city

Thursday February 10, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 10, 2022

A better response to illegal protest

May 8, 2021

Leave aside, for now, the ethical and moral questions around anti-vaccine mandate demonstrations and occupations taking place right now in places across the country.

That debate is far from over, but today we want to focus on the law and preparations for future occupations and demonstrations.

Whether you support or abhor the occupations and protests, you cannot logically deny that the organizers behind them have latched on to a winner. They figured out how to shut down the nation’s capital, to block at least two major border crossings and they’re not done yet. They are violating the rights, human, economic and social, of millions of Canadians, and they’re getting away with it.

A perfect example is that Wednesday afternoon several Ontario auto plants announced they were reducing production and sending workers home because the Ambassador Bridge blockade in Windsor is causing a parts shortage.

Tuesday February 1, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday February 1, 2022

Vulnerable downtown residents hit breaking point as convoy enters 5th day

January 26, 2022

Ottawa resident Jo O’Connor says she’s been living a nightmare in her home just minutes away from Parliament Hill where a convoy of trucks and protesters remain for a fifth day in a row.

Constant honking and noise outside her building, as well as the smell of diesel fuel, has left her sleepless.

“It makes me so depressed and so sad that these people care so little about people like me, or people who are disabled, people who are immunocompromised,” said O’Connor.

Jo isn’t her first name. CBC has agreed not to use her first name for fear of reprisals from protesters, some of whom are still in Ottawa.

Thousands of protesters and convoys of transport trucks have clogged downtown Ottawa streets in what began as opposition to mandatory vaccination for cross-border truckers — and has since evolved to include a range of opposition to COVID-19 public health measures.

Thursday April 9, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 9, 2020

Why we should all be wearing masks — and how our public health authorities got it wrong

Coronavirus cartoons

For months, as the COVID-19 crisis escalated and Canadians and Americans watched people across Asia increasingly wearing masks in public spaces, our health authorities stuck to their long-held policies, strongly advising against this. 

That is, until Friday. That’s when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reversed course, advising the public to use “cloth face coverings” to help slow the spread of COVID-19. They may have preferred to make this a quiet change on their website, but a characteristically bombastic press conference (and victory lap) by Donald Trump ensured that there was no saving face (no pun intended). 

The Public Health Agency of Canada made the same policy change Monday, and I suspect that the World Health Organization will not be far behind. And with these reversals come an eroding in public trust in the very organizations we need people to trust the most, at the very moment when our collective survival most depends on that trust.

So what went wrong? (continued: Toronto Star) 

 

Thursday February 9, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday February 9, 2017

Hamilton city staff broke rules at Washington Trump protest

A group of city of Hamilton employees who took part in the massive anti-Trump women’s march in Washington last month were in breach of city policies.

The staffers used a city van without permission to get to Washington and conducted out-of-country city business without proper authorization.

Joe-Anne Priel, general manager of community and emergency services, was the ranking staffer among the seven employees.

Priel should have gotten authorization for the travel and use of the van from city manager Chris Murray. She didn’t.

In an email to Murray and councillors, Priel explained the group used the city van because they were conducting business while in Washington, specifically visiting community hubs and picking up “ideas which we are keen to implement.”

The question is, did they book the hub visits before or after the decision to take part in the Washington march?

The answer is a muddy as the optics. (Source: Andrew Dreschel, Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Friday, June 3, 2016

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Friday, June 3, 2016 Hamilton and its Parts Inspired by a letter to the editor of the Hamilton Spectator which stirred a bit of feedbackÊ If you are such big believers in one amalgamated city, why do you let people sign letters with their old suburban town names? There is no Stoney Creek or Dundas. We are all Hamilton. You should stop allowing people to live in the past. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/6696743-may-30-lrt-is-the-option-offered-preserving-the-quality-of-life-and-other-letters-to-the-editor/ Hamilton, Amalgamation, city, names, Dundas, Ancaster, Stoney Creek, suburbs

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, June 3, 2016

Hamilton and its Parts

Inspired by a letter to the editor of the Hamilton Spectator which stirred a bit of feedback

If you are such big believers in one amalgamated city, why do you let people sign letters with their old suburban town names? There is no Stoney Creek or Dundas. We are all Hamilton. You should stop allowing people to live in the past. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)