No casino in my back yard please!

I have been doing a bit of looking around and I have found some more information on casinos and their impact on the local area.  I also found this site http://nowoolwichcasino.org which is informing people about this casino project (that's where I found to mouse trap image).  Please go over to the site and learn more about what is going on there.

I have also learned that OLG is trying to move the casino in Hamilton to a more downtown area and there has been a facebook group created to oppose that project.  There is a very lively discussion there as well with a lot of interesting information including this image:

While reading more on this topic of gambling and casinos the most popular voices from the support of casinos can be summed up in the following statements:

1. Gamblers will go where the action is no matter what any health, counselors or anyone else for that matter. May as well be here so we can reap the benefits.
2. If people might destroy their life due to gambling so we should not allow it then also we should not allow smoking, drinking or eating fat/sweet food.

#1. The question of benefits is a good one, here is a quote that I have found in a few places but couldn't verify 100%:

"In Atlantic City, within 4 years of the casinos opening, 40% of the city’s restaurants closed as did 1/3 of the retail businesses."

The reason for this was that the casinos became the "only game in town" and began to expand to include eating facilities and merchandise shops killing any other small market business.  Gamblers also prefer not to leave their gambling site if they don't have to.  Building a casino anywhere in Woolwich is not going to help any surrounding business.  This is not sustainable growth and development.  Being a resident of Breslau I see the township routinely overlooking us for services despite our rapid population grown.  We don't have a library, pool, arena or any other funded recreation facilities, and now they think Woolwich's big contribution to the Breslau area is a casino! I am thoroughly unimpressed.

#2. Now the question about what behaviors and products should be controlled by government and which ones shouldn't is much more difficult to answer.  However, this is why we have public debate and why all opinions should be heard and discussed so that the residents of the areas where these products are provided should be able to collectively decide.  The decision should also ensure that the community has been engaged and a large enough proportion of the residents (not just respondents) should be in favour of this project.

• Smoking is a very highly controlled behaviour because it doesn't only affect the health of the smoker.  It also affects the health of all those around the smoker by second hand smoke.  Cigarette packages also have strong warning messages on them informing the smoker regarding the behaviour they are engaged in.
• Drinking and alcohol are also very tightly controlled in Ontario with sales only permitted in certain licensed establishments.  Servers of alcohol and there place of work can be found criminally responsible if they over serve a customer and that customer gets into there car and gets into an accident.  I don't know if the law extends to the black jack dealer in a casino in the same way.
• Fast food / unhealthy food choices are slowly becoming more regulated as well, where more nutrition information needs to be made more available.

The reason that these 3 behaviours are regulated by government is because of the potential to addiction and thus significant health problems. For those of us who do not suffer from true addiction we have a hard time trying to understand what it means.  For others it is a very real and very significant problem.  Problem drinkers, gamblers, eaters and smokers do NOT choose to have this problem.  Yes, they may have made poor choices earlier to get to the problem stages, but they don't choose to loose all their money at a card table, they don't choose alcoholism that destroys their lives, they don't choose to constantly smoke despite the fact they can't breath.  Mental health addiction is just as sad as cancer and if I can do something /  anything to prevent even one person from that I would.  Just as I would do anything to help someone avoid a cancer diagnosis.  Before people discount this and say, people should be free to do whatever they want, lets consider the argument of a publicly funded health care system.  You pay for the health care of others, I would rather pay for the prevention of these types of problems instead of creating a catalyst.  A catalyst that will increase health care costs as well as costs of other social programs.

"The evidence shows that the closer you live to a casino, the more likely there is to be gambling and problem gambling" - Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Hamilton’s medical officer of health (Proximity feeds addiction: Richardson).

To close I offer you this document Position Statement by City of Toronto Medical Officer of Health.

OLG wants a Casino in my backyard - I think NOT

So if you are a resident of the Township of Woolwich you would have received this card in the mail this past week (December 2 - 8, 2012).  I totally missed it and had to go digging in my recycling box to find it.  Let's just hope that the township didn't send this out on purpose on the same day as the flyers.  That would just make me angry.

Apparently, "The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) has approached the Township to find out if interest exists concerning the possible establishment of a gaming facility in the municipality."

As a resident of the Township of Woolwich this concerns me greatly.  A casino is an extremely bad idea, it is not about the money it is about how you obtain that money.  We have to think long term about the values that we want in our township.

"Why is Council open to considering a possible gaming facility? It has been estimated that gaming facility can contribute approximately $4 million dollars per year to host municipalities"

Ok, lets just check out this statement "ESTIMATED"  and "APPROXIMATELY" are not very strong words now are they? Not only that, but if the casino can generate revenues in such excess to provide the host municipality $4 million dollars how much money has it stolen from the residents of said municipality.  Where do the supporters of casino funds to municipalities think the money comes from? Remember "The House" always wins and the Township and the residence are not "The House". People give your heads a shake.  Before we all get excited about the money don't forget this story about OLG potentially changing the rules on revenue sharing.  They are "The House" and they make and break the rules.  The Township Concil doesn't want to be put into this position in several years:

“It was not good news for us. It was not a good day,” said Michael Wood, chief administrative officer of the Township of Centre Wellington, which includes Elora. “We just don’t know what the announcement is really going to mean.”

Casinos are not sustainable municipal development. If you want to get some real information on gambling visit the University of Waterloo's Gambling Research Team or Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre.

We are suppose to check off "Yes" or "No" to the following question:

"Do you support the establishment of a gaming facility in Woolwhich?"

They forgot the option of "Heck, No you crazy politicians" because that is the box that I'd be checking.  If you want your opinion heard on this please go to www.woolwich.ca/olgsurvey.   The deadline is Friday, December 21, 2012.

Here is some discussion of a possible casino in The Township of Woolwich.

Here are the search results of other articles in the Record on the possible casino in Woolwich.

I would like to applaud the Cambridge council for dumping this idea as they voted to reject it.  Gambling is not a source of revenue, it is a source of problems now and into the future.  Please be informed and inform the Council in Woolwich that this is a bad idea. Woolwich said "No" to the slot machines in the past and now they have an arena and new homes on that land.  New homes and other services provide stable income for the municipality.  Casinos only provide an income as long as they are making more then they are providing to you.

Ok, this rant is over but I can almost guarantee that I will have more to say on this issue.

Say "YES" to a positive sustainable future and say "NO" to a casino in your backyard.

My Scathing Review

Well you see I am a blogger now and bloggers change the world (ok maybe not my blog but whatever).  This post is to express our frustrations with the kitchen construction in our house.

A little background to this story is that we purchased a new home built by Empire Communities.  The kitchen cabinets were built and installed by Paris Kitchens.   During the whole construction process we were faced with the standard builder grade components or upgraded components.  Now this is something that everyone who is building a new home should understand.  When you build a new house you first pick from a variety of floor plans / building models that all have a price attached to them.  I would assume that people pick the  biggest house they believe they can afford.  The catch is that the price quoted is with builder grade everything which can mean pretty low quality.  Then you get to go to your upgrade appointment where you are faced with literally thousands of low and high priced upgrades.  For example, in our situation, the door from the house to the garage was considered an upgrade (don't get me started on this).  This upgrade cost us an additional $1250.  We went through all the possible upgrades and colour selections and when we came to the kitchen cabinets we had no choice but to accept the builder grade cabinets as the upgrades were just getting too much.

Now this gets to the heart of this post.  We were in our house for less than 3 years before we noticed that the veneer on the kitchen cabinets was peeling off.  We contacted Paris Kitchens and inquired about the warranty of the cabinets.  We were informed that all kitchen cabinets come with a 1 year warranty. WHAT! One year, really this must be a joke.  You are telling me that you build a kitchen in a new house and you can only warranty your product for a year.  Not a good start.  So we then asked what it would cost to replace the two doors that we were having problems with.  They quoted us a price of $258.60 for the doors which we would need to install.  So I ended up taking off the doors and I tried to glue the veneer back on to prevent it from peeling off.  This solution held for several months and then doors started peeling again including other doors.

Now for full disclosure the first door we were having problems with was in the location where we normally use our toaster and the next door was close to the stove.  I consider this standard kitchen use and I feel that a kitchen should be built to withstand this as a standard builder quality.

This the the first door I tried to glue

This is the door by the stove that now
scratches every time you open it

This is the bottom of the door
above the microwave.

This is the top of the door above
 the microwave.

So now we are faced with what to do.  We bought a new construction home to avoid these types of maintenance / repair issues and redoing a brand new kitchen in less than 4 years really wasn't in our plans.

So thank-you  Empire Communities and Paris Kitchens for your excellent work in creating a home for us.  I am sure glad it all held together for a year so you don't need to worry about it.

Thus ends the scathing review.  I feel better now.

Where does my food come from

Growing up on a farm we always understood the concept of growing food.  I enjoy attempting to keep that concept close to home.  Here is a picture of our little vegetable garden.

In the planter box ont he right we have a pretty successful strawberry plant that the boys enjoy checking out wuite often.  We planted it this spring and hope that is re-seeds for next year.

Our rhubarb plant is probably the one we use the most throughout the summer as my wife enjoys to make baked good with it.  I also enjoy a raw stick or rhubarb as well.  It reminds me of cutting grass growing up.  I used to grab a piece out of the plant as I pushed the mower by it.

The pink flowery stuff is oregano which turns out is quite a successfull weed (I mean plant).  We haven't been so successfull with harvesting and drying it but we keep trying.  We have enough of it.

The tomato plants are tied up to the deck railing in the back.  Those will hopefully be used for some salsa when they ripen up.

The garden is green but the grass infront of it is not doing so well.  I think this means I need a bigger garden.

Learning about myself through home projects

I finished up a set of slide our drawers for our pots and pans.  The picture on the left is the builders standard cabinet with the half shelf.  We have been discussing drawers for a long time.  I finally got to the project.  The image on the right is the two slide out drawers.  I am not sure how much the builder would have charged us for these two drawers but I purchased the materials for about $75.  The most expensive part was the full extension sliders.

This set of drawers mimics the set my dad and I worked on putting in the bathroom so working this project worked out pretty smooth.  I enjoy working on these type of project because of the influence of my grandfather who passed away early this year.  I miss him and the lessons that he taught.  The most important lesson was that any problem could be solved if you really wanted to solve it.

Now this picture is evidence that I am just like my grandfather in many ways.  With the scraps of wood that I had left over from the drawer project I built this guy with the boys.  No scrap of wood is too small to be useful.  The boys put the face on and I expect they may paint him up in some way.

Memories are made when you least expect it.  Take those special times and moments that you share with your friends and family and make them count.

Ride on

Throughout the summer months I try to use my bicycle to get to work.  Google maps estimates it at 15 km and I normally do it in 35-40 minutes.  The road way where I live isn't really ideal for cyclists but I do have a bike lane for the last 3 kilometres or so.  Thankfully, the trip home has slightly more down hill sections then up hill ones.  It is satisfying to get to work on your own power, if only we could do something about the safety of such a trip.

I would like my primary motivation to be getting fit and staying active but the bigger motivator is the financial burden of the second car for the family.  We have been surviving on one car for a while and we would like to keep it that way for as long as we can.