorry to all the Bradbury fans among our readers. It’s amazing to think of all the writing that entails. This space holds about 600 words, so that means I’ve spilled ink on over 270,000 words in this space alone – that, of course, doesn’t factor in the handsful of stories I write for The Citizen on a weekly basis. The breakdown of my column-writing career goes like this. I took over for former Editor Bonnie Gropp and wrote my first column in this space on Feb. 25, 2010. The topic was gathering up all of my childhood treasure (and trash) from the Pickering home of my youth as my parents planned to sell it. Atop that column was a picture of me wearing sunglasses and staring off into space (or presumably the oh-so-bright future). The next week – March 4, 2010 – I had a new picture, taken by our then-intern Aislinn Bremner. That picture is the very same one that sits atop this column today. Some readers have told me it’s time for a new one, but I have assured them that I’ve barely changed, despite what their eyes and calendars may tell them. I would write 43 columns in 2010. Those, however, were not my first columns for The Citizen. Under Bonnie, I wrote two ad hoc columns in the general section of The Citizen. The first was about the concept of culture shock and the second was about soccer chants, specifically, the Liverpool F.C. and Celtic F.C. anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. So, we’re up to 45. I would then go on to fill this space every week from 2011 to 2018 (we take a week off in August and a week off in December every year) for a total of 50 columns per year, bringing us up to 445. And now, with this being my sixth column of 2019, we arrive at 451. I’ll have to start planning now for something special for my 500th column, about this time next year. Of all of the 270,600 (more or less) words I’ve written in columns, some were no doubt funny, while I tried with others to tug at your heartstrings. The topics are often hyper-local and increasingly I try to use them to take a stand. If I’m lucky, I may have been able to use some to affect change or offer alternative viewpoints – 600 words at a time.