April 5, 2018 Vol. 18, No. 13
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Gary Davison, former Mayor of South Frontenac, dies
by Jeff Green (with files from Craig Bakay and Wilma Kenny) ary Davison, who served on the Loughborough Township fire department for 40 years, as a South Frontenac Township Councillor for 3 years and Mayor of South Frontenac for 8 years, has died of cancer. Davison died on Monday morning (April 2) of cancer. He had been treated for Lymphoma over the last few years, and recovered. A few weeks ago, after returning from a trip to Australia, he became ill and it turned out the Lymphoma had returned, and this time the treatments were not effective. Aside from his public service, Davison worked as a stone mason, and was a very devoted husband, father and grandfather. During his tenure as mayor, Gary Davison was responsible, in part, for completing the municipal amalga-
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mation process in South Frontenac. A multiple budget, ‘area rating’ system that was instituted upon municipal amalgamation in 1998 to deal with the stark differences in financial standing and service levels in the four townships (Storrington, Loughborough, Portland, and Bedford) that combined to form South Frontenac. During his tenure as Mayor, ‘area rating’ was phased out and finally eliminated in 2010. As well, the Sydenham library and ambulance stations were constructed. He served as Frontenac County Warden in 2009 and 2010. Gary Davison was born in 1944 (November 15) into a large family. He had 7 brothers and 4 sisters. He had two sons with his first wife Sandra, Chris and Curtis. They married when he was 20 and she was 19 and were together until she died of cancer. Sandra was a founder of the Limestone Learning Foundation and an annual fundraising golf tournament is held in her name each June at Loyalist Golf and Country Club. Gary later remarried his second
wife Sue, who was a great support to him when he was mayor and afterwards. He had seven grandchildren. He was well known as a hunter, golfer, Montreal Canadians fan and a community booster. A long time member, and eventually the Chief of the Loughborough Fire Department, his first involvement with the township of South Frontenac took place a few days after the township was established in 1998, in the aftermath of the famous ice storm. “He was one of the first people to come into my office when the ice storm hit. ‘What can I do,’ he asked. Ten days later we let him go back to his life,” recalls former South Frontenac Mayor Phil Leonard, a longtime friend and hunting buddy. In 2003 when Davison was thinking about running for council, he approached Leonard, who was about to step down as Mayor. “I thought it was great that he wanted to run. And when he was on council and later as mayor he would come and talk about what was going on. I would tell him what I thought and he’d listen, and then go ahead and do what he thought was the right thing. He was a good public servant and a great friend. Many people will miss him. It’s hard to imagine that he’s gone.” Wilma Kenny, who covers South Frontenac Council for the News described his political style as Mayor as “fair, firm, thoughtful, and able to be decisive when necessary.” She also recalled driving to the opening of the Plevna branch of the Kingston Frontenac Public Lindary (KFPL) with him a few years ago, when he was county warden and she was the vice-chair of the KFPL board. “He seemed to know everyone all along the way. He had hunted with many of them. He was full of entertaining stories about the region, and was at home anywhere in Frontenac County.” Curtis and Chris Davison, Gary’s sons, have hundreds of memories of their dad, all flooding back to them this week. They remember his first election for mayor, which he won by about 200 votes. There were also about 200 people at the Davison family Christmas that year, and one of them said Gary had won the election because of their votes. Looking around the room, he said “what makes you think everyone here voted for me?” His sons also mentioned that
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Arden Easter Party
Grandmother Judy Payea and Mom Amy Hole joined Paige Hole to sort out the eggs she collected as the District 1 Rec Committee held its annual Easter party Saturday in Arden. The day once again featured all sorts of games and activities as well as a hot dog lunch and attracted a large crowd. Photo/ Craig Bakay
New milk source “shows promise” say researchers by Jack Gruner (reprinted from the Lancer – edition #1198 – published 04\01, 2018) s the Kingston Economic Development Corporation (KEDCO) and the Frontenac County Economic Development Department continue their efforts to foster a massive expansion to the capacity of the Ontario goat milk industry, a new milk source that may be even better than goat milk is being studied by Queen’s University researchers. Feihe is a Chinese baby formula company that is building a plant near Kingston in what was a major coup for KEDCO. The company is intent on establishling two production lines, one using skim milk which is available from Ontario dairy producers, and another using goat milk, which is not readily available in Ontario in the quantities required for the massive Chinese market. “We know that it has been a major undertaking for KEDCO and Feihe to interest investors
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in large scale goat farming, said Professor Justine Schmolka, the Dupont Professor of Agribusiness Technology and Innovation in the Queen’s Biology department, “so I assigned some of my top students with an open-ended goal of finding a solution to the conundrum of the goat milk shortage.” The students worked in teams, and one of the teams, team R, came to Professor Schmolka, just one day after receiving the assignment, with a question. “They asked me if they could look into a solution that did not require goats but still produced a baby formula with the qualities that Feihe researchers had found when they used goat milk. I took a leap of faith and said yes,” recalled Schmolka. Within a few weeks, after a number of all-nighters in the field and in the Queen’s bio-lab, the students came up with a radical solution, beaver milk. The definitive study of beaver lactation is called “Lactation and chemical composition of milk of
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the European beaver” by the team of Zurowski, Kisza, Kruk and Roskosz. They determined that although the volume of milk is low, the fat content is unusually high and there are unique properties to the milk. “Lactose content was low, and decreased significantly over time, from 4.62 +/- 0.1% to 2.65 +/- 0.1%. 4. Milk production peaked at day 14 and ceased by day 35. 5. The unusual milk composition of this tropical rodent, is one of several adaptations correlated with reproduction in a xeric environment,” said the study (ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pubmed/1975538) The Queen’s researchers did field work with the Canadian beaver in recent weeks, and found that the lactose content in the Frontenac County beavers they studied was higher than their long lost European cousins, but the unusual milk composition was the same. “They also found, and this is
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