Most of us are very casual when it comes to voting for municipal and school board representatives - deciding for whom one should vote, or whether to vote at all. Tonight I was reminded that our collective decisions really matter and that terrible things can happen when we fail to make good choices.
Case in point: Choice of school board representatives.
I attended the meeting of the petitioners objecting to the procedures followed by the Avon Maitland District School Board in deciding to close Blyth Public School. The only persons allowed to speak were those who signed the petition, which was a reasonable limitation. There were a few contribitions from the public gallery, but fortunately these were minimal. Those who spoke were very well spoken and much more polite than I would have been had I had the right to speak.
There were excellent presentations among those that I could hear, but to me, sitting in the public gallery, many of them were completely inaudible. The facilitator, Ms. Margaret Wilson I am sure received a very complete, clear, and reasoned set of objections to the AMDSB handling of the accommodation review.
It was somewhat disconcerting that she argued against some of the points raised, and provided explanations for some of the things that were done or not done - explanations that could be interpreted as "supporting the bad guys". For example, with respect to the opposition towards sending grade 7 and 8 children to a high school, she pointed out that this is normal practice in many Canadian provinces and many countries around the world. Does that mean that we should do the same?
But the most disconcerting information that I received at this meeting, leads me to doubt the chance of blocking this terrible decision for Blyth.
Let me put it this way:
Suppose Ms. Wilson agrees completely with all of the petitioners objections, and
Suppose she reports to the Minister that the board did not follow its own policy, and
Suppose she reports that their procedures also failed to follow the guidelines set out by the Minister of Education, and
Suppose she recommends that the Board be forced to reconsider and change its decision, and
Suppose the Minister accepts the recommendation of the facilitator.
THE MINISTER HAS NO POWER TO FORCE THE BOARD TO CHANGE ITS DECISION.
The Board has full and sole power to close any school it chooses to close.
Now you see what I meant at the opening of this article. All those who voted for the members of this board have a great deal to answer for.
There were numerous examples given tonight about the lack of responsiveness of our local board representative, about indifference, about lack of communication. One person questioned why no one from the board has spoken to our community to explain why they decided to close Blyth Public School. Indeed why did our representative not do this. (Silly question, I know.)
Even the facilitator mentioned that it would be normal for the board to give the community some sort of explanation for changes like this.
So here we are stuck with the people we elected. With the higher population density in this municipality in the north, we are in clear danger of remaining unrepresented following future elections, unless we encourage worthy and responsible candidates to come forward.
Small rural communities like ours face many difficulties these days. We cannot afford to continue with representatives who represent no one but themselves.
About a remarkable Ontario village
Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archives. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
More About the Repository of Blyth History
The best source of general information about our collection is the publication of the Huron County Historical Society titled "Huron Historical Notes 2007: Repository of Blyth History" 47 pp.
The Society has reprinted this publication and copies are available from The Citizen weekly newspaper office in Blyth as well as the Huron County Museum in Goderich. They cost $8.00.
Our repository began as a simple act of listing the names of the Blyth people we knew or knew about. Then we began adding information about them. Then came some pictures. Then people began contributing items and more information. We tried to put some time boundaries on the collection: "We'll focus on 1850 to 1900!" we declared. But then we received a whole box of school information which came close to the present time.
Finally, we dropped all the boundaries and opened the collection process to "everything about Blyth". As we have said many times, one persons comment to us told us that we were onto something very important. This lady told us that her family had been in the Blyth area from the beginning, had contributed to the growth and development of the village in a low key way, and yet they were never mentioned in any of the histories or the stories about the village.
This changed our focus to something like "NO BLYTH FAMILY LEFT BEHIND!"
Our goal now is to be able to respond to the request of any descendant of persons who ever lived in or around Blyth with a significant amount of information. We are getting very closer to achieving that goal, but there is more information needed. We appeal to local residents, former residents, and others who know something about Blyth to come forward with "stuff". We accept donations, we scan or copy items that you want to keep, handwritten family stories also welcome.
Recent discoveries of old Blyth Standards, (back to 1894) when we get a chance to analyze all of them, will provide us with an enormous amount of "new" old information which we assumed would never be found. (Many of these papers are off being microfilmed and digitized.)
We receive contacts from far and wide requesting family and other information about the old days of Blyth. We have visitors, too, who come to see the collection, to seek specific information, and to bring their information to us to fill in the gaps we have. These people have come from across Ontario and Canada, and some from USA are planning to visit us.
The size and scope of the collection is surpising to us as well as to visitors when we consider the small population of the place. It consists of many three-ring binders (about 150), many file cards (approx. 10,000), a collection of maps of Blyth showing the entire village and separate maps of the surveys of various parts of the village, close to 15 GB of computer information, along with a few artifacts, the largest of which is an antique portable typewriter which belonged to the publisher of the Blyth Standard in 1894 to 1906.
The question is constantly in our minds as to where we are going to put this collection when we are no longer able to work at it. We want it to be in a safe place where it will be looked after well, where it will (ideally) continue to grow, and where it is accessible to people doing research on the village or its families, and in a way that makes it easy to find the information being sought.
There are such places, but the best of them are full and do not have the space. Some places have the space, but do not instill confidence that material will be looked after properly. There are places which could contain this collection along with other Blyth material, but there is no plan for staffing it and maintaining that kind of facility.
In the meantime, we carry on collecting, recording, filing, researching, answering questions, asking more questions, and most of the time enjoying it all to the full.
We think every community should have such a collection. It provides services that no history book, no museum, and no county archive could (or should) provide.
Perhaps what we need is a facility to accommodate all of our community collections.
Please leave comments or write to hbvodden@ezlink.on.ca
The Society has reprinted this publication and copies are available from The Citizen weekly newspaper office in Blyth as well as the Huron County Museum in Goderich. They cost $8.00.
Our repository began as a simple act of listing the names of the Blyth people we knew or knew about. Then we began adding information about them. Then came some pictures. Then people began contributing items and more information. We tried to put some time boundaries on the collection: "We'll focus on 1850 to 1900!" we declared. But then we received a whole box of school information which came close to the present time.
Finally, we dropped all the boundaries and opened the collection process to "everything about Blyth". As we have said many times, one persons comment to us told us that we were onto something very important. This lady told us that her family had been in the Blyth area from the beginning, had contributed to the growth and development of the village in a low key way, and yet they were never mentioned in any of the histories or the stories about the village.
This changed our focus to something like "NO BLYTH FAMILY LEFT BEHIND!"
Our goal now is to be able to respond to the request of any descendant of persons who ever lived in or around Blyth with a significant amount of information. We are getting very closer to achieving that goal, but there is more information needed. We appeal to local residents, former residents, and others who know something about Blyth to come forward with "stuff". We accept donations, we scan or copy items that you want to keep, handwritten family stories also welcome.
Recent discoveries of old Blyth Standards, (back to 1894) when we get a chance to analyze all of them, will provide us with an enormous amount of "new" old information which we assumed would never be found. (Many of these papers are off being microfilmed and digitized.)
We receive contacts from far and wide requesting family and other information about the old days of Blyth. We have visitors, too, who come to see the collection, to seek specific information, and to bring their information to us to fill in the gaps we have. These people have come from across Ontario and Canada, and some from USA are planning to visit us.
The size and scope of the collection is surpising to us as well as to visitors when we consider the small population of the place. It consists of many three-ring binders (about 150), many file cards (approx. 10,000), a collection of maps of Blyth showing the entire village and separate maps of the surveys of various parts of the village, close to 15 GB of computer information, along with a few artifacts, the largest of which is an antique portable typewriter which belonged to the publisher of the Blyth Standard in 1894 to 1906.
The question is constantly in our minds as to where we are going to put this collection when we are no longer able to work at it. We want it to be in a safe place where it will be looked after well, where it will (ideally) continue to grow, and where it is accessible to people doing research on the village or its families, and in a way that makes it easy to find the information being sought.
There are such places, but the best of them are full and do not have the space. Some places have the space, but do not instill confidence that material will be looked after properly. There are places which could contain this collection along with other Blyth material, but there is no plan for staffing it and maintaining that kind of facility.
In the meantime, we carry on collecting, recording, filing, researching, answering questions, asking more questions, and most of the time enjoying it all to the full.
We think every community should have such a collection. It provides services that no history book, no museum, and no county archive could (or should) provide.
Perhaps what we need is a facility to accommodate all of our community collections.
Please leave comments or write to hbvodden@ezlink.on.ca
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