The
THIS WEEK 2 • Warden 4 • Editorials 15 • Obituaries 19 • Cabaret
Citizen
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Friday, November 29, 2024
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Volume 40 No. 48
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Festival releases season By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen
The Christmas spirit It’s now officially Santa Claus parade season with the Goderich and Teeswater parades in the books. Joining them on Friday night was Seaforth, which held its annual parade on the the streets of the town amid the threat of inclement weather, though that threat would
never come to pass. Among the many businesses, families and service clubs that took the time to enter a float into Friday night’s parade was the Huron Heat Female Hockey Association, above, which brought youth and enthusiasm to the proceedings. (John Stephenson photo)
HE stands pat on council composition By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen Despite further discussion and urging to consider an alternative, Huron East Council has opted to maintain the status quo in regards to the size of council and the current structure of the ward system. When the issue reared its ugly head again earlier this year, council was set to vote to maintain the status quo, but several councillors said they wanted to hear from the ad hoc Council Review Advisory
Committee, which had, in recent years, recommended a reduction in the size of council and the gradual elimination of the ward system. Clerk Jessica Rudy presented council with a letter written by the committee as part of her report at the Nov. 19 meeting. “After engaging the public, evaluating multiple perspectives and analyzing the structures of comparable municipalities, we put forth a detailed recommendation in 2022 that aimed to address and modernize our council’s structure. Specifically, we proposed a move
Budget talks begin By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen The 2025 budget process is officially underway in Central Huron, with the first meeting being held last week to pre-approve a handful of purchases before the budget process begins in earnest next February.
At the meeting, held on Tuesday, Nov. 19, Central Huron Council approved just over $1 million in 2025 capital projects and $671,000 in the 2025 operating budget based on the recommendations from Director of Finance Jeff Boyes. The capital project budget Continued on page 9
towards a nine-member council, featuring a blend of both ward and at-large representation, with the ultimate goal of transitioning to an at-large election format,” reads the letter from the committee, written by Christie Little. “This format change was crafted with an understanding of our community’s dynamics and a commitment to ensuring equitable representation for all residents.” The committee’s recommendation was to move to a council comprised of a mayor, a deputymayor to be appointed by council and two representatives each from a new ward that combines Brussels and Grey, a new ward that combines McKillop and Seaforth, and the existing Tuckersmith Ward, as well as two councillors to be elected at-large. Furthermore, the committee also recommended that council consider eliminating the ward system entirely by 2029 and moving to an entirely at-large election. Little went on to detail the committee’s thinking in making its recommendation, further
suggesting that the committee should have been summoned to present to council back in 2022 when the recommendation was first made. “At the time, council deferred the recommendation without further discussion or explanation. Now, as council revisits the matter, there appears to be a strong inclination to maintain the current structure. As a committee, we feel it is necessary to express both our concern and frustration that, after two years, the recommendation has not been acted upon, and only now, been given a formal request to present our rationale to council,” Little wrote in her letter. “We believe a delegation should have been permitted in 2022 to explain how our committee arrived at our recommendation. We also feel strongly that further delay or a decision to retain the status quo could be a missed opportunity to ensure council’s structure is both representative and forwardthinking.” Little asked that council thoroughly review and consider the Continued on page 17
The 2025 Blyth Festival season, officially announced to members late this week, will include four shows indoors at Memorial Hall, two of them world premieres, and one modern Canadian classic produced outdoors at the Harvest Stage with the entire company as its cast. The season will open indoors with Drew Hayden Taylor’s Sir John A.: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion, which was produced at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre in 2017 and then again briefly at Regina’s Globe Theatre before its coming stint at the Blyth Festival. In an interview with The Citizen, Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt said that the play is funny and thought-provoking, with Taylor’s trademark edge to which Festival audiences responded with 2022’s Cottagers and Indians and 2017’s The Berlin Blues. The play follows two young Indigenous men - one a musician and the other someone who loses his grandfather at the beginning of the story - who hatch a plan to recover the deceased grandfather’s medicine pouch from a museum in London. The grandfather has grown up in the Residential School system and had the pouch stolen. To recover it, the men aim to travel to Kingston to exhume the bones of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, and hold them ransom until the pouch is returned. Along the way, the pair encounter a hitchhiker with his own problems with the founding of the country and Macdonald even makes a cameo appearance. The season’s second play will make its world premiere in Blyth. Commissioned by the Festival, bestselling author and Academy Award nominee Emma Donoghue has adapted one of her short stories to create The Wind Coming Over the Sea. Garratt says that while the show has a lot of heart, it will also be somewhat of a folk musical, complete with plenty of Irish music that is sure to appeal to audiences. The London, Ontario-based author, in recent years, has become a big fan of the Festival, attending many shows and she approached the Festival with the concept for the play. Garratt says that while it’s based on one of Donoghue’s own short stories, that story, in turn, is really based on real-life Continued on page 12