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Top Canadian cyclists take a tour of downtown Georgetown HOT WHEELS PAGE 8 Town ready to celebrate July 1 with a full slate of events CANADA DAY INSIDE www.theIFP.ca Tuesday, June 28, 2011 Halton Hills' award-winning newspaper serving Acton & Georgetown 24 Pages 50 Cents (+HST) Hospital gets $1 million `birthday gift' Usually a person celebrating a birthday receives gifts. But a day before his 90th birthday, Georgetown resident Fred Helson chose to give a gift--$1 million to the Georgetown Hospital's expansion fundraising campaign. As part of the ongoing fundraising campaign for the Georgetown Hospital's renovation project, Helson announced Wednesday night that he would be donating $1 million to the $5.25 million campaign-- the largest donation in the hospital's history. The announcement was made at the Georgetown Hospital Foundation's annual Donor Appreciation Celebration at the Club at North Halton. As a result of his donation, the CT scanner suite will be named in memory of his late wife Marg. "Marg would just love the fact we could do this," said Helson, a lawyer. "The hospital was always her first place of choice to lend our support." "It is a thrill to be part of this remarkable gift," said K.C. Carruthers, executive director of the Georgetown Hospital Foundation. "We are at the beginning of the biggest fundraising campaign in the hospital's history, so it is very heartening to have Mr. Helson leading the way with the biggest pledge in Hospital Foundation chair Laurent Thibault (right) the hospital's history." announces Fred Helson's $1 million donation to the See HELSON, pg. 3 hospital's renovation project. Photo by Ted Brown Residents raise objections to highway plans By LISA TALLYN Staff Writer "Broadsided" is how one area resident described how he felt about the possibility of two new highways that could cut through a large swath of rural south Halton Hills at a meeting that drew about 250 people Thursday night. "You guys all knew what the plan was, but you didn't tell us," said the man at the meeting organized by residents held at the Glencairn Golf Club to the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) staff and consultants working on the GTA West Corridor project. He complained the preferred option being recommended to move forward to the next phase of Environmental Assessment is a new one-- a combination of two options-- determined in the GTA West Corridor study. The preferred options are 4-2, which calls for a fourlane highway serving as a north-south link that terminates at Hwy. 401 and Hwy. 407, and option 4-3 which is an east-west link that ends at Hwy. 401 west of Milton at Tremaine Rd. The EA process determined that elements of both of those alternatives would be required. Mayor Rick Bonnette is urging residents to fill out postcards (above) showing their opposition to GTA West highway proposal 4-3 and send them to Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne. Postcards are available at the Civic Centre. The exact alignment of the 175-metre corridor (12 lanes) is to be determined through the next stage of the EA process but MTO has tentatively mapped out a preliminary route through rural Halton Hills between Five and 10 Sideroads stretching from its west border to its east. Another segment for the north-south link stretches from Steeles Ave. to 10 Sideroad (from Eighth Line to the eastern border.) Another area resident said she was looking at the highways from a "pollution standpoint." She said the area has already had to deal with a natural gas-fired power plant (Steeles Ave. in Hornby), and now will have to be "saddled" with a highway. To a round of applause from the crowd she said the area had done its share and the Province needs to back down. "We have enough pollution from that plant, we don't want anymore." Another resident said the need for the highways is based on the Provincial Growth Plan-- future population growth of three million people stretching from York Region to Guelph-- but he stressed that "population is not going to happen." See FIGHT, pg. 5 Vi s i t o u r s h o w r o o m $&+,//(6 0$='$ 2I 0LOWRQ 6WHHOHV $YH 0LOWRQ 21 /7 ; ZZZDFKLOOHVPD]GDFD · your window & door professionals · LQIR#DFKLOOHVPD]GDFD 3KRQH 3KRQH 7ROO IUHH )D[ Quality & Service You Can Count On! 332 Guelph Street, Georgetown (Across from Canadian Tire) 341 Guelph St., Unit 3 Georgetown 905.873.0236 www.buy-wise.ca info@buy-wise.ca · awarded readers choice 16 times · 905-702-0885 www.bathstudio .ca