Cheers & Jeers

CHEERS: to the Brad Gushue rink (Team Canada), who won their sixth Brier on March 10 in Regina.

In doing so, the Gushue rink ties Randy Ferbey for the most Brier wins in history. It’s something for this province to be proud of. Former Newfoundland and Labrador premier and businessman Danny Williams is taking that pride a step further, and last week revealed plans to pay tribute to the skip and his teams with a special structure in the Galway subdivision. Williams has commissioned renowned local sculptor Morgan Macdonald to create a piece destined for a designated portion of the land. “I recall vividly almost 20 years ago, as premier, when Brad and his team put themselves and Newfoundland and Labrador on the map with their extraordinary Olympic win,” Williams said, recounting the 2006 Olympic gold collected in Turin, Italy, by a Team Canada led by Gushue. Nice tribute.

JEERS: to schools without cafeteria services.

More than half of N.L. schools — 156 out of 253 — are currently without cafeteria service. For years we’ve heard from many corners that no child should go hungry at school. That’s a more profound statement now with the rising cost of living resulting in fewer items in parents’ grocery bags. The province’s education department stated it is working to improve food security by prioritizing income-based initiatives, including support for families with children by providing additional funding to ensure school food programs are available in all pre-kindergarten and K-9 schools under a new Poverty Reduction Plan announced in November 2023. Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh called for a national school lunch program to be implemented in the upcoming federal budget on April 16. Canada is the only G7 country without a national school food program. Children cannot concentrate on their studies, enjoy their classes, or interact energetically if they are hungry. In many cases, volunteers and teachers on the frontlines are left to try to fill the gaps. Why do they have to? This shouldn’t be an issue in our schools.

CHEERS: to the 2023 BMO Winterset Award winner.

Holly Hogan won the prestigious prize last week for her book “Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist.” The winner also gets $12,500. Hogan is a writer and wildlife biologist with a focus on seabirds. During her more than 30 years as a scientist, she has spent about 1,000 days at sea conducting avian and marine mammal surveys and providing educational programming with expedition teams. The two other finalists were Michael Crummey for “The Adversary” (Knopf Canada) and William Ping for “Hollow Bamboo” (Harpercollins), who both took home $3,000. The BMO Winterset Award honours the memory of Sandra Fraser Gwyn, a St. John’s-born social historian and prize-winning author who promoted national awareness of the province’s artists. Her husband, journalist and author Richard Gwyn, established the award in 2000. It is named after the historic house on Winter Avenue in St. John’s where Sandra grew up.

JEERS: to closing down the House … early.

The Liberal government shut down the House of Assembly early this session, leaving the chamber empty of rowdy and fired-up politicians on previously scheduled sitting days on Thursday, March 14, and Tuesday, March 19. The reason given was that the legislative agenda planned for the period before budget day had been completed. The Official Opposition, the Progressive Conservatives, didn’t like the move, and PC Leader Tony Wakeham said there was further work that needed to be addressed. He said it was “not only disappointing but upsetting and disrespectful for the people of Newfoundland to say that necessary business had been done.” The House will reopen for budget day on Wednesday, March 20, and is scheduled to sit again on Thursday, and is scheduled to open again in April and May. With rumours of this budget being a “pre-election budget,” there should be plenty of drama to come.

CHEERS: to ruling the ice.

Local hockey referees Sheldon Keough and Brian Lambert, along with linesmen Joe Maynard and Jim Vail, on March 9 became the first all-newfoundland and Labrador four-man crew working a Newfoundland Growlers game. With a winter storm hitting the Avalon Peninsula, some flights were cancelled, including the one on which a scheduled referee was to arrive in St. John’s. That left the game control at Mary Brown’s Centre up to the locals. There had been three-person crews from the province who worked pro hockey before — in the 1990s when the NHL officials went on strike and locals were asked to referee AHL games in the city –– but this moment was special. As Lambert said, “It’s an experience you’ll never forget.” Great job!

JEERS: to more money for “planning” for new housing.

Last week, the federal government announced $10.4 million in funding for the City of St. John’s over the next three years from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund to help the city streamline and speed up the housing development process. Specifically, the money is going to be used for incentives to build multi-unit homes; creating an electronic permitting system; reduction in property taxes for multi-unit buildings that contain affordable housing; city and province working together to rewrite zoning rules and make it clear where developers can and should be building affordable housing; changing the zoning laws to let people build backyard units; and helping turn over cityowned land for housing. Other than the money to provide incentives, isn’t the rest of it what a city should be doing on its own, and what its taxpayers are already paying for them to manage?