heritage • mackaycartoons

Friday June 16, 2017

June 15, 2017 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday June 16, 2017

Netflix tax? Trudeau says no to MPs’ proposed broadband internet levy

February 11, 2016

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has flatly rejected a controversial recommendation from a parliamentary committee calling for a five per cent tax on broadband internet services.

The new levy, included in a majority report of the Canadian Heritage committee released Thursday, was intended to boost a media sector struggling to adapt to technological changes and evolving consumer habits.

“We respect the independence of committees and Parliament and the work and the studies they do, but allow me to be clear: We’re not raising taxes on the middle class, we’re lowering them,” he said during an event in Montreal. “We’re not going to be raising taxes on the middle class through an internet broadband tax. That is not an idea we are taking on.”

September 24, 2014

Trudeau said his Liberal government was elected on a promise to lower taxes for the middle class and raise them on the wealthiest one per cent.

The committee’s report suggested the proposal would add hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues to the Canadian Media Fund, which already receives a levy on cable bills to finance the production of Canadian content.

The tax, levied on broadband internet providers, would apply to high-speed internet services that allow for the streaming of music, movies and TV shows, but not to slower and less costly services.

Revenue generated by the current cable levy is no longer seen as sufficient in an age of cord cutting and “over-the-top” services that stream content over the internet.

The Heritage committee has spent more than a year studying the industry, which has been steadily losing advertising revenue and market shares to online giants such as Facebook, Netflix and Google. (Source: CBC News)

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Friday April 8, 2016

April 7, 2016 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 8, 2016

Gore developers back with plan to save some historical features

Developers of a site with historic buildings facing Gore Park are back with an amended proposal to save some and incorporate some heritage features before demolishing the current structures and rebuilding.

The redevelopment project screeched to a halt in 2013 when city council slapped a last-minute heritage designation on a small strip of buildings addressed 18 to 28 King St. E. just before they were to be torn down. They are on the southside of the park.

Proponents for redeveloping the site made an unscheduled appearance before city council’s general issues committee Wednesday with a new plan to save the façade of 18 to 22 King and demolish the rest.

A new five-storey, 20,000-square-foot building is planned that will also encompass a small adjacent vacant property where a building was demolished in 2011.

The building will have retail stores on the first floor and 14 apartments above, all with balconies overlooking Gore Park, said Tim Bullock, a lawyer representing the consortium that owns the properties.

The preserved façade will form half of the new building’s front.

“This is a compromise,” Bullock told councillors.

He said the façade to be preserved has Escarpment stone in its design and has the most heritage features worthy of preservation.

The other façade or building front, on addresses 24 to 28, has fewer heritage features, different stonework, and has deteriorated beyond reasonable repair, he said.

“Restoring all the facades would make it economically unfeasible … The engineering report says 28 (King St. E.) is very unsafe and 24 King has had its heritage features stripped.”

The two addresses also have small retail fronts not suitable to today’s retail industry, he added.

The new plan is “very respectful of the Gore,” he suggested. “It’s a win-win for the city.”

Architect David Premi, who worked on the downtown library and farmers’ market project, told councillors the building, with the original façade for half of its front and a complementing front for the other half is “an attempt to be respectful” to the original design. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday November 21, 2015

November 20, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 21, 2015

Confusion surrounds push to preserve Desjardins Canal bridge

The fate of one of the city’s busiest old bridges is up in the air.

And it’s entirely possible that not one of the 5,180 drivers-per-hour who use it at peak times could name or even locate the bridge on a map.

Beaten to death by the stadium

Don’t feel bad — neither could Hamilton councillors Wednesday, despite their decision to talk to the province about preserving parts of the 84-year-old span.

The Ministry of Transportation calls the structure one-half of the Desjardins Canal bridges — basically, the east and west traffic lanes of Highway 403 that cross the old watercourse connecting the harbour to Cootes Paradise.

But in a previous life, the eastbound span was called the Longwood low-level bridge, carrying that road across the canal from 1931 until the 1960s, when it was incorporated into the highway. (The westbound span was built in the ’60s.)

The dreams which never die

The city has to act fast if it wants to influence a looming provincial plan to replace the historical bridge, said Coun. Aidan Johnson, who moved a motion Wednesday directing staff to talk to the province.

“All heritage architecture and infrastructure in the city should be protected to the best of our ability precisely because it is our heritage,” he said. “Especially if the province is going to pay for it.”

Johnson said city cultural staff alerted him to the impending bridge replacement — and an opportunity, through the environmental assessment, to lobby to retain “heritage aspects” of the concrete bridge, such as distinctive abutments.

The bridge doesn’t meet the criteria to be a provincial heritage bridge, according to the project website. But MTO spokesperson Astrid Poei said via email it’s possible the existing bridge piers could be “cut off” and preserved to “reflect the width and materials of the old bridge” with the cost of the work covered by the province.

A replacement bridge would still be built, she noted, but the remnant piers would remain as city property. Construction is slated to start next year and won’t finish until 2018.

Neverending Lister

The project website says the preferred fix for the aging canal span is to completely replace and widen the old Longwood bridge while rehabilitating the younger westbound highway structure.

Johnson argued the city has nothing to lose for arguing to preserve part of the “beautiful” bridge — even as he acknowledged being initially confused about exactly what bridge is under threat.

Councillors bemusedly searched the Internet and unsuccessfully tossed out guesses about exactly which bridge was under discussion during the meeting.

The confusion was understandable — the canal is criss-crossed by several historic spans, including the McQuesten high-level bridge and rail bridges used by CP and CN.

But unless you paddle the canal or walk the adjacent trail, you’d never realize the stretch of Highway 403 is a bridge at all.

Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, a former construction industry boss, expressed doubt about the idea of a partial preservation.

“In my experience, it’s not easy to save parts of a bridge,” he said. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Thursday, February 13, 2014

February 13, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, February 13, 2014

Parks Canada buildings in worse shape than claimed: Internal report

Parks Canada’s crumbling forts, historical houses and other heritage structures are in much poorer shape than the agency estimates.

That’s the finding of an independent consultant asked to review a comprehensive inventory created by Parks Canada to determine how much repair work is needed for its varied infrastructure across the country.

The agency’s 2012 inventory found that 47 per cent of all its assets — from dams, bridges and roads, to old stone forts — are in poor or very poor condition.

But Opus International Consultants Ltd. said its own sampling of hundreds of assets pushed that overall level to 53 per cent. And so-called cultural assets — the historical houses, fortifications, locks and other heritage gems from Canada’s past — are in even worse shape.

Opus estimates 61 per cent of these 2,000 structures are in poor or very poor shape, compared with Parks Canada’s more rosy assessment of just 33 per cent.

“Results indicate that at the portfolio level the value of (Parks Canada) assets in poor condition has increased from condition reported in the 2012 National Asset Review,” says the Opus report, which cost taxpayers $316,000.

A copy of the Dec. 16, 2013, document was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Parks Canada has come under fire in recent years for weak management of its real-estate portfolio, which includes historic canals and archeological sites, in addition to campgrounds, access roads and visitor centres. (Source: CBC News)

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Friday, June 14, 2013

June 14, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, June 14, 2013

It’s checkout time at the City Motor Hotel

A neighbour with a truck said he’d help her move, but Kim Coulas has been waiting all day. When she tries calling, his phone is off.

“I’m screwed,” she says, removing a cigarette from a large Ziploc bag. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”

It’s 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. City staff are standing in the parking lot, waiting for the keys to the City Motor Hotel. It was supposed to be vacant by now.

Romolo D’Angelo, the city’s director of facilities management and capital programs, says 10 rooms were occupied when they arrived in the morning.

Most people left without incident, but Coulas is one of two still here. Her belongings are packed and stacked in duffel bags and wicker baskets outside her room, but she can’t move them alone.
She calls another friend and waits some more.

Coulas says she doesn’t know where she’ll go when they show up. She’s been here for a month, ever since she and her husband divorced and she left her rented house.

“Divorce was easier,” she says of living at the hotel.

She’s been here once before — a decade ago, when she moved to Hamilton from Beaver Creek, Yukon. She says the same people owned it, but it was a lot nicer then.

“They just took this place and they ran it into the ground,” she says, pushing a busted pane of Plexiglas out of the window of her room and leaning through. “Every cent they could get out of it they milked it and that was it. It’s a shame.” (Source: The Hamilton Spectator)