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The Citizen, 2016-12-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2016. PAGE 5. Other Views Where the Papver rhoeas blow Let's hear it for Joel Poinsett and Casper Wistar. And a hand for J.G. Zinn, Anders Dahl and Leonard Fuchs as well. What's special about those dudes? They all have flowers named after them — to wit: poinsettia, wisteria, zinnia, dahlia and fuchsia. What could be more sublime than knowing that a beautiful bloom will bear your name forever? Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz has that honour. The genus Eschscholzia of the family Papaveraceae is named after the 19th century Russian scientist. We know it better as the California poppy. Which brings us, in a rambling, creeping vine sort of way, to the subject of the day: the poppy. We mostly know the red kind, Papaver rhoeas, which we wear on our lapels each November, but the poppy can come in any colour and a bewildering variety of guises. It can grow up to four feet tall; the blossoms can be the size of a dinner plate. Aside from the Herr Eschsholtz namesake, there is the Prickly, the Welsh, the Pygmy, the Wind, the Tulip, the Tree and the Desert AOArthur Black Bearpaw variety. Poppies are a weed that grows anywhere from the plains of India to the battlefields of Flanders to the front lawn of the RCMP detachment on Salt Spring Island (really). And the flowers go back a ways. Early Greeks and Romans used them as offerings to their dead. Ancient Egyptian medicos ground up the seeds and fed them to patients for pain relief. And somewhere along the line somebody discovered that if you cultivated the right species of poppy and harvested it at the right time, you got an industrial -strength pain reliever: opium. Later they discovered it was also lethally addictive. So they dumped it on the Chinese. Rather, the British East India Trading Company did. Back in the early 1800s, British merchants found themselves with a huge cash crop of opium distilled from the poppy fields of India. They shipped it off to China (ignoring the protests of the Chinese emperor who had banned the drug). The British got filthy rich; China got generations of junkies and eventually endured the Opium Wars in which tens of thousands (almost all Chinese) were killed. Free Trade, nineteenth century style. Fast forward to Afghanistan at the end of the 20th century. Under the Taliban, Afghan poppy farmers (who supplied 75 per cent of the world's opium) were put out of business on pain of death. That was then. A little over a decade later, Afghan poppies are once again blowing in the wind. Last year marked the fourth record year for production of (ahem) non -pharmaceutical grade opiates, 92 per cent of which come from Afghanistan. The poppy. A beautiful flower that inspired In Flanders Fields, the most famous Canadian poem ever written. A flower of peace and remembrance. But a flower with a history as blood-soaked red as the petals of a Papaver rhoeas. A different kind of metric necessary During a recent meeting of the Blyth Business Improvement Area (BIA) it was revealed that the typical measurement used to identify the need for a stop sign or traffic light at a location is the number of collisions that occur there. The reason the issue came up was that Huron County's new Economic Development Officer Andrew Kemp, who was attending the meeting to introduce himself to the group, had been told to look into the possibility of placing a traffic light at the intersection of County Road 4 and County Road 25. Having traffic lights at the intersection is the goal of a petition started by North Huron Councillor Bill Knott who has allied himself with Chris Patterson, a Blyth resident who was involved in a collision at the intersection and, around the same time that Knott started crafting his petition, started a Facebook group with the same goal. Kemp explained that a local business owner had made the request earlier (independent of Knott and Patterson) so it was handed to him. His research indicated that traffic lights, without some kind of political will behind them, wouldn't likely happen at the intersection. This didn't surprise me. I've been here for a few years and this isn't the first time this issue has come up. The answer, typically, is that there isn't enough traffic there to justify any kind of traffic control. What did surprise me, though, was that while the previous answers have always revolved around general traffic, Kemp said the issue revolved around a specific aspect of traffic: collisions. Let me first off say that traffic control at that intersection is necessary. I'm not rooting for any specific kind of traffic control, but, as the reporter that usually ends up grabbing a camera to cover collisions, I've been there a number of times over the past several years. In my experience, the intersection is tough to navigate when you are on County Road 25. Southbound traffic can be out of line of sight, especially if you drive a low -to -the - ground vehicle like me. Trying to cross or turn onto County Road 4 can be a dangerous proposition and that was before it was announced that there would be a Tim Hortons and the Blyth Cowbell Brewing Company's brewery and restaurant located at the intersection. Traffic control can take the form of flashing lights to encourage people to follow the rules that seem to be sometimes ignored, a round- about (which there doesn't seem to be room for, if it's anything like the round -abouts I've travelled on in Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph and Woodstock), a four-way stop or traffic lights. Kemp reported that, before a traffic light is considered, a four-way stop would be considered and there haven't been enough collisions to justify the four-way stop, let alone consideration for stop lights. To me, that seems to be a backwards way of thinking about the issue. Whenever issues come up at the council or committee meetings that we cover, people are always talking about being proactive instead of reactive, but in this instance, when we're talking about people's lives, Kemp reported that the placement of traffic control measures are completely reactive. Before anyone calls up Kemp, let me state that he was just reporting the information that had been relayed to him. This wasn't his decision to make and calling him probably isn't going to change what he reported. While the issue of the intersection seems a simple one to me (put up the four-way stop, a relatively inexpensive solution, because of the increased traffic from development in the area and upgrade to traffic lights if necessary) the fact that we rely on the number of collisions to justify traffic measures seems to be a bigger issue. To me, a collision is a life -changing event, regardless of how fast the people involved are travelling. I've been in a collision that resulted in a written -off vehicle and chemical burns and I can tell you, the world doesn't look quite the same afterwards. I'm reminded of how lucky I am that I didn't suffer some debilitating injury or worse every time I see a collision. The fact that we wait until enough people have had their lives damaged or ended by collisions before we start looking at traffic control doesn't just bother me, it horrifies me. When it comes to other issues, governments are more than happy to prepare and try to address a problem before it happens. Possibility of military action? Better increase military spending. Devastating illness on the rise? Deploy medical professionals to deal with the issue. Financial crisis? Create stimulus packages and invest in the economy before we end up in crash scenario. Traffic, however, isn't changed until it's too late if Kemp's report is accurate. Sony Blyth, no stop signs or traffic lights for you until a few more people have had their lives either ended or irreparably damaged by collisions. No -can -do on that flashing warning light Carlow, you haven't seen enough people chopped out of mangled car wrecks just yet. The way things are now are sickening. Sure, we might get some traffic control at that location some time down the road because of the increased traffic from developments, but it might not be until some poor person has lost their life or the use of their limbs. Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic here. There are plenty of collisions that people walk away from every day. However, all it takes is one collision to end someone's life and, in my opinion, if we need that to happen before we get a second pair of stop signs on County Road 4, then, in my mind, the people who decide not to look at traffic control for an intersection that sees more than its fair share of collisions are partly responsible for that fatality. Regardless of whether you think that's an embellishment or not, the intersection isn't safe and something does need to change and it needs to change now, not after a prescribed amount of people have had their lives ruined while attempting to navigate it. Final Thought Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way. - Alice Childress Shawn 111 ‘! Loughlin Shawn's Sense The winds of change Jt was on April 2, 2013 that Huron East Council officially declared the municipality an "unwilling host" to industrial wind turbine developments. The wording, ripped straight from Premier Kathleen Wynne's February, 2013 throne speech, in which she said that only "willing hosts" would be home to developments such as a casino, a quarry, a gas plant or a wind development. Now, over three and a half years later, Mayor Bernie MacLellan wants that motion to be reconsidered. At the Dec. 6 meeting of Huron East Council, he asked that council consider rescinding the motion at the next meeting, set for Dec. 20 in Seaforth. One can't help but assume that this has something to do with the vibrancy fund council turned down in December, 2013. It was just under one year later that council had its inaugural meeting after the October, 2014 election, that MacLellan stated that one of the first issues he hoped council would tackle would be to revisit the issue of the St. Columban Wind Energy vibrancy fund — an agreement that would pay Huron East $115,000 per year for 20 years for a total of $2.3 million for hosting the turbine project. With mounting financial concerns such as rising infrastructure costs, skyrocketing hydro bills and declining provincial funding, MacLellan hoped the company would reconsider offering the funding that council so urgently needed. While opponent groups like Huron East Against Turbines (HEAT) called the fund "blood money" other councillors felt that because hosting turbines was a provincial decision, Huron East would be forced to host turbines whether it wanted to or not, so the municipality might as well take the money. At the time, it seemed like a foolhardy decision to me. The municipality was desperate for revenue and here is a revenue stream sitting on the table and council turned its nose up at it — seven -figure payment for something that was coming whether or not council accepted the money. Rescinding the "unwilling host" declaration seems like the first step towards the reconsideration of the vibrancy fund. Certainly you can't take a company's money in one breath, while denouncing its product in the next. At the same time, with MacLellan making his notice of motion declaration for the Dec. 20 meeting, one can anticipate that wind turbine opponents will be out in full force for the meeting and council will face similar pressure to what it had when the vibrancy fund was first being considered: a room full of passionate and vocal opponents to turbines. The question also remains as to whether or not St. Columban Wind Energy would be willing to re -offer the vibrancy fund after facing three years of opposition from the municipality. Certainly the company would be operating within its rights to not entertain the notion after having what the company would consider a generous offer shoved back in its face, but who knows? Perhaps the company is one that believes in second chances. Huron East is one of nearly 100 municipalities and counties across Ontario that have declared themselves unwilling hosts to wind turbines. Whether or not that will change remains to be seen. Whatever the decision — whether it's to welcome wind turbine developments or to again leave money on the table — it's destined to please some, while infuriating others.