The Voice PUBLISHED INDEPENDENTLY IN PELHAM
DEBBIE PINE
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Uwe Brand on the gas that nearly killed us
Vol.20 No.47
CELEBRATING OUR 20TH YEAR
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
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Column Six My despicable deed
Brock prof and former Pelham Town Councillor looks at methane
50 years on, restitution, forgiveness still hoped for
BY VOICE STAFF
BY NICK SALTARELLI
If you’re looking for insight into the current climate change debate, travel back — way back — to around 252 million years ago, when life on Earth nearly came to a screeching halt. Brock University researchers Uwe Brand and Nigel Blamey have recently shown that a huge release of methane into the Earth’s atmosphere near
I
See METHANE Page 3
Special to the VOICE
into their lives in Pelham to raise their family. In 2009, Taylor took on his present role of Executive Director at Youth Resources Niagara. In this role, Taylor says he gets up in the morning and heads into work—the David S. Horne youth home, on Hwy 20 in Fonthill— not knowing exactly what to expect of the day ahead. While admittedly this can be a challenge for him, he says it is also one of the things he enjoys most about his career helping youth. “It’s one of those jobs that’s very dynamic and always changing,” Taylor says. “It’s never the same thing twice so you don’t become subject to the boredom of a routine. I certainly enjoy working with kids. The vibrancy of that has kept me going and it will be 30 years this year.”
N 1965 I was a 13-yearold paperboy delivering The Welland Evening Tribune. I’d inherited the route from my older brother that spring. He’d had it for four years. When he was 17 and moving onto a real job he handed the route over to me. My parents said it would be a good experience. Teach me about money and responsibility. I accepted it begrudgingly. It was 40 households in the Welland city core. A prime route. After school I’d ride my bike to East Main Street to pick up my allotment. When the presses were down we had to wait, sometimes until after dark. The boys with corner pickups were worse off because they waited in the elements. Pressroom pickups were inside the shipping dock. Lighted, warm and dry. We were entrepreneurs. A weekly subscription to the Tribune was 55 cents; we kept 10. Every day we’d drop the paper on doorsteps and move on, except Thursdays, which was payday at the Atlas, the Tubes, Union Carbide
See EVEN AFTER Page 6
See COLUMN SIX Back page
OPEN SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG BOOK Development Coordinator Melanie Taylor-Ridgeway and Pelham Library CEO Kirk Weaver take in the view at the newly re-opened Maple Acre library. Story on page 8. BOB LOBLAW PHOTO
A Day in the Life: Mike Taylor, Youth Resources Niagara BY NATE SMELLE
The VOICE
For most his working life, Mike Taylor has been working to improve the lives of children and youth in the communities where he has lived. Though it has become his passion and his vocation, it was not the original career path he chose to follow. In fact, it was a chance encounter with an advertisement on a passing subway car he noticed while working as a sales representative for a company in Toronto in the early 1980s that changed his life’s direction. Taylor credits the flashy ad for the organization Operation Springboard as the first spark igniting his interest in working with youth. After volunteering with the group, he said his appreciation for helping others began to grow.
After 30 years in the field, Executive Director of youth program still energized “I started volunteering with them and then pretty soon after I found myself working in a halfway house in front of the jail in Toronto. It turned into a part-time job, then I was a full-time staff, and then next thing I knew I was a manager supervising programs for Operation Springboard all over Ontario.” Continuing his work with Operation Springboard, Taylor moved to Niagara in 1990. In 2002 he and his wife Nancie had their son Elijah and settled
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