Blogs Moose Country

Note: If you can help with the cause I write about here, there is a Trust Account for young Austin Chapleau at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Acct # 937320029580. No transit number is needed. Any Scotiabank can process.

There is a note at the bottom of the flyer circulating town announcing an upcoming fundraiser for young Austin Chapleau, and it reads as follows:

“We, as a community, can make a difference.”

I suspect there are few among us who do not know the tragic story of 15-year-old Austin Chapleau, and the severe burns he endured while trying to extinguish a grease fire and keep it from burning down the family home in Maynooth.

He is a very brave young man.

Over the course of my career, I have seen too many burn victims. With third-degree burns to 60% of his body — to his face, and his arms and his chest, — he is currently at Toronto Sick Kids hospital for what will be a long and arduous haul.

My prayers go out to him and his family.

So, what can we do? Well, there is a benefit at the ANAF in Maynooth, beginning at 10 a.m., on Sunday, April 21.

We can help by being there, donating what we can, either through money or silent auction items, and joining the community in making a difference.

Like I said, the kid is just 15. He was making dinner for his siblings while his single mother was at work at Vito’s in Bancroft.

In my books that makes him a hero.

As I wrote recently in a national editorial for Sun Media, the New York Times recently showed that its famous slogan of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” also includes the right to print garbage.

In a editorial timed around NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s “Kill Keystone” trip to Washington, the Times basically wrote Barack Obama’s script to nix the pipeline, or otherwise live with the guilt of ignoring” humanity’s most pressing dangers.”

Yes, climate change, and the Times’ vision of a world “ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, and devastating droughts and other destructive forces created by climate change.” Their words, not mine.

It was hardly responsible journalism.

What the Times failed to address, however, is that the U.S. burns carbon-spewing coal like there actually is no tomorrow to worry about, almost a billion tons a year.

No did it mention there is still no viable alternative that would suddenly see Americans no longer needing to import some 300 million barrels of oil a month from human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela, as opposed to ramping up the 97 million barrels it imports monthly from its democratic Canadian neighbour by endorsing Keystone.

No, instead, it printed hyperbolic garbage.

Let me start by saying I have this framed cartoon of a man standing neck deep in snow, and shaking his fist in the air while shouting at the top of his lungs, “Damn you Mike Harris!”

When that cartoon was published, Mike Harris hadn’t been premier for five years, yet they were still blaming him for everything.

News flash. Mike Harris has not been premier of Ontario for 10 years now.

Perhaps the time has come to blame someone else, as I was reminded by a letter to the Bancroft Times by Bill Cheshire who, like many, is still blaming Mike Harris for everything.

Why is that? Yes, Mike Harris made deep cuts and downloaded many items onto the agenda of municipalities, but what have successive Liberals governments done to right those alleged wrongs over the last 10 years?

The answer, of course, is nothing.What they’ve done, instead, is drive up the debt and drive up the deficit — so much so that taxpayers actually need someone like Mike Harris to help them again.

There is no arguing this. Blaming Mike Harris for today’s mess is like blaming John S. Macdonald for years of Queen’s Park screw ups.

Who’s he? you ask. It’s a good question.

He was Ontario’s very first premier.

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Despite the fact the Ontario Liberals deserve no more chances at running the province — or arguably running it into the ground — they might have stood a chance if they had chosen Sandra Pupatello as their next leader and premier.

With Kathleen Wynne, however, they are back to where they belong — a long shot at best.

Pupatello was the one among the slate of candidates with a hint of fiscal conservatism, something direly needed for a government facing a $10-$12 billion deficit.

Kathleen Wynne, on the other hand, is a social liberal, and about as left as one can get without throwing on the orange T-shirt of the NDP.

And then there is her sexuality. Even the ultra-liberal Toronto Star put this high in their story. “Let’s not be coy,” it wrote. She’s Ontario’s “first openly lesbian leader.”

Does this matter anymore? Well, in big metropolitan centres, it probably doesn’t mean much, but it will mean more than nothing. In rural Ontario, however, it’s an entirely different kettle of fish.

Dalton McGuinty left Ontario in a mess, and bailed like a rat leaving a sinking ship.

Sandra Pupatello was not part of that crew, and it cost her the leadership.

Somewhere Tim Hudak is smiling.