I hope that your 2023 has been better than mine. Honestly, it wouldn’t take much. It’s been a merde year, to borrow a technical term from French philosophy. From costly home and auto repairs, to the contractor from hell that absconded with a nearly $6000 deposit (an update on this in the New Year), to death in the family, to death in friends’ families, to a hospital stay that knocked 15 lbs off me in a week (yet to come back), to… You get the idea.
On top of that, the state of the world. Burning up, being bombed to hell in Ukraine and Gaza, and increasingly dominated by authoritarian nationalists—a euphemism for racist dictators. Covid making a strong comeback, along with the flu and RSV. And podcasts. Apparently we all must make podcasts now, every single one of us. As Fran Lebowitz once said, “Your life story would not make a good book. Do not even try.” The same holds for podcasts.
So with all that in mind, in the grand scheme of things I acknowledge that our local issues are but minor irritants. Sadly this does not make them any less irritating.
SPEEDOS: First, let’s take the stupendously ill-advised idea that the Town of Pelham should impose a 40 km/h speed limit on all its roadways—not just the few hundred metres around schools, a limit which is perfectly sensible—but on every single road and street under Town authority. So not Rice Rd. or Highway 20, which are Regional roads, but Pelham St., and Effingham, and Metler, and Foss, and Canboro, and Balfour, and on and on. It’s bonkers.
Asked to weigh in, Town staff informed council in a report, presented at their November 1 meeting, that:
There appears to be interest in lowering the speed limits on streets under the jurisdiction of the Town to 40km/h. This is not an accepted method of traffic calming and is referenced as such in the Town’s Neighborhood Traffic Management Policy S801-02. While this will be the topic of a future report to Council, it is important to understand that establishing speed limits that are perceived to be too low will lead to disregard by most, and increase driver frustration resulting in tailgating, and other aggressive behaviors which could counteract the intended safety benefits.
To which any sentient driver can only respond, “Duh.”
I am as goody-two-shoes of a law-abiding citizen as you will find, but just hearing about this harebrained scheme had my blood pressure up, and I am far from alone.
Can you imagine? Driving 40 km/h along the entirety of Pelham Street? It’s bad enough when someone drives the current limit of 50. Are they having a stroke? Are they texting? Is a tire going flat?
Which brings us to two obvious issues when it comes to bad driving: First, bad drivers. Idiots behind the wheel. Meatheads who should have their licenses revoked. The kinds of drivers who race around curves and flip over. Or crash into a house at a T-intersection. Or fly into the roof—into the roof, folks—of a home on a quiet residential street. These aren’t freeway incidents. These are suburban roads.
The problem isn’t speed, it’s poor judgment. It's drivers who maybe need to serve some jail time. No speed limit reduction will stop these jerks from wreaking their havoc.
The second issue is enforcement. We don’t need decreased speed limits. We need increased enforcement of the speed limits and laws that already exist. As far as I and many others have seen over the last few years, the NRPS seems to have forgotten that Pelham exists, something that Mayor Junkin attempted to address with the Police Chief this summer. When’s the last time you saw any speed or stop sign enforcement in town?
Yes, we ran a photo a few days ago of a cruiser parked on Station St., this in turn a possible reaction to a peeved letter to the editor that prompted a story about speeding in that area.
And yes, the NRPS media folks—god bless ‘em—dutifully give us traffic enforcement stats for Pelham when we ask, but here’s an important caveat. Enforcement is generally triggered by resident complaints.
How about some proactive enforcement instead? Are there really so few constables available that we can’t get daily radar set-ups in random locations around Pelham? What’s the term—“cherry patch”? You want to bring in some tasty revenue, set up on Welland Rd. between Pelham and Haist, or between Haist and Effingham. Fines galore. Speeding, blowing through stop signs. And let’s write a few citations for crazy loud exhaust systems too.
Now, no one is suggesting that we go all-German Autobahn and do away with speed limits. But again, at the risk of stating the obvious, a 50 km/h limit is already too low on many of our roads. Take the newly redesigned Pelham St. from Highway 20 south to the border with Welland. Wide lanes, unobstructed sight-lines, houses offset from the street. Plenty of time to react to the child or pet that’s suddenly headed for the roadway. That’s a safe 60, and most drivers are doing 70 km/h—not an endorsement here, just a reality check. There has not been a rash of collisions on Pelham St. The same can be said for many other of our roads.
If need be, we’ll have more to say about this in the New Year, but let’s hope that in the meantime Town staff can present enough expert evidence to council to talk them down, to remind them of a truth instinctively understood by any governed populace: a law that turns a majority of citizens into lawbreakers is fundamentally unjust, serving to erode respect for the legal system generally and a society’s leaders specifically.
QUACKED: Moving on. Fancy a short stroll with the kids or grandkids at St. Johns Conservation Area? Maybe say hello to the ducks and geese? Well, starting next year, that will cost you $14.50 for parking, please.
At least it will if the NPCA has its way. As Don Rickers reports today, with zero public consultation, and apparently even without board member Diana Huson’s awareness, there are plans afoot to impose a parking charge in the spring. Welcome to Very Bad Idea number two.
The logic justifying this unfortunate scheme is shaky.
One of the rationales offered is that “vandalism” has increased such that requiring users to pay to park is necessary to curb it. Leaving aside the apparent and erroneous assumption that vandals don’t drive cars, the more important question is, what vandalism?
As St. Johns visitors for nearly 15 years, my far-less-irritable half and I have yet to see anything even remotely close to vandalism. A few bits of trash left in the parking lot? Maybe. But tagging? Bullet holes in signage? Smashed benches? Nope.
So let’s drop that excuse and move to the real problem, which is that the NPCA needs cash, money that it's no longer getting from the province under the Ford conservatives, a government that is instead preoccupied with making Ontario safe again for that most endangered species, the Tory-speckled residential property developer.
Charging young families and retirees $14.50 a day to commune with nature is not the way to raise those bucks. An NPCA spokesperson tells us that free passes are available at the library, which on its face sounds good, until you hear the reality. The reality is that there are just four—four!—free passes in total, between Pelham’s two library branches, and they must be returned within a week. And in the summer there’s a waiting list for even these four. So much for impromptu nature walks.
You know who can afford to pay for parking in recreational areas? People who own $200,000 motorhomes. People pulling $80,000 trailers with $100,000 pickup trucks. There’s your revenue source, not young families on a budget or retirees on fixed incomes. As they say in Letterkenny, give your head a shake, people.
THE MARTINI SHOT: Right then, let’s end on a reasonably upbeat note with some positive items.
John Swart, our fitness and healthy lifestyle columnist is back, after taking the year off for various adventures, of which I hope we’ll hear more about in the coming months, as well as his tips for good health through active, ass-off-the-sofa-and-in-to-the-outdoors living.
Cher, at age 77, has a Christmas single out. If you haven’t heard it yet, you will. It’s a catchy tune that’s regrettably repetitive, but I suppose we can’t have everything. And it’s still preferable to the current flood of whiny songs by elfin female vocalists (there are some whiny males in there, too) that now seem to dominate popular music.
Need a calming respite, or a little white noise to run in the background as you type your latest column of complaints? Try this Christmas market walk in Strasbourg, or this snowy train journey in Norway, or this beach in Anguilla.
Mayor Marvin Junkin offers his thanks today for the support shown to him and his family following the tragic death of his son Zachary this summer.
Finally, as we approach the end of the first year of PelhamToday’s existence, there’s some good news to report on the staff side, but I think we’ll leave it there for now, a minor tantalizing tidbit to come.
On that note, see you next time.
