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www.insideHALTON.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, April 5, 2012 · 6 The Oakville Beaver 467 Speers Rd., Oakville Ont. L6K 3S4 (905) 845-3824 Fax: 337-5566 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. Guest Column QEPCCC a milestone for town akville's arts and cultural hub is now open. More than 6,500 Oakville residents enjoyed the recent grand opening celebrations, as we officially unlocked the doors to Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre (QEPCCC). QEPCCC is Oakville's first community and cultural centre. It is the town's largest community centre and the only one located Rob Burton south of the QEW. What an amazing space. QEPCCC is the end result of a lot of hard work, careful planning and incredible foresight by council. Special attention should be paid to the advisory and working groups, and the arts groups who will inhabit QEPCCC, as well as the greater arts community and everyone who consulted on this project to turn a promising vision into a compelling reality. I also want to pay tribute to our Town staff. Ray Green, Domenic Lunardo, Nina De Vaal, Shelly Switzer -- all have been incredibly committed to this project from the outset. They have each led teams of dedicated staff. Without them, QEPCCC would not have been possible. Premier Dalton McGuinty also deserves high praise for providing $7.4 million from the provincial surplus in 2007-08. Council and I are proud that Oakville has the financial strength to have been able to contribute the rest of the funding for QEPCCC. In 2010, Oakville voters gave me a second, strong mandate to continue the work council and I began in 2006 to control growth, catch up on our community facilities shortage, and get the costs of growth off of property taxes. We created new Official Plans at the Town and Region to replace the outdated plans that let developers control our growth. We increased development charges at the Town and Region to the legal limit, nearly doubling them. We cut Oakville's rate of growth by 33 per cent. During my time as mayor, your property tax increases have been lower. You're getting more for the money you're investing. In the last term of council, from 2006-10, the average annual total property tax levy increase was 5.1 per cent. In this term, we expect that this number will be 2.8 per cent or less. For the four years before becoming your mayor, from 2002-06, the average total tax levy increase was more than seven per cent annually. We are doing more with less and we're heading in the right direction. We added 800,000 square feet of facilities to the town's previous total of 1.1 million square feet; that's more than a 70 per cent increase. We increased fire-protection response time capabilities and created a modern, grid-style transit system to improve transit ridership and trip times. Perhaps most importantly, we have maintained and improved the services and programs residents value as essential. The opening of QEPCCC represents a great milestone for our town. On behalf of council, I invite you to explore the space and really make it your own. Thanks again to everyone who helped make QEPCCC possible. We couldn't have done it without you. Neil Oliver Vice-President and Group Publisher, Metroland West David harvey Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Editor in Chief Daniel Baird Advertising Director ANGELA BLACKBURN Managing Editor Riziero Vertolli Photography Director Sandy Pare Business Manager RECOGNIZED FOR EXCELLENCE BY: Ontario Community Newspapers Association MARK DILLS Director of Production Manuel garcia Production Manager CHARLENE HALL Director of Distribution Sarah McSweeney Circ. Manager Website oakvillebeaver.com The OakvilleBeaver is a division of O Rob Burton, Mayor of Oakville Canadian Community Newspapers Association Suburban Newspapers of America THE OAKVILLE BEAVER IS PROUD OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR FOR: United Way of Oakville ATHENA Award STEVEN DER-GARABEDIAN / SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER / @halton_photog All smiles: Sisters Kiara (left) and Marica O'Keeffe-Pinnock are all smiles during dinner at the Carib Spring Fest Dinner and Dance held last Saturday at the Knights of Columbus Banquet Hall. The event, a fundraiser for the Youth Scholarship Award, featured live music by Infra-Red, a silent auction as well as a buffet dinner. Contemplating the sources of creativity and inspiration 've been contemplating creativity a lot as of late. Where does it come from, and how is it inspired? You see, after four years of sitting on the sidelines, I'm back in the fiction game. I'm working on a manuscript that I'm hopeful will eventually turn into a novel, my fourth. For those who (gasp) do not have multiple copies of my August outpourings at their fingertips (shame on you), let me recap. I've written a novel about failing, floundering and, finally, growing up -- I've taken a Leacockian look at a small town and I authored an odd, quirky love story, told backwards. And then, the shallow man that I am, I ran out of novel ideas. Well-meaning friends kept steering me toward sports -- as part, I suppose, of the old, "write what you know" adage. And I know sports. Trouble is, as the curator of a sports-humor website, I get my fill of sports. The thought of dedicating myself to five-plus years of writing more sports was not appealing. Then, one day at a wedding -- under a hot summer sun, imbibing a cold glass of wine -- I had a fortuitous meeting with a man who knew my background and who imparted the following gem: "I don't like sports all that much. Personally, I find it more interesting to watch what happens to athletes after their careers are I over." And so the seed was planted. And that seed has thus far grown into a depiction of what happened to three young men who for one magical season formed a dynamic line (The Party Line) for a hockey team that bears untold resemblance to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Andy Juniper I'd like to say that I've been working on this idea ever since, but that might imply that I've been steadily writing ever since when, in fact, between wild writing surges there have been some long creative lulls wherein I spend considerable time examining my fingernails. Different things put different people in a creative mood. Different things inspire. Great works of art have sprung forth from personal pain (ah, the tortured artist who has lost his love). Conversely, great works have also been inspired by romantic love. Some people need chaos to create, others need calm. Of course, necessity is the mother of invention. Desperation can work, too (this is why newspaper people invented deadlines, otherwise Joe Reporter would be inclined to file his scintillating story on summer activities in late September). Further, when it comes to creativity some people swear by music (in the background, putting out the creative vibe), others (ill-advisedly) by alcohol, others by coffee, others by... the color green? Indeed, I recently read that green gooses creativity. Seriously. Researchers in Munich found that a mere glimpse of green activates "the type of pure, open (mental) processing required to do well on creativity tasks." I'm looking at lettuce even as I write. Eventually, of course, what creativity comes down to is BIC. That is, Bum In Chair. Because, you can look at lettuce, whack-back booze or coffee, toss yourself into the pit of despair (or fall madly in love), and you can create all the mood you can muster with your music collection, but until you put your backside in the chair, you're just another guy contemplating creativity. And, ah, not being very creative. Andy Juniper can be contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com, found on Facebook at www.facebook.com, or followed at www.twitter. com/thesportjesters.