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New days in the apple orchard
The Voice PUBLISHED INDEPENDENTLY IN PELHAM
Vol.20 No.30
NIAGARA’S BEST-READ WEEKLY SINCE 1997
Wednesday September 28, 2016
Now up to
$240! Page 11
Column Six Tales from a land Down Under That terrycloth was seriously thick
BY JOHN SWART
VOICE Correspondent
See APPLES Page 11
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Advances mean more fruit, better quality
Dan DeVries loves fruit farming, and it shows in the excitement and knowledge he conveys when discussing the transition his family is making in how they grow apples. “Gone are the days when trees were 20 feet apart and you could turn a semi around in the orchard,” he says, gesturing to an area of 30- yearold apple trees in his Sumbler Road orchard. These old trees are 17 feet apart, planted in rows 12 feet wide. His latest plantings are in rows three feet apart. “Up to 40% of the apples on the older trees are poorer quality. Less sunlight, suckers are harder to prune amongst the gnarly old branches, less productive, more costly to pick ..., “ says DeVries as he handles the tree. “ It’s competitive in the fruit industry. You have to be more efficient, manage your labour and costs. The new planting method is known as a High Density Orchard System, and DeVries’ family business is embracing the changes to be profitable and survive. “We’re 25% in the old standard, 50% in intermediate, and 25% in the newest form of high density planting,” he says, referring to the 40 acres dedicated to apples. Plans are to continuously remove older trees and put more space into high density in the future. “Our medium density trees yield about the same per-acre as our new plantings, but the labour costs of managing and picking are less for the new ones,” says DeVries, referring again to the need to be ultra-efficient. The new planting style was developed by Cornell University. British
The
BY BOB LOBLAW
The VOICE
O
would do that —grab my artificial leg and then rip it off. And then one cop ordered me to hop with my hands tied behind my back. It was so outrageous and ridiculous that sometimes it feels like I was tortured. I mean, what were they trying to do to me? It was like they were trying to break me.” When Pruyn told the officers that he couldn’t hop because it was too painful, he says that he heard another officer say “You asked for it,” before he says they assaulted him again. Being dragged across concrete by two different officers, he says he screamed for help as he was hit and kicked. With so many police watching, Pruyn says he couldn’t understand why none intervened. “What they did to me was intentional,” Pruyn says. “It was obvious that I was disabled and obvious what they were doing by yanking off my leg and stealing my disability aid. Those were deliberate things to hurt me mentally and to cause stress, lifelong stress.” According to Pruyn, it
N MY FIRST TRIP to Australia I witnessed two remarkable events. The first involved the entire country. The second involved a man in an elevator. The first remarkable event was a nationwide vote on whether to get divorced from Britain. Similar to the Canadian system, Australia was a constitutional monarchy, with a Governor General representing the monarch. Anti-royalist sentiments bubbled up now and again, yet the monarchy remained popular, particularly in the form of Queen Elizabeth II and a certain Princess of Wales. Even so, by the early 1990s a fresh push for a break from Britain arose, becoming a political Aussie-rules football usually tossed by the left. A Constitutional Convention was held in 1998, and after much unpleasant dickering a proposal was finally hammered out—the sort of half-baked compromise that pleases no one and is guaranteed to fail. Despite this, on the eve of the election opinion polls suggested that Australia was about to become a republic—byebye Westminster system, hello...weirdly-hybrid-appointed-president system. It was put to a nationwide vote in mid-November 1999. The polls were wrong. Monarchists won the day decisively, defeating the republicans by about 2-to-1. My wife and I sat in a hotel bar watching the election returns on television. We’d
See G20 Page 7
See COLUMN SIX Page 3
AUTUMN SOARING Brandon Christopher lifts off at the Isaac Riehl Skateboard Park. Story on page 3.
VOICE PHOTO
Ridgeville man’s G20 scars linger BY NATE SMELLE
The VOICE
There seem to be new allegations of police brutality in the U.S. every day lately. While tensions flare south of the border when another shooting occurs, most Canadians assume that they won’t be subject to violence at the hands of those whose duty it is to serve and protect them. This may be the case for most Canadians, but not for all. For some six-and-a-half years Ridgeville resident John Pruyn has been waiting for an apology. He says that he was assaulted by police at the June 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto. What started out as a fun day of walking the streets of Toronto with his wife Susan and daughter Sarah, quickly turned into a nightmare that Pruyn says continues to haunts him. Pruyn was sitting, talking with his daughter in what was designated the “Free Speech Area” at Queen’s Park, when he says police moved in. Trying to get up after being told to move by one of the officers, Pruyn says that he was pushed to
Ridgeville’s John Pruyn. the ground and beaten. He says that his daughter, who was asking the officers to let her father stand up, was dragged away by her hair
VOICE PHOTO
and assaulted before being detained. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Pruyn. “I was stunned that they