I’ve been to a number of communities, have been working on plans for Wind Concerns Ontario going forward and have found myself without the time to actually sit down and write about what’s going on.

Going forward, I’m going to try to write about things that are happening and I’m involved in to share my perspective – at least on that which can be made public.

I do look forward to going back to sharing my thoughts, in part because it is almost therapeutic by the time an entry is completed.  When I first launched http://laforet.ca almost three years ago, it was all original content that I wrote on things I was involved in, and thoughts I had on issues. Between the election campaign, when I became more conscious that my words could be used against me, and being extremely busy with Wind Concerns Ontario, it’s something that drifted away.

But, I hope over the coming days, weeks and months to at least begin sharing thoughts, images and ideas that I become exposed to through the lens and perspective I see them.

Christmas is a very special time of year for many and sees family and friends gather, share and catch up on the busy lives they’re living. For my family Christmas Eve also marks my parents wedding anniversary, which we celebrate as a family each year. I look forward to our second and bigger Christmas celebration tonight, with my extended family in Guildwood. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins will be there. It will be the first Christmas with four generations of Laforet’s with the addition of my beautiful four month niece.

Below is a video that shows the power positive, like minded people acting together and the joy they can bring to strangers. This shows a ‘flashmob’ breaking out into “Hallelujah!” before an unsuspecting audience in a food court. It’s been viewed by over twenty six million people in the last six weeks.

My family Christmas tradition sees three generations of Laforet’s celebrating Christmas in Guildwood – where our Christmas dinner has been celebrated since 1968 and with the addition of spouses, children and family friends spans three generations and includes nearly two dozen people.

For me Christmas is a time to share with family and friends, catch up and reflect on the year that is quickly coming to an end. It’s also a time to make decisions about how you will spend the year to come.

This past year has been a unique and totally unexpected one for me that has seen many challenges and opportunities present themselves. My community involvement and activism have taken an angle I could not have predicted they would even when I decided last fall to actively work with Guildwood residents to oppose Toronto Hydro’s project.

While where it has led has been unexpected, the camaraderie and friendship that exists within Wind Concerns Ontario is second to none that I’ve witnessed elsewhere and I feel blessed to consider so many fine Ontarians standing up for their communities to be my friends.

Christmas 2009 will also mark the one year anniversary of the burning of the Studio Building at the Guild Inn – something that tragically destroyed a heritage building on a site with so much meaning to my community. It is my hope, by Christmas 2010 the old Bickford Inn will begin to look like it’s old maintained self again and we can move past the ‘lost decade’ the City of Toronto brought my community at the Guild Inn.

Next year I am sure will be interesting for it’s own reasons, but I look forward to the challenge and know I am in good company as we soldier on.

All of these fights represent instances of communities versus the Provincial government, and on all of these issues the Premier and his government side with the developer, against the local community consensus, and against clear science that in each case demonstrates negative impacts to groundwater, habitat, human health or the environment. Areas with Liberal MPPs get fed this utter crap from their local representatives that they are essentially powerless to do anything because of party discipline and so their communities basically need to just suffer silently, and re-elect them because the other guy is far worse, so they say.

That is in essence the flaw with the Parliamentary system. One tyrant, in this case Premier McGuinty (please someone challenge me on the label tyrant, as I am more than prepared to defend it), makes a decision and tells members of his caucus, each of whom was duly elected, that their opinions are worthless, and although no one actually elected him Premier, he is boss man because they support him and if they dare challenge him by standing up for their constituents he will throw them out of caucus and end their political careers.

Sucks if you’re a citizen, great if you’re the Premier.

In Ontario, residents like me have fought hard and watched Liberal MPP after Liberal MPP turn out to be totally and utterly useless at doing anything of any value for their constituents due to the rigidness of party unity, and have had to take political action, and prepare for larger battles to come in hopes of getting government to listen, or in many cases defeating those MPPs who lack the guts or courage it takes to actually do their jobs.

As a political science geek, I have to tell you I see a lot of value in a congressional system as representatives actually do represent their constituents, and will fight like hell for them because that is how they keep their job. They don’t give speeches saying things like ‘but I can’t do anything for you, because the Premier has all the say and he won’t listen’. They introduce the bill and defend their constituents (at least the good ones do) and they get things done.

North Carolina is the example I am going to use because they did something quite courageous about a month ago that is worth sharing.

In 1983 North Carolina was concerned at the rate of development on mountain ridges, and passed a bill banning further ridge development. 95% of this land is now protected by the state or federal government, kind of like how the Green Belt protects a whole whack of land around the GTA from development. When wind developers wanted to put turbines on mountain ridges, presumably due to the high winds one would expect to find at higher elevations, Assemblymen and Senators at the state legislature said no. They did so, because their constituents have been fighting to protect the mountain ridges from all development and have been aggressively working to conserve the natural beauty that is the mountains.

This July a law passed the North Carolina Senate 45-1 declaring that wind farms are the same as any other unwanted development in this conservation area, and that the only wind turbines that would be allowed would be those shorter than 100 feet, and the power generated could only be used to supply a single home. They’ve basically struck a balance of allowing an individual to build a home based turbine, while blocking the for profit wind factories that are harmful to the environment, disrupt conservation areas and are frankly unwelcome in those parts of the state by local residents.

45-1 means Democrats and Republicans voted for the bill in a bi-partisan effort to protect areas worthy of nature conservation for massive wind projects. They did it because it was what their constituents wanted, and because residents made it clear that nature conservation was more important to them in that particular area than industrial wind factories.

The difference? The people’s elected local representatives have the power. The Governor is directly elected separately from them and does not share a directly linked political fate. The Governor also can’t bribe folks with perks into keeping quiet like a Premier can. If you’re a representative, thats what you do, you represent. You defend your community and fight like hell for them, free of the fear of retribution or undemocratic tactics used so commonly in our party politics to silence dissent.

Back to Ontario, our legislature and Liberal MPPs voted to take away the voices of local residents, they voted to remove environmental protection, to remove local planning and to deny citizens the right to participate in the decision making. Scarborough’s waterfront MPPs were spineless in the face of this local issue, and chose to sit quietly while their party leader literally took shots at residents of their constituencies and the Deputy Premier joined in as well. They are cowards who sat quietly as residents fought to protect the environment from unnecessary degradation.

Today John Gerretsen, the Minister of Environment put his personal approval behind Toronto Hydro’s illegal application and granted them permission to install an anemometer, wasting over a million dollars of taxpayer money to study something the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Federal Government each have already studied and determined there was not sufficient wind to warrant a wind farm.

Through the abuse of the Premier and Deputy Premier and Scarborough’s embarrassing lack of representation, residents were told defending the shoreline, some of the last untouched shoreline on Lake Ontario, and certainly in an urban area, a Provincial heritage site dismissible and not worth even listening too.

In North Carolina, I’m sure state legislators would have stood up for nature conservation, and common sense, in Ontario we’re forced to fight on our own, and defeat those who will claim to want to represent a community, until elected to do so and then fail miserably at the task at hand, breaking the faith with those who sent them and hurting the community in the process. I hope these failures of representatives carry the weight of this damage on their conscience, but sadly, I know enough to know none of them do.

The extreme control of our democratic institutions and using the levers of powers to abuse citizens is what generally results in the defeat of governments in Canada, where the concept of a government MPP speaking up for you is bested left for a political science course, sadly for them, the citizens who operate in the real world don’t care what the Premier would do to you if you actually did their job, and their failure to do their job will result in citizens entrusting someone else to give it their best shot in the next election.

There is now a search feature to the right of the menu options at the top of the page, which will make it easier for folks with a specific interest to find information I’ve written on that topic.

It is now easier to subscribe to the RSS feed or have laforet.ca send updates by email to you, instead of having to visit the site to find out what’s new.

There is a project page, with information and links to the various organizations I am involved in, am supportive of and am hopeful you are too.

A media gallery has been set up with videos of coverage I have done as an accredited citizen journalist of the NDP and PC leadership races and on the Toronto Hydro Wind Farm proposal.

‘In the news‘ provides links and excerpts of media interviews I have provided as part of my advocacy work, over the last year.

The ‘contact me‘ page has been updated to include a contact form, making it easier for folks to get in touch with me.

The new design from a functionality perspective is far superior to it’s predecessor, and I believe the design is more interesting that the previous as well.

Once again, I’d like to thank Dara Skolnick for her hard work in putting this all together.

I’m a geek so I think about the Fathers of Confederation today, and pull out an original copy of ‘The Globe’ from July 1st 1867 and try to imagine the excitement that Canadians must have felt on that first day as a Dominion.

That being said, I am heading out right after this post to enjoy some of the beautiful weather we’ve been blessed with today – and if you’re still looking for a place to see fireworks in Toronto – check out Ontario Place tonight.

I will also leave you with one of my favourite beer commercials and what may be one of the better modern attempts at Canadian patriotism through music. I know the song certainly works up all kinds of patriotism when I hear it.

Canada Day 2009 Logo

Canada Day 2006 Logo

Canada Day 2004 Logo

Canada Day 2002 logo

This is what I look like taking pictures on my cellphone as I drive.

Long Pond facing West

Swan in Long Pond

Long Pond facing West

Long Pond facing West 

Long Pond facing East

Sun Falling Behind Trees – Long Pond

CN Tower – Looking down Deep Pike Cut

Trees – South shore of Long Pond

Tour Boat – Long Pond

Sun Setting through Hanlan’s Point 

Long Pond facing East

Nature – Long Pond

City View from Hanlan’s Channel 

City View from Hanlan’s Channel 

City View from Hanlan’s Channel 

City View from Hanlan’s Channel

City View – Toronto Harbour

City View – Toronto Harbour

I took some pictures along the way, and especially of this very cool freighter, the Canadian Miner that seems to be docked with no plans of moving in the portland’s.  The Toronto Port does still have an active industrial and commercial area down around Cherry Street, Unwin Avenue and along Commissioners. Most Torontonians never see it, but those who use the harbour for recreation see it all the time. 

I love the mix of revitalization like Harbourfront to the west and the more commercial/industrial uses to the east. I think it has more to do with liking to see the freighters, looking at where they’re registered, wondering where they’ve come from, what their carrying and where they’re going. 

There is a site called boatnerd.com for folks who want answers to these questions. I personally prefer just wondering.  

Anyways, enjoy the pictures below – and take this as proof that there is more to being John Laforet than public policy and activism, however a big part of my life that is. 

Shot of Toronto Skyline from Eastern Gap – in the Toronto Harbour

Lining up the boat with the centre of the channel before going under the bridge.

This is the lift bridges, lifting apparatus. I’m not a big enough deal to make it happen though.  

This is the sign saying commercial vessels only. If you fit underneath you hardly need ‘prior arrangements’.

Going under the bridge (on the way out, but you get the idea)

One of the Harbour’s more industrial uses – aggregate production and storage on Unwin Avenue. 

I think is is the same pile of aggregate, but from a different angle. 

I think freighters are really cool. I used to want to work on a freighter – True story. 

This is the propeller and rudder. For obvious reasons this should be underwater – but this boat is riding extremely high. It must be empty and have no water in it’s ballasts. 

Better shot of the propeller. 

In the boating world this would be classified as a ‘fixer upper’ – Look at all that rust. 

Canadian Miner – Bow. 

Shot of Canadian Miner from stern facing forward.

Canadian Miner almost from end to end.

Canadian Miner Stern

Curious what the Canadian Miner used to look like? I found this picture of it from 2005 on boatnerd.com 

Twitter also has a ‘forced’ frankness in that you have 140 characters in which to make your point. It cuts away a lot of the other stuff and forces one to reply in sound bites. Considering it isn’t unusual for me to devote over 1000 words in a single blog post – that should be interesting too.

I can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/laforet It looks like it could be a great tool for getting information out quickly and also generating small discussions around things.

Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas Address

Prime Minister Harper’s Christmas Address

President Elect Obama’s Christmas Address