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“Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction” |
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Written by Al Hollingsworth
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Thursday, 13 August 2009 |
I wish I could take credit for the title of this week’s column, because it describes Peter Kelly to a “T”. However the credit for the quote must go to the late Will Rogers.
HRM’s mayor is, to be kind, confused. Or so it seems. His performance in relation to the malfunctioning sewage treatment plant borders on the pathetic.
This week he was upset with the Halifax members of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and in particular the Association’s vice-president Luc Erjavec, who said Halifax Harbour “is putrid, it stinks.” Guess what, Peter, he’s right. And so is every upset citizen of HRM who is footing the bill for this fiasco.
I drive by, on a Link bus, twice daily, a minimum of three days a week and sometimes have to hold my breath passing by the Casino. It’s that bad inside an air-conditioned bus with windows closed.
Luc’s right on the money when he says the stench is costing his members, especially those near the harbour, money.
One of my family’s summertime pleasures is having a meal on the patio at Murphy’s On The Waterfront. Not this summer. I gag just thinking about being there and trying to eat beside a cesspool.
In a letter to the mayor and his council, Erjavec expressed his association’s “complete frustration” with HRM’s inaction in addressing the failure of the sewage treatment plant. Since the breakdown in January, some eight months ago, the people who pay the freight (remember us, the taxpayers?) have been kept in the dark.
Robert McKelvie, the respected owner of McKelvie’s Delishes Fish Dishes, told the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, among other things, that “it’s a embarrassment.” Yes it is.
Watching different newscasts, and listening to CBC Radio news, I have heard countless visitors decry the downtown stench.
I am old enough to remember a different Halifax, one that had a major fish plant (National Sea Products) in the downtown and across the harbour a sulfur-spewing Woodside oil refinery. On certain days, the wind would combine the gases being emitted at the plants, and the result was a stomach-turning stench. Today’s smell is far worse.
One of Kelly’s responses to the representative of these taxpaying businesses and major employers was that the restaurant owners are employing “scare tactics.” If he means that it is scary for these entrepreneurs to see their tourist season tanking due to our mayor’s inaction, then I guess I would have to agree.
Asking the mayor and council to be proactive and open is a scare tactic? What’s really scary is we are being led by someone who would make that assertion. God help us.
(Al Hollingsworth is a retired journalist and broadcaster)
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