The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, August 6, 2009 · 6 The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5571 Classified Advertising: 905-632-4440 Circulation: 845-9742 The Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. Advertising is accepted on the condition that, in the event of a typographical error, that portion of advertising space occupied by the erroneous item, together with a reasonable allowance for signature, will not be charged for, but the balance of the advertisement will be paid for at the applicable rate.The publisher reserves the right to categorize advertisements or decline. Editorial and advertising content of the Oakville Beaver is protected by copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Commentary Letter to the Editor NEIL OLIVER Vice-president and Group Publisher, Metroland West DAVID HARVEY General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief ROD JERRED Managing Editor DANIEL BAIRD Advertising Director RIZIERO VERTOLLI Photography Director SANDY PARE Business Manager MARK DILLS Director of Production MANUEL GARCIA Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution SARAH MCSWEENEY Circ. Manager WEBSITE oakvillebeaver.com It's not about NIMBYism, but clean air to breathe Re: Letter to the Editor, Oakville Beaver, Friday, July 31, 2009 Mr. Mikkelsen, yes we need to plan for the future, just not here. Yes you would be building a super-efficient gas fired plant, but regardless it will be emitting considerable pollution. It may well be within the Ministry of the Environment guidelines, but the whole area is already well beyond those guidelines. We can't afford to be breathing millions more tons of carbon dioxide, or any of the other pollution the plant will be emitting. You fail to mention how this plant will be cooled. The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) says it leaves it up to you, and if you are able, undoubtedly you will have it water cooled. Thank you. Now for about five miles around the plant, the weather is negatively affected, rain becomes snow, sleet becomes ice, etc. The totally moisture-laden air retains the pollutants dispersing them locally, drastically and with damaging efficiency. Please, of course, you will be paying municipal taxes. The local residents whose health you will be seriously affecting pay what adds up to millions and further more they have been paying it for years, but what they don't get in return is the millions the plant will be making every year. Your company is not in it for the benefit of their health, it is in it for the considerable profit at local and not-so-local residents' expense. The employees will likely come from all over and undoubtedly many of them have worked for you before, and 25 permanent jobs are no big deal when the health of thousands is at risk. Nanticoke wants the new plant, it wants its coal-fired plant converted to gas, it wants to retain jobs. The Nanticoke plant produces 1,000 mega watts, and more to the point, it has a three-kilometre, non-residential barrier around the plant's location -- not the few hundred metres your plant would have. In Oswego, New York another of the proponents, Sithe, has its plant four miles from the nearest community. This is not a "not in my backyard" attitude, it's about the well overpolluted air we already breathe. PAT MELHUISH Letters can be sent to editor@oakvillebeaver.com. If you wish your thoughts to be considered as a possible letter to the editor, you need to forward your complete home mailing address as well as a daytime number where you can be reached for verification purposes. Only your name would ever be published. RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville TV AUCTION ERIC RIEHL / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER CHEERS: Helen Moore prepares to eat her lunch at the annual Civic Holiday barbecue hosted by the Bronte Legion Branch 486 at its branch at 79 Jones St. When it comes to book club selections just let the dog decide O nce upon a time there was a book club. Wait, I'm already getting ahead of myself. Once upon a time friends came over for dinner and the conversation turned to reading. What have you been reading? What have you liked, loved, loathed? And over the course of the conversation we were all lamenting that -- given time constraints, life commitments and, admittedly, sheer laziness -- we weren't reading nearly as much as we used to, or as much as we desired. Someone suggested creating a book club to goose us out of our literary lethargy, and to get us back to books. In the ensuing months we corralled five couples and we began in earnest (as bookies, we knew the importance of being earnest). That was in the early 1990s (yes, kids, they had books back then and they'd even come up with something called lightbulbs by which to read those books). Meeting every two months or so, the club lasted 12 years. That's a lot of meetings, a lot of months and years and, by my casual calculation, a lot of books. Some classics. Some clunkers. Over the course of the club's long life, things evolved. Faces changed (for instance, one founding couple got transferred, detouring to Delaware before landing in Liechtenstein), and our book discussions, once fairly structured and quasi-intense, became more casual and relaxed. But a few things remained constant: wine (beer, spirits) always flowed and fun was always had. However, at some point after all those years, the club seemed to lose luster and some of its original spirit. We began to wonder whether this Andy Juniper incarnation had run its course, eventually determining that it was indeed time to pull the plug. And it stayed unplugged until one night last spring when I found myself watching some dopey reality show on TV, and thinking: after a sixplus year hiatus, it's time to bring back the book club. Recently the reincarnated club congregated at our house. Two couples from the old club and two new couples. As new beginnings go, it was inauspicious. If we were superstitious, we might have folded the club on that first night. You see, before we could uncork a wine bottle to toast the club's future -- hell, before the last of the couples had even arrived -- one couple was sent sprinting out the door. Carrying their young daughter, who was crying madly and clutching her toes. Toes that were, well, oddly askew. We never really did get the full story. But our 13-year-old daughter, babysitting for the very first time -- talk about an inauspicious debut -- said the young lass had been solidly struck with a drumstick wielded by her young brother, resulting in a toe being separated and broken. As the couple raced to the local emergency ward (for a five-hour wait), the remaining bookies (a little solemnly, I must admit) uncorked the new club. By the time we got around to picking our first book, we were giddy, goofy and game for pretty much anything. After a long battle to decide which of the books we had put forward would be selected, someone suggested the obvious: Let the dog decide. So, we put the books in a line, placed treats atop their glossy covers, and waited to see which book our discerning Zoey would run to first. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. Hey, the hound has a nose for literature. Book club is back. Andy Juniper can be visited at his Web site, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com.