Follow-up: Canadian Christmas

Earlier this week I wrote about Tim Hortons and how they are not advertising their festiveness on their cups this season.  I sent out a fe e-mails and got in contact with Michael, whom is at guest services for Tim Hortons.  Here is a copy of what I got back from him:

Tim Hortons is proud to announce the launch of our new espresso based beverages on November 14th! We are delighted to offer our guests even more variety in our restaurants - particularly at a time of year where friends and family gather together to celebrate the holidays.

This November and December, our take out cup will be dedicated to sharing the exciting news of our espresso launch with our guests. While this means our cup will not feature holiday imagery as it has in the past, we are confident that the spirit of the season has been well reflected in our seasonal advertising and in our Restaurants through our seasonal bakery offerings, our holiday merchandise program which features an assortment of exciting gift ideas for the coffee lover, and holiday imagery in our in-store signage.

In short, yes there will not be any christmas/winter season cups this year.  However, it is not because of the alleged complaints that they have been getting from people - they are just promoting their new latte's in the store. 

YAY.  I will be looking forward to them next year!

Jenn Barr

Whats a Canadian Christmas without the Canadian Coffee?

Tim Hortons 2010 Christmas Coffee Cup (from Google Images)

Jenn Barr

I woke up this mornimg on a (not so regular) warm December morning only wanting a Tim Hortons coffee. It was rather enjoyable...however to my dismay i had no christmas festiveness on my cup. 

According to these allegations going around, it is said to belive many people were arguing that the festivities on the cups were leaning towards the christmas religion rather than just the winter scenes.  A few of the arguments wanted to have it removed, while others said that they want their religion to be shown on the sups as well.  Since Tim Hortons could not add every single holiday religion, head office said they would stop going the cups for 2011/2012 winter season

I know it may seem irrelevant to some people, but the christmas festivities that appear on this "Timmy's" cup is something I look forward too every December.

Personally, Christmas isn't celebrated as well as it should be in my household.  Tree decorating doesn't happen until the second or third week of december, and it gets taken down January 2.  Christmas lights haven't been on my house for the second year in a row.  My family says it's because of the new eves put onto our house, and my mom doesn't want to get them scratch.  Pft.

I seem to not be the only one upset about this matter.  Tara from B101, Barrie's Hit Music station, expresses for love of the "missing coffee cups"

On her blog she wrote  "I know it may not be a big deal to some...but the Christmas Cups at Tim Horton's have become an almost official start to the holiday season...a cup of hot coffee inside a cutesy idyllic winter scene...made my morning over the holidays...and I swear...the coffee tastes better in those cups then the regular cups...now...it looks like we have to make do with their lousy old brown "Buy and over-priced Latte" cups..."

And people agreed with her, commenting that they look forward to the cups every year as well, saying that it "makes the reason bright."

E-mails have been sent to head office and PR people of this franchise to hear the truth and put a solid source to this allegations .

Occupy Movement: Not so Utopian After All

       The new generation assures their, much older, Boomer Generation that they won’t have any part of the corporation’s green greed. In the final months of 2011, our North American society has seen thousands of people protest in major areas such as Toronto, Denver, and especially Wall Street. But what exactly are the protests about? According to The Occupy Wall Street website, it says that it’s unified concept is about “...fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.” It also says that the “99 per cent” is annoyed with the “1 per cent” of society creating the rules of the world.

Isn’t democracy all about not having enough people in control of a whole lot of people? 

The occupy movement also express that an Utopian society needs to be met. They have physically created a replication of the 16th century description of Utopia, when the name was first used for a fictional book. It has since then been, to me, created into a modern day form of communism. Another world within reality, but nothing close to what reality actually is. Everything is peaceful and everyone is the same or equal. Everything is perfect.

Wait a minute. Perfect? 

Utopia has been brought up in American history, and failed, three different times. According to the Unitarian and Universalist Biography website, Brook Farm was the first recorded Utopian society from 1841 until it went bankrupt in 1847. Fruitlands was created in 1843 in Harvard, Massachusetts, and it only lasted six months because of malnourishment and poor diet. The third, Capitalist Utopia, was located just 15 miles north of Chicago. However, after 20 years into the experiment, George Pullman, the creator of this town wanted more power, therefore asked for more in return by his people, and they started to resent him.

An Utopian world cannot exist within society for two basic reasons. For one, it is humanly impossible to make everyone equal in a community or society. A seen in the Capitalist Utopia in the 1880s, competition is basic human nature. It is to weed out others that are weak. Competition has already been seen in other Occupy movements, especially in Halifax. On November 9, 2011, the rioters started to fall a part within the camp. According to Bethany Horne, a reporter for Metaview Management Ltd., from her own eyes what she saw at the Halifax camps, she expressed that the “problem people” of general society were overtaking the camps, and causing the real message to be muffled within the personal problems of the people. 

Competition has started to happen within the occupy movements themselves; separating the poor-rich people from the poor-poor people. Fights and arguments within the Halifax camp, according to Horne, became violent and dangerous, creating the evacuation of the camp better for the residents, and potentially better for the rioters themselves. 

People that have grown up in a prejudice society may have some difficulty in assimilating themselves into an utopian way of thinking. In this equal society, race as well is an equal part of the way of life. However, coming from a western culture influenced by the British and other northern European ancestry, it would be complicated for some people to change their way of thinking. In a 2007 Audit of Patterns of Prejudice in Canada, Anti-Semitism has increased just over 11 per cent, showing that our society is not yet ready for an equal environment. 

Finally, an utopian society takes the passion and drive from people’s minds. If there were a Utopian society, everyone would have a role in society picked for them at birth and never be

able to get out of it. A book called The Giver by Lois Lowry describes a community where everything is the same, rules are followed and there is no colour, no music, and nothing that

doesn’t follow the carefully planned lives of the people. If society never broke the rules, our evolution would stop completely, and we would have stayed the same. If we were in a Utopian world, would we potentially think that the world was still flat? Would computers or televisions have been made? Breaking the rules, for the right reasons, has evolved our human selves for the greater.

There have been historical moments where an Utopian movement has happened and miserably failed, all of which have been in the United States. People should see that the occupy movement is no different. Power struggles and human competetiveness is found everywhere, is we as in the camps. The Occupy Movement will weed off and become the utopian world that once was, and people will see that a Utopian communism is unable to work. An Utopian society is, well, not so Utopian after all.

Oshawa City Council November 7th/2010

“I want to see every kid play”

That was spoken several times during the discussion with Steve Lines at the Oshawa City council the evening of Monday November 7. 

Lines, President of the Oshawa Central Council Neighbourhood Association (O.C.C.N.A.) spoke with Oshawa council to try and understand why his committee has been, in his words, “brushed off” by council.

Since 1946, the O.C.C.N.A has helped lower income households within the city of Oshawa, get the chance to play in local house leagues. From 4 to 19 years old, boys and girls can have the opportunity to play; whether it be sports, or be a part of Girl Guides of Canada. This committee runs only on the help of volunteers, “the only one if itʼs kind” expresses Lines.

Lines added that the O.C.C.N.A. creates revenue for the city, but not explaining how much, as well as helping parents in all lower income divisions of the city let their children play.  “A lot of families that come through this committee donʼt make the same amount of income that me and my wife make working at [General Motors].”

The question from Lines to council on Monday evening started as user fees. The costs that participants pay to join are too high, and not letting the committee work at itʼs best for the community. However, by the end of the night, it ended in a greater accomplishment.

The first official letter was sent October 30, 2011, just days before the meeting occurred. Lines expressed that other letters were sent a little over three weeks ago, however it was only sent to one city councillor and not forwarded to the rest of council.

“We have not received anything [on this issue] for a regional councillor,” Nancy Diamond said on the floor. Her and Doug Sanders, another council member of Oshawa, were both interested in the topic, and agreed that this committee, which has created many milestones for young children, needed to have a member from council involved with the O.C.C.N.A. John Aker, another regional councillor, dabbled the idea of having two councillors.

One small step for Lines, one giant leap for children of Oshawa.

With all jokes aside, an unrecorded vote showed a unanimous decision among council; O.C.C.N.A. got itʼs member of council to be apart of this established Oshawa committee. ! User fee costs were not discussed the rest of the meeting.

A Day of Remembrance 11/11/11

Today all over Canada, people of all different backgrounds were remembering those who had served this country, for this generation to live the way it lives today.

Which brings me to the topic: How does the new breakout of society treat the country today?  If the veterans then knew what society was going to be like now, would they have still fought as hard?

Let's take a look on the last few decades.

After the First World War, people were coming back from overseas to a new world, and a new decade.  The 1920s, also known as the Roaring Twenties to historians, were known for there materialistic lifestyle and optimistic ways of life, heavily influenced by Europe's way if living.

It was a celebration to most, but disappointment to others.  Soldiers coming home were not ready for the joyous celebration so soon, after seeing what they had seen overseas.  They wanted the entire world to be as strict on society as they had been, and they did not see that in any shape in the Roaring Twenties.

After the Second World War, and defeating Hitler and his world domination plans, soldiers again came home from being overseas for x amount of years.  They returned to create their own offspring, ones that can keep the steady tradition of serving their country.

However, that "new generation", known to demographics as the Baby Boomers, created a new way of living in Canada.  Starting in the fifties, when the thought of being a teenager came into affect, to the hippies of the sixties and beyond, the ideals of the greatest generation have slowly leaked into modern day society.  Making the once proud veterans of the wars question what they had done wrong as parents.

Flash forward to 2011.  The occupied movement has been scaling across North America and all over the world.  Media sources from radio to print have been on 24-hour watch on what exactly?  not even the protesters know.

I bet you Shelby the border collie in Denver knows.  But no one speaks dog.

I digress, thinking that the future soldiers of Canada have to fight to protect the people here now.
I find that ridiculous.

"When asked by my grade 12 history teacher why I wanted to fight for a country who doesn't seem to care about patriotism and sense of duty," said Brett Huckstep, a current applicant for the Canadian Forces.  "I replied 'I will fight for their right not to care'."

And I hope he and the rest of those soldiers fight for my right to report on this new and outlandish society.

Interview on October 18th @ City Hall

This interview was done on October 18th, 2011.  The assignment was to interview anyone you wanted and write a story with tht person incorporated into it.  I thought that with all the new developments going on within the city of Pickering, I thought the best person to ask was the mayor himself.

.............

Pickering, Ontario has seen some drastic changes over the last eight years because our present mayor Dave Ryan knows there is more to come in our city’s future.

“Roughly a million people are suppose to come into the GTA over the next 25 years, and we are going to get our share of that.”


And he’s right. Approximately 60,000 people will be moving to Pickering, making it a challenge on the mayor and council to make room for everyone.

“We are already seeing people moving out of the condominium development in Toronto and moving into single family homes.” With all the growth that has happened to the west and the north of Toronto, Durham Region is the next place for growth to happen, the mayor is expecting it.“Pickering is the first municipality in the eastern region, so we know that this is the growth area for the next decade.”


Responsible growth is the first layer to this Scarborough born mayor’s two main points to his platform. He and his council are working on figuring the best way to help those future residents. “What that means to us is that we have to find a way to best manage that growth. What built form is that going to go into; residential lots, single family homes, semi detached townhouses? What portions and responsible housing are they going to want?”


A much known example of this is shy west of the downtown core, on Bayly Street. The new “San Francisco by the Bay” condominium and town home community is in production, but not everyone agreed that this was “responsible growth”. “The toughest issue we have dealt with is trying to get the city to agree with what we feel would benefit them. When we started to build the ‘San Francisco by the Bay’...not everyone thought that was responsible growth.”


Business development is the second layer to Dave Ryan’s platform, which he says is a major component to responsible growth. “The real job of this council...is going to bring jobs to support those new residents. It doesn’t make any sense to have 60,000 people move in and not be able to employ a good portion of them.” Ryan added, “If people have to leave Pickering to go and work somewhere it puts a huge strain on our infrastructure, a transportation structure in particular.


To help with this future problem, council has helped local businesses expand. Dave Ryan doesn’t want to see history repeat itself. “We had a company in the office towers on the corner of Liverpool and Pickering Parkway called ClearNet. They told the council at the time that they needed to expand and if we couldn’t do it, they were going to move.” At the time Pickering didn’t have the money to expand, so the company moved, and years later they turned into Telus. “Imagine the business development we should have had if they stayed in Pickering.”


Mr. Ryan never stops thinking about his own family when he’s changing the once unknown town. “When I’m doing what I’m doing here in the city, thinking about growing it and thinking about the things that are needed to be done, I quite often find myself thinking about what that’s going to mean for my grandkids and the future generation.”

Welcome to Instant Local News

My Name is Jenn Barr and I am a first year journalism student at Durham College.  I have created this blog to keep people undated with the local news from Pickering to Oshawa.  City council meetings, community involvements and any addtional information will be found (with pictures) here on the site.

I hope everyone enjoys the new blogsite.  If you have any information that you would like to see on this site, or if you have any information that will help keep this blog updated, you can contact me by e-mail @

jennifer.barr@hotmail.ca

See you soon,

Jenn Barr

@thebarrscorner