THE
SERVING THE MAPLETON COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY NEWS Volume 49 Issue 04
Drayton, Ontario
1 Year GIC - 1.82% 3 Year GIC - 2.00% 5 Year GIC - 2.40% Daily Interest 1.00%
638-3328
Friday, January 29, 2016
www.jackfinancial.ca
Driscoll urges Mapleton residents to lobby for rural waste/recycling pickup
Welcoming newcomers - The Al Jasem family of 11 arrived in Canada on Dec. 30 and has settled in Drayton with the sponsorship of the Markham Waterloo Mennonite Conference. Six of the children began attending Drayton Heights Public School on Jan. 18. submitted photo
Mapleton welcomes Syrian family by Jaime Myslik DRAYTON – Drayton Heights Public School welcomed its first Syrian refugee students last week. On Jan. 18, six children from the Al Jasem family began classes at the school in kindergarten and Grades 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8. “It really is an absolute highlight,” said Drayton Heights principal Jeff Crawford. “For the first week you’d see them gaining in their confidence and pretty seamlessly, the students in the school already were great at welcoming them. The staff were fabulous at planning; as you go around the school
some of the staff had set up signs that show the English and the Arabic.” Congregations in the Mapleton area that are part of the Markham Waterloo Mennonite Conference sponsored the Al Jasem family of 11 to come to Canada through a United Nations program. “They look at the sponsorship group and ... you can request family size and we said we’re okay with doing a large family because we’ve got a big group and large families they have a harder time finding sponsors for, because of the added responsibility and accommodations and so on,” explained Matt Frey, a member of the spon-
sorship group and liaison with Drayton Heights. The Al Jasem family arrived in Canada on Dec. 30 from a refugee camp in Lebanon, where they lived for more than three years after fleeing Syria, Frey explained. The sponsorship group provided the family with a house in Drayton, helped father Khalil Al Jasem enroll in English as a second language classes in Waterloo, and arranged for transportation to and from the course. Frey also took the seven eldest Al Jasem children to Drayton Heights the week before six of them officially began classes. Continued on page 5
by Patrick Raftis MAPLETON - Mayor Neil Driscoll is urging township residents to lobby for the extension of rural garbage and recycling pickup across Wellington County. Currently, garbage and recycling pickup is provided, every other week, to rural residents of Erin and GuelphEramosa, but not in other rural areas of the county. At a public budget open house in Moorefield on Jan. 14, Driscoll said he favoured extending the service to all rural residents in Wellington. Driscoll said when he inquired about the idea, staff indicated it could be quickly implemented. However, “committee chairs say we’d have to go through a three-year study to see if it makes sense to pick up garbage and recycling in the whole county.” Driscoll urged township residents to contact their representative, Ward 2 councillor Gregg Davidson, or solid waste services committee chair Don McKay, if they are in favour of extending the service. Driscoll pointed out without pickup, rural residents often don’t take advantage of county recycling programs. “If we’re not picking up
garbage and recycling in rural municipalities we’re not recycling,” he said. A two-year pilot program that saw garbage and recycling picked up in Minto and Guelph-Eramosa every other week resulted in the service being discontinued in Minto in December 2008 due to lack of participation. Only 22 per cent of rural Minto residents took advantage of the service at the time. The service was continued in Guelph-Eramosa, which doesn’t have a landfill or waste transfer station within its boundaries. Participation there was almost double that in Minto. In Erin, rural garbage pickup has been provided since the closure of a transfer station in Hillsburgh in May of 2010. The issue of extending the service county-wide is already on the political radar, said McKay. He explained the idea has been listed as a “top priority” in a strategic plan review of county solid waste. Staff are expected to complete a rural pickup analysis and come back in March with a recommendation “looking at a cost/benefit analysis of whether we have rural pickup across
the whole county.” McKay also said he will be accompanying staff on visits to member municipality councils in the next few weeks “with regard to the solid waste strategic plan and our intentions.” In addition, he said a questionnaire will be sent out to county residents “asking what they feel about rural pickup.” While conceding the current timeline for completing the strategic analysis is about two and a half years, “that doesn’t preclude that if there is an appetite and an interest there by the residents that want to see something sooner, and if that committee felt it was appropriate to put in place sooner, that we could do that.” However, McKay said, “We want to make sure that residents have an opportunity for input into what we’re doing so it’s not a knee-jerk reaction.” Part of the reason for the longer timeline, said McKay, is the county’s contract with the current waste services provider ends in 2018. “Just before we would have to RFP for a new contract, we would have some pretty good ideas on maybe how things could change,” McKay pointed out.
Meeting set on local refugee aid efforts by Caroline Sealey DRAYTON - In response to the high level of interest and support from Mapleton churches and residents surrounding the Syrian refugee crisis, an information meeting has been scheduled for Feb. 6. “World Renew, the organization our local committee has been working with, will be hosting an information meet-
ing on Feb. 6 at the Drayton Christian Reformed Church,” said Markus Frei, committee member. “Everyone is welcome to attend to learn more about bringing Syrian families to live in Canada.” Frei said the event will be of interest to those who are considering sponsorship, are currently involved in sponsor-
ing refugees, or would like to know more about any aspect of refugee resettlement. The Drayton Christian Reformed Church is located at 88 Main Street East in Drayton. The meeting will run from 9:30 to 11:30am. For more information about the meeting, contact Frei at 519-638-3627 or Janelle Zwart at 519-803-3698.
House fire linked to power outage by Patrick Raftis MAPLETON - No one was injured but a family of seven lost their home and all their belongings in a house fire on the Fourth Line, just east of Conestogo Lake, on Jan. 20. The fire was reported by a neighbour who saw a red glow around 8:15pm, said Mapleton Fire Chief Rick Richardson, who was the first one on the scene. He added the house was engulfed in flames when he arrived. “There were flames coming out three sides in the upstairs and three sides in the downstairs so basically all the exposed sides of the house had
flames coming out, including the basement, so it was fullyinvolved for sure. “The guy who called it in was there with his pickup truck. He had towed the vehicles, trucks that were at the house, back from the house. But he did tell me that there was a family that lived in there, but it wasn’t confirmed that they weren’t there.” A tense few minutes later, Richardson said firefighters learned the family - two parents and their five young children was safe. “A neighbor contacted them for us and they were on their way here together, they were all
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in the van together so nobody was in the house,” said Richardson. He noted firefighters, including Mapleton’s Drayton and Moorefield stations and a tanker crew from Floradale, then focused on preventing the fire from spreading to a nearby pig barn and vehicles. “As more water became available, we put more water on the house to douse it down,” he said, adding firefighters were on the scene until around 1am. The house was insured, but Richardson said the contents were not. The family, who were tenants, lost everything in the Continued on page 6
House fire - This home on the Fourth Line of Mapleton was destroyed by fire on the evening of Jan. 20. No one was injured, but seven family members, none of whom were home when the fire began, lost their home and all their belongings. photo by Patrick Raftis
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