David J. Widmann

On Wednesday, Kids Help Phone and Parent Help Line announced it’s usage statistics for 2002.

The two services, which are Canada’s only 24-hour, toll-free, bilingual and anonymous telephone and internet referral and counseling services, answered almost 363,000 calls and online questions from children and parents from almost 3,000 communities across Canada.

“Since 1989, the Kids Help Phone organization has been committed to the protection of children against physical, emotional and sexual abuse through education, prevention and intervention,” Chris Simmons-Physick, vice president of Child and Family Services at Kids Help Phone said in a press release. “We achieve his through the continued provision of our professional phone and web-based counseling and referral services and through our commitment to educating the public about critical issues affecting Canadian families.”

In 2002, calls to the Kids Help Phone service (1-800-668-6868) increased by 7 per cent.

Traffic to the web site (kidshelp.sympatico.ca) received almost 460,000 hits, representing an increase of 230 per cent. This includes people who used the new “Ask A Counselor” service on the site, which received more than 3,200 hits in six months.

Counselors at Parent Help Line (1888-603-9100) answered more than 23,000 calls from more than 1,800 communities in Canada – a 34 per cent increase. The Parent Help Line web site received over 70,000 hits.

Thousands of callers were referred to help right in their own communities through the organization’s database of 30,000 health and service agencies.

The Kids Help Phone organization receives no on-going government or United Way funding, and relies on the contributions of corporate and individual donors.

More than 10,000 volunteers across the country also help raise money and awareness for Kids Help Phone through special events including the Bell Walk for Kids, which takes place on Sunday, May 4. For more information on this fundraising event, visit www.bellwalkforkids.com.

Marketing tool attracts new business

Work is continuing on the new community profile for Port Hope.

“We’re aiming for the end of the month,” said economic development officer Rebecca Goddard-Bowman.

“It will probably go into the first week of March to get the final copy prepared, and then it goes into committee.”

The community profile is a marketing tool that the economic development department uses to attract new business to the community.  The profile includes a message to potential new businesses from the mayor, some basic facts about the community, and maps of the area.

The core of the community profile is its demographic information.  Figures on Port Hope’s population, labour force, and unemployment numbers are some of the most requested data.

“It’s seen as a negative factor if unemployment is high,” Ms. Goddard-Bowman said.  “When you have a high unemployment rate, you have a labour force sitting there waiting.

“Labour force is a huge issue of any type of new business coming in, particularly if they need a number of different types of employees.  Manufacturers and call centres are examples of businesses that have a high rate of employment,” she said.

Port Hope has a relatively low unemployment rate but also has a labour force that comes from quite a wide geographical area, she said.

The community profile also looks at what it’s like to do business in Port Hope by detailing how existing industries are developing, current tax rates, the telecommunications and transportation infrastructures, and what provincial and federal incentive programs exist for small- to medium-sized business enterprises.

“Small businesses make up about 90 per cent of the businesses that we have in our community, so it’s a very important factor,” Ms. Goddard-Bowman said.

Currently, Port Hope has a community profile which it uses to promote the community to businesses of all sizes but, although the statistics are up to date, she described it as “sort of a mish-mash of the information that’s been gathered.”

The new community profile will be more coherent on a presentation basis, and include more information that will help bolster Port Hope’s image in a competitive business market.

“It’s been a labour of love, but it will be very good to have,” Ms. Goddard-Bowman said.

Many sites to be included in upcoming cleanup project

“Port Hope has lived with this problem for so long,” says Sue Stickley of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office in Port Hope, about the radioactive and industrial waste throughout the municipality.

“The waste was placed in the 1930s and 1950s and got spread around,” she said at the start of a tour of waste sites in Port Hope. It was a time when the long-term effects of radioactive and industrial wastes hadn’t even been conceived, much less considered.

The refinement of materials such as radium and uranium at Eldorado Nuclear on the waterfront, as well as the manufacture of consumer and industrial products by other area companies, created waste. To the people creating it, it was waste just like any other — it was buried, dumped into the lake or shipped off, and then forgotten about.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the full scope of the problem had been realized. Not only had the sites occupied by factory, foundry and refinement operations been contaminated, but radioactive materials and other industrial waste products had been found throughout the town, Ms. Stickley said. Contaminated fill had been used on building sites, radioactive materials had been discovered in garbage dumps, even transportation routes had been polluted. There was even radiation detected in some of the community’s commercial and residential buildings.

“When they took down the radium factories in Clarington in the 1950s, a lot of people took building materials because they didn’t know,” she said.

The Atomic Energy Control Board began a large-scale radiation reduction program in Port Hope in 1976, and in 1982 the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (LLRWMO) was established to manage Port Hope’s waste, both radioactive and industrial.
While the LLRWMO works with the federal government and the local community to come up with a long-term solution to containing this waste, it is being monitored at several sites in and around Port Hope.

The centre pier area in the harbour is marked by the LLRWMO as one of the main industrial waste sites that needs attention.

“The harbour itself needs to be completely cleaned up,” Ms. Stickley said. “The sediment needs to be dredged.”

The centre pier and harbour is currently the home of the Port Hope Yacht Club. According to Ms. Stickley, the club will have to be moved before cleanup operations can take place.

“We figure that we can clean up the harbour in one boating season, so they only have to move for one season,” she said. “We’re trying to minimize the impact as much as possible.”

With cleanup of the harbour not scheduled to take place for another five years, the Yacht Club has yet to announce where its temporary location will be.

Just southwest of centre pier is the waterworks area.

“Back in the very first days of Eldorado Mining, they called it the Lakeshore Disposal Area,” Ms. Stickley said.

Much of the area has been cleaned up already, but further cleanup in the area will have to go ahead of schedule. The waterworks building is being expanded in the spring to meet new provincial water treatment standards. Part of that expansion area is still contaminated.

“We’re looking for a temporary storage site until we get the permanent facility,” Ms. Stickley said.

Overlooking the waterworks area is the entrance to the Alexander Street Ravine.

“The waste got to the Alexander Street Ravine during the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s by diversion from designated disposal areas,” Ms. Stickley said. “Subsequently the contamination was spread down the ravine, contaminating soil and other materials dumped there such as ash, cinders, municipal and industrial waste.”

The corner of Alexander and John Streets is nondescript, but is another industrial waste site that the LLRWMO is eager to get cleaned up. It is the site of a coal gasification plant that operated between 1859 and 1939. Although the last of the buildings was removed around 1971, the plant left a legacy of various heavy metals and hydrocarbons. Some of the pollutants on this site are considered leachate, which will require monitoring until it is moved into a permanent storage facility.

“Another area is around the Lion’s Recreation Centre here, literally in my back yard,” Ms. Stickley said. “There’s foundry waste and a variety of industrial waste. We’re not exactly sure how all of it got here — most of it came from the same plant that was at Centre Pier. There are areas that have lead, boron, and various other metal contaminates.

“We would clean this area up as well and put it in the long-term storage facility.”

The tour then proceeded to the Jack Burger Sports Complex on Highland Drive.

“Directly behind the sports complex is the old landfill site,” Ms. Stickley said. “The east end has been contaminated with radioactive material, runoff mixing with the waste, that sort of thing.”

Not far from the Highland Drive site is the Pine Street Extension area. This is where waste is consolidated and stored on a temporary basis.

“After the cleanup that took material up to Chalk River this whole area, called Brewery Pond, was then cleaned up,” Ms. Stickley said. “There was no place to put it outside the municipality, so we put it in an engineered mound called the ‘consolidation site.’ The other mound, the one with the tires, is a temporary storage site.

“We doubled the size of the temporary storage site because we knew that this has to last until we get a permanent site.”

The Pine Street Extension site is also one of the proposed sites for a permanent waste management facility. A permanent facility would replace the current mounds with a multi-component capsule designed to “cap and cover” the contaminated material. The waste would be isolated from the surface and from the flow of groundwater, and monitored to ensure that no leakage occurs.

Another proposed site is the Welcome Waste Management Facility on Marsh Road.

“This site is still owned and operated by Cameco Corporation,” Stickley said. “They’re looking after the waste on behalf of the federal government until a decommissioning and cleanup plan goes ahead.”

An auto wrecking yard adjacent to the site would be removed to facilitate expansion. As well, a house across from the facility is scheduled to be moved. The federal government has purchased the property so an access road can be built, allowing construction and waste-transportation vehicles to avoid passing through any residential areas after exiting Highway 401.

Ms. Stickley said that this site was under construction because it is “large enough to accommodate everything from Port Hope and Welcome.”

East of Rose Glen Road and south of Lake Street is the site of the former Chemetron property, now occupied by Esco.

“Chemetron was a pigment producer who came in, didn’t stay very long, polluted the environment and left,” Ms. Stickley said. “They left this lagoon area here that’s filled with chemicals and pigment. We’ll clean it up as part of the overall project.”

The waste in the lagoon will be dried, then encapsulated with the rest of Port Hope’s radioactive and industrial waste.

Not far from the Chemetron site is a temporary storage site for some contaminated sewage, near the treatment plant. All of the sewage waste has been biologically treated, but is still considered contaminated.

“There was a certain amount of uranium going into the sewers, so the sludge has uranium in it,” Ms. Stickley explained. “Some contamination got spread around Port Hope by the sludge too, because in those days some people took the sludge and used it in their gardens.”

There are some other minor areas of contamination within Port Hope that are also being monitored by the LLRWMO and are slated for cleanup. The project is currently in the environmental assessment process, with facilities construction and cleanup scheduled to begin around 2006. Although a few years down the road, the project has been moving according to schedule since the federal government and the municipality signed the legal agreement that set the cleanup process in motion.

For her part, Ms. Stickley is glad to be part of the process that will finally see a resolution to Port Hope’s ongoing industrial pollution problem.

“We’ve lived in this community for a long time, and we get to work on the solution to a problem,” she said. “That’s really satisfying.”

ABOVE: The centre pier at Port Hope harbour, one of many contaminated areas due to be cleaned up.
BELOW: A temporary storage mound with sewage treatment plant sludge in the background, at the east end of Lake Street.

Tuesday night’s bad weather kept Northumberland OPP extremely busy on highway 401 throughout Northumberland County.

the Grafton area was the site of the worst of numerous accidents.  A 20-car pileup resulted in the closure of westbound lanes at County Road 23 for approximately 6 hours.

westbound 401 lanes were also closed for approximately 2 hours in the Port Hope area.

including the multi-car collision, the OPP investigated around 30 collisions overnight, with many cars running off the road.

police said it was fortunate only minor injuries were reported.

The problems are the highway for a one brought, at times heavy truck traffic and Port Hope and Cobourg late Tuesday Much of the traffic from the west followed the truck route around Port Hope and turned onto Country Road 2 at Boundary Road.

truck and other vehicle traffic was also thick on Elgin Street, and at the Elgin/Burnham intersection in Cobourg, with more traffic coming off the 401 as well.  Much of the extra traffic flowed down Burnham, and through downtown Cobourg.

As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, the had been no new problems reported on Highway 401 for two hours although numerous cars and trucks were still in the ditches, and on the medians and shoulders waiting to be removed in better weather, the OPP stated.

The repercussions of a furnace oil spill on Front Street in Harwood are rippling more than where the nearby creek and ditch empties into Rice Lake.

An oil slick is still visible near shore, coating surviving geese.

Two geese have already died, according to nearby property owners.

Water and oil soaked pads are frozen into the lake ice about 20 feet from shore.

Furnace oil continues to seep into the lake from a drainage ditch that runs behind the house, 150 metres away.

A tenant in the house where the leak originates is out thousands of dollars, and is now also experiencing health problems, believed to be associated with the oil.

The house and furnishings are impregnated with the stench of furnace/diesel oil.

The registered owner of the property, George Newton Lang, lives in Studio City, California.

The property is under the care of Fred Holloway of Cobourg, as property manager.

It was rented to tenant Sandra Mate in December 2002.

The spill was reported to the Peterborough Office of the Ministry of the Environment on Jan. 24 and was told by Mr. Holloway that “approximately one gallon of furnace oil had leaked from the basement of the house at 5425 Front Street.”

He also indicated to the Ministry, according to a Provincial Officers report “that on behalf of the property owner, he would retain Johnson Septic Service Limited, a local spill clean-op contractor, to begin controlling and cleaning up the spill.”

Provincial Officer Michael Longpre, writing in his report states: “based on an update from the Spills Action Centre on January 27, 2003, indicating that the spill was ongoing, and that area waterfowl was being impacted at Rice Lake, he and another Officer, David Arnott attended the site location to assess current conditions”

He wrote “it was noted there was a creek flowing through the site location, connecting to a municipal ditch which in turn connected to Rice Lake”.

The officers observed that the creek, the municipal ditch and an open section of Rice Lake “all had visible signs of oil present on the surface of the water”. They also observed “visible contamination on the banks of the creek and the municipal ditch.”

In addition, the provincial officers observed “that oil was getting past the booms placed in the ditch by Johnson Septic Service on behalf of the property owner and was continuing to flow downstream into Rice Lake.”

Their investigation of the house, also on Jan. 27, “revealed significant flooding in the basement with visible oil on the surface of the water in the basement.”

Samples of the contaminated water were collected from all areas, from the house to the Lake.

Subsequently a clean up order was issued as a result of a contravention of section 14 of the Enviromental Protection Act due to the spill. The report was issued Jan. 28 and gave the property owner/manager 24 hours to contain the problem, hire a consultant to assess the damage, prepare an action plan with implementation schedule to restore the property.

Ministry officials said the clean-up will include removing all contamination, vegetation and soil from the affected site all the way to the Lake, a distance of about 150 metres. Cost is expected to run between $140,000 and $180,000.

However, while they currently don’t know the total impact or effect of the damage, they expect to know soon.

Ministry investigators have also been brought in to study the violation to determine if any further prosecution may take place.

The new tenant, Sandra Mate said all of the problems started in December when they moved in to clean up the house, repaint and wallpaper.

She paid her first and last months rent in the amount of $1,000 on Dec. 16 and was told there was a lot of oil in the tank.

They ran out of oil two days later.

Because they could not get a company to refill the tank before Christmas, she was forced to spend $280 filling the tank five gallons at a time with diesel fuel until Dec. 26.

The furnance oil supply company she contacted said an inspection of the tank would have to be done before they filled it on Dec. 27. Because it had a hole in it, it was condemned.

A new tank was installed on Jan. 2, but it apparently also leaked near the furnace.

The red coloured furnace oil had apparently leaked into a sump pump well in the corner of the basement. With a continuous odor of oil, Ms. Mate said she bailed out between 30 and 40 gallons of the red liquid which now sits stored in a large drum on the front lawn. And the problems were not over yet.

Water almost eight inches deep seeped into the basement and froze, mixing with the furnace oil, and then leaked out a basement door, across the grass, and into the ditch.

They were ordered out of the house Jan. 27 by ministry officials and the power has been turned off, Ms. Mate said.

Ministry officials in Peterborough were contacted late in the day Monday, and told their questions would be answered by Tuesday morning.

Mr. Holloway, who is also reeve of Hamilton Township could not be reached Monday at the Municipal Offices, nor could he be reached at home prior to the paper’s printing deadline of the Cobourg Daily Star and Port Hope Evening Guide.

$27-million program to make these lands available for recreation and development

Ontario Minister of Northern Development and Mines Jim Wilson was at the former Kam Kotia mine site near Timmins last week to officially open the lime treatment plant built last year with funding from the province’s Abandoned Mines Rehabilitation Program.

“With support from this program, the important rehabilitation work begun at Kam Kotia last year is moving ahead on schedule and is the main focus on fourth-year activities,” Wilson said.

Kam Kotia, a former copper and zinc mine, is part of a four- year, $27-million program to begin rehabilitation of Ontario’s abandoned mine sites and make these lands available for recreation and development.

“The Ontario government is dedicating $10-million this fiscal year toward rehabilitation of abandoned mine sites on Crown lands to ensure public safety, improve the environment and make these lands available for productive use,” said Wilson.

“I’m proud that this government is leading the way in Canada when it comes to addressing physical hazards and environmental contamination at former mine sites.”

In the first three years of the program, work has been undertaken at more than 45 abandoned mine sites. In addition, the Ontario government is one of the few jurisdictions in Canada that has completed an assessment of all known abandoned mine sites on Crown and privately owned land.

As well as construction of the plant at Kam Kotia, projects for the fourth year of the four-year, $27-million program include:

- capping a mine shaft, backfilling two mine stopes and fencing off several areas of the Toburn Mine in Kirkland Lake;

- removing the temporary Bailey bridge and constructing a permanent bridge to restore the North Road to its original two lanes at the Central Patricia Mine in Pickle Lake;

- continuing a rehabilitation partnership with Kinross Gold Corporation at the Kinross properties in Timmins;

- backfilling underground stopes in Cobalt’s Provincial Mine;

- removing PCBs, capping open holes and removing a surface structure at the Coppercorp property in Sault Ste. Marie; and

- removing fire-damaged buildings from the Buffalo Ankerite Mine in Timmins.

While the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines is responsible for mine site rehabilitation, representatives from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of the Environment have also participated in the planning process.

“This government’s strategic approach to managing the environment relies on strong partnerships, both across ministries and with the businesses, community groups and citizens who make conservation and pollution prevention a daily concern,” said Environment Minister Chris Stockwell.

“The ongoing work at Kam Kotia is an excellent example of the results that this kind of co-operation can achieve.”

The government’s efforts to address acid mine drainage at Kam Kotia earned an honourable mention from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario in his 2001-2002 annual report.

Effects of international accord on mining still unknown

The Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce has vowed to work with other chambers in Ontario to press for clarification on how Canada will meet its Kyoto obligatations.

The Kyoto Protocol, the controversial accord designed to curb the effects of global climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, was ratified in November of last year.

Of concern to the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, as well as other chambers nation-wide, is that Kyoto says much about emissions reduction, but does not provide a clear framework that businesses can use to meet their emissions responsibilities.

“We want something that is a framework that is useful in terms of how Canada moves forward on this issue,” said Jim Thompson, first vice-chairman of the Greater Sudbury chamber.

“We want something that helps people to understand how they are going to live with Kyoto.

“We want to watch the development of this plan closely to make sure that politicians are kept accountable and it doesn’t threaten the economy.

“It’s like signing a contract without knowing what’s in it,” said Thompson about the current state of Canada’s Kyoto implementation.

“Inco actually came out and said themselves, prior to ratification, that they were concerned about what Kyoto was going to mean for them. It was very unclear how it was going to impact on them.

Mining Concerns

“I think Falconbridge feels the same way.”

Many of the mining industry’s concerns stem from the fact they have already committed to reducing their emissions.

“They are doing a lot right now, voluntarily and under provincial guidelines,” Thompson said. “They have really moved forward on renovating and retrofitting their plants, developing new technologies in the last 10 years because they’ve had to reduce their emissions. That’s a very positive impact on Kyoto’s objectives.

“I think Inco’s question was ‘what more are we going to have to do with Kyoto in place?’”

To get an answer to some of these questions, the Greater Sudbury chamber has been working with the Canadian and Ontario chambers to push for clarification on how Kyoto will be implemented.

“What the chambers want is to make sure that what we’re doing is responsible, is achievable, is affordable, and is something we can all get behind,” Thompson said. “(For) all industries, and all of the provinces.

“We want to make sure Kyoto is not just something that’s going to be put out there by the federal government with the hopes that everyone else is going to follow suit, otherwise there’s a danger that nothing will happen.

“There are a lot of good things in the Kyoto accord. I think the objectives are ideal and we support the objectives. The question is how to get there? What’s the responsible way to get there for Canadians?”

Thompson noted that although Kyoto is of importance to local industry and the Greater Sudbury chamber is working with other chambers on the clarity issue, the Sudbury chamber’s concerns are focused more on the local business environment.

“The Kyoto Accord is, by and large, a national issue,” said Thompson. “There are many other important issues coming up, such as the municipal elections in the year 2003 that we’re more concerned about and will be working on in the months ahead.”

On Wednesday, Laurentian University’s Native Human Services Program kicked off the first annual Native Social Work Conference.

The keynote speaker for this year’s event, entitled Articulating Aboriginal Paradigms: Implications for Aboriginal Social Work Practice, was Michael Anthony Hart.

Hart, a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba and a professor at the University of Manitoba, looked at “social work in light of our histories, particularly in light of some of the work done by missionaries.”

He said the purpose of the address was to “ask the question of whether we are any different than what has happened to us historically.”

Workshops planned

A host of workshops featuring speakers from across the country will take place from today until Saturday.

Several themes will be discussed during the conference, including child welfare, aboriginal youth risk and resilience, homelessness, urban native women recovering from addiction, working with trauma and abuse in aboriginal communities, social determinants of aboriginal health, and aboriginal psychology.

On Thursday, two films will be screened in the Science North cavern.

The first, Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minnijean Brown Trickey, tells the story of a Laurentian University native human services graduate and eight other African American teenagers who broke racial barriers to attend high school in Little Rock, Ark. It will be shown at 3 p.m.

Atanarjuat — The Fast Runner will air at 7 p.m.  The film won the Golden Camera Award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and is the first film presented in the Innu language of Canada.

For more information on the conference, visit http://nativeswconference.laurentian.ca.

Sudbury shop is Ontario’s most northern source for woodcarving supplies and classes

In a blink-and-you-might-miss-it storefront location on Sudbury’s Bancroft Drive, a small shop is starting to build, among other things, a reputation.

Thompson’s Woodcarving is owned and operated by the husband and wife team of Morris (“Moe”) and Brigette Thompson.

They have built what started as a way for Moe to relieve the stress of working as a Sudbury Regional Police Officer into Ontario’s most northern source for woodcarving supplies and classes.

“We started the shop here in 1999,” said Moe. “I was still working full-time in the police service at the time. I retired in the summer of 2001, and we’ve been steady at this ever since.”

After trying several different types of woodcarving, Moe found his passion was in carving caricatures.

Shelves and display cases at Thompson’s Woodcarving are dominated by wooden characters, many of which are originals drawn from Moe’s experience as a police officer.

Reference Materials, Supplies

Thompson’s Woodcarving also carries reference materials and supplies for several styles and methods of carving.

“Just about anything that’s out there, I have some supplies here that will help,” said Moe.

You can’t buy what they sell just anywhere, said Brigette, who takes care of the business end of running the store.

“Woodcarving tools are so different from any other carpentry tool or any other woodworking tool.”

“There was no place in Northern Ontario to purchase carving tools,” Brigette said. “People in Sudbury, until we opened, were limited to looking at either a print catalogue or a Web site. They couldn’t try anything in their hand. We thought if we could get the tools in, people could try before they buy.”

As well as running the store, the Thompsons attend woodworking and carving shows. This helps them expand their customer base, as well as help their current customers.

“Morris loves to carve, and it’s a way to meet people,” Brigette said.

“We’re the central contact point for information about woodcarving in the area. Through shows, we’re able to keep tabs on what’s going on and pass that on to other carvers. Plus, we get to see new products.”

The store is also working on increasing its inventory of wood- burning supplies.

“‘Artistic arson,’ as one person put it,” she said. “With the aid of your burning pen, you’re sketching a picture onto wood or other mediums. It’s not a new art, but it is seeing a revival.”

Before retiring from the police, Moe’s job was the main source of funding for the business. The business grew slowly, and as time went on, became self-sufficient.

“We ran a cash business, which we still do,” Brigette said. “We find that has been the best way to do business. We buy what we can afford. Once we have sold it, we buy more. Occasionally we do run out of things, especially the big-ticket items, but generally we can get it in a short period of time.

“For the first few years, growth was very slow. Where we’re at today is about where we should be. We have no bank loans.”

Brigette cites the banks’ lack of understanding of small- business issues as one reason why she and Moe couldn’t get financing for Thompson’s Woodcarving.

“The banks would not look at us, because they had nothing to assess this type of store against,” she said. “As a small business, we’ve found that the banks have been very frustrating to deal with.”

Brigette also said that other industries still haven’t figured out the needs of their small-business customers.

“If I want high-speed Internet, because I’m a business I have to pay nearly twice as much as I would as an individual, yet my usage is probably less.”

Still, by avoiding bank loans, creating and following a business plan, and choosing a location that is “tailored to the budget,” the Thompsons have managed to keep their love of woodcarving — and each other — from being overtaken by the stresses of running a business.

“Being retired, we don’t depend on this for our bread and butter,” Brigette said. “We do it mostly because we love it.”

One of the things Moe loves most about woodcarving is teaching. In the past, he has taught classes at Cambrian College, and given instruction to hearing-impaired children. Now he teaches classes in his Bancroft Drive shop.

“I keep my classes very small, because that way I can give individual attention to everybody,” he said. “I carve along with the students, so we all start with the same blank cut-out of wood cut the same way.”

More Carving Shows

In the future, the Thompsons hope to get the word out about their business by doing more woodworking and carving shows. They have also made the first few steps onto the Internet, with their Web site at ww.woodcarve.netfirms.com.

The Thompsons are also working on a project to help increase awareness of Sudbury’s small-business community.

“We’ve tried to interest local cable companies to do a hobby show,” Brigette said. “The reason hobby stores don’t make it in this town is because people don’t know they exist. We’ve got to get them to understand that retailers here in Sudbury carry the same products and often at a competitive price or cheaper.

“People in Sudbury still have to learn to support their local businesses.”

A group of parents has asked the Ontario Ministry of Education to investigate a decision by English-language Catholic trustees to close Our Lady of Fatima elementary school in Naughton this fall.

In a letter to Education Minister Elizabeth Witmer, the group wrote that the “parents and taxpayers seek judicious use of their tax dollars to provide our young people with good, solid education.”

One of the parents, Kerri St. Jean, said: “We’re hoping that the trustees will reconsider their decision to close Our Lady of Fatima in favour of pulling $2.39 million out of their reserves to add on to a school that doesn’t need to be built.”

In their letter, parents said the Sudbury Catholic District School Board underestimated the cost of closing the school and moving its students to nearby St. James in Lively.

In an effort to save money, trustees in December opted to close Our Lady of Fatima and to consolidate St. Anthony school with St. Francis school, located in Sudbury.

However, in a report commissioned by the parents group, chartered accountant Darlene Gatien said it would cost $4.18 million over the next 10 years to close Our Lady of Fatima and expand St. James.

The board’s estimate is $2.55 million.

Given its estimate, the parents told Witmer that “taxpayers in the City of Greater Sudbury have grave concerns regarding financial information provided by the board administration to the board of trustees for the 2002 student accommodation review of the western family of schools.

“Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School Council prepared a financial analysis highlighting that the board’s cost estimates have been done improperly. The trustees did not provide any comment on our financial concerns.”

However, Ray Vincent, chairman of the Catholic board, defended the board’s decision.

“I respect what they have to say, although the board certainly disagrees with (the economic) argument,” Vincent said. “We have highly qualified experts in the field of accepted municipal and school accounting practices and we have to abide by that.

“We’re quite willing to meet with the ministry people and have them peruse our figures.”

Vincent said trustees, given the need to cut costs, made the best decision they could.

“The board has to consider what’s good and healthy for the entire system,” he said. “We look at all the schools. We look at enrolment, operating costs, costs of maintaining the school, and so on.

“Sometimes we have to consolidate schools. When we realize the economies of consolidating schools, it’s redistributed to the benefit of all our schools and all the children in the system.”

He added that once St. James is expanded and renovated, parents will be pleased.

“We’ll go out of our way to enhance the quality of programs … When that school is completely renovated, it’ll be the envy of every elementary school in the Sudbury district.”

Making their case

Why parents say Our Lady of Fatima should stay open:

- Location: The school is seen as being central to students as far away as Beaver Lake in the west, Copper Cliff in the east, Dogpatch and Lively to the north, and Long Lake to the south.

- Condition: the building is well maintained, and accessible to students with disabilities.

- Size: the building is seen as spacious enough to house a good number of students, and has a very large gymnasium.

- Well-equipped: the school has a large computer lab and science lab.