The Community Services, Programs and Initiatives department has, together with the County Arts Council and The County Foundation, devised a plan to direct a portion of the municipality’s tourism revenues to fostering the arts. The plan makes perfect sense. Our arts organizations not only make this a flourishing, vibrant and utterly unique place to live, but draw great quantities of high-spending visitors.
The County wineries shifted Wassail from the apple trees in winter to the grapevines in late fall, the time for local vintners to celebrate the harvest come in, all the hard work done, the vines wrapped, ready for winter. Time to invite the neighbourhood in to drink and to sing, to wassail the vines. As Richard Johnston, of By Chadsey’s Cairns, wrote in these pages last year, “We needed the visitors to come in the darkest, most depressing time of the year, November, and maybe December for good measure.”
Council’s settlement hands oversight of the Terminals and the escarpment it has agreed not to alter without “approvals” to the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of the Environment, and Quinte Conservation. Yet these ministries either have inadequate powers or limited jurisdiction. Each thinks the other should be the one in charge. An effective system — if washing your hands and passing the buck at the same time is the game you want to be playing.
A chef is a hoarder; finding ways to store up the harvest requires invention, time, and space.
Until CAFF gets traction and support, as the forum that bridges the Toronto International Film Festival and the International Festival of Authors — in a setting of outstanding natural beauty, resplendent with award-winning wineries, restaurants, and boutique hotels — it’s going to take a village. This village.
For anyone who believes in democracy, it isn’t about who you vote for, it’s about casting your vote.
It was a fine day for the 100th anniversary of Fosterholm Farms. It could not have been finer if Mr. Clifford himself had ordered up the weather.
Certainly, anyone who cares about sustaining local farmers, or the County’s primarily agricultural economy, or just about plain farmland, never mind the history of this place and its revered farming families, would have felt pulled in at least a couple of directions at the news that P & H was partnering with Picton Terminals to build a grain shipping port on Picton Bay.
It seems obvious. Of course we should shop local. But is it really that simple? Is paying an extra few quarters for an ear of corn really going to float the local economy?
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