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www.oakvillebeaver.com · OAKVILLE BEAVER Thursday, November 19, 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 Regional 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 Don't pave green We are writing to express our concern over the recent decision by the Halton District School Board to offer up for sale White Oaks Secondary School (WOSS) green space. We greatly oppose the sale and are disappointed that the school board has gone against our concerns, and the concerns expressed by many others. This letter expresses our hope that the Town of Oakville purchases the land, so that its usage will not change. Currently the land is used for multiple sporting teams and events from the community, as well as our school. The loss of sporting fields will result in fewer sports teams and fewer citizens and students getting active and involved in the community; also resulting in a recession of the health of our students and community athletes. White Oaks is 1,800 students-strong and this space is vital for social and extracurricular activities. Regardless of their use, the fields are a delicate environmental ecosystem and Halton's massive urban growth plan has disturbed this balance. The last thing we need is more pavement. To pave over a living, breathing, participating part of the community is irresponsible. Originally our school had a swimming pool to use at its leisure, but it was eventually leased to the town. The pool and the school continue to have a healthy relationship. We also have a great relationship with the Town in our shared library space. We desperately hope that the fate of the fields could result in a mutually-beneficial outcome. This would be a wonderful relationship for both parties and provide a good outcome for the community. These fields are less about the school's usage, but the community's use. Oakville Soccer Club uses the fields every weekend. The fields are busy and in high demand for various sporting clubs and community events, due to their proximity to the surrounding urban area. If the land does fall into developer's hands, trails surrounding the area, heavily used by residents for leisure and transportation, may cease to exist as well. These fields should remain a desperately needed and protected green space in the area of Oakville, a sporting facility on which residents can exercise and socialize together. More importantly, the fields would remain an environmental haven in the ever-expanding region of Halton. CHRIS GISMONDI, ON BEHALF OF WHITE OAKS SECONDARY SCHOOL, AWARENESS AND ACTIVISM ASSOCIATION 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 NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER WORKING FOR A CAUSE: Employees from Forest City Fire,Apex Fabrication and Hertz Equipment Rental install fire sprinklers in the new LCBO at Cornwall and Trafalgar roads on a recent Saturday. The cost was donated to Kids Alive and the Princess Margaret Cancer Research Investment Fund. Oakville resident and Forest City's Mississauga's Operations Manager John Aqui first organized the event last year in memory of his mother who died in January 2008 of inflammatory breast cancer. This year, $7,500 was raised. Pictured are, front row, from left: Clemente Branco, Mark Dymond, Aqui, Josh Barreira, Zack Aqui and Robert McGuire. In back, from left, Stefano DelBrocco, Dan Oshell, Peter Feledyn, Tyler Deslauriers, Kevin O'Neill, Kory Fitzgerald, and Matthew Stadtlander. For most university students a clean apartment is alien T here's no other possible explanation. Our son has been abducted by aliens. How else to explain Scott's odd and uncharacteristic behaviour over the past two-and-ahalf months? At the end of August, we moved him into an apartment in Toronto to begin his first year at Ryerson University. My wife and I were filled with the usual trepidation parents experience when sending offspring to university, plus some added fears based on our son's history of, well, Scott being Scott. And being Junipers, we naturally feared for the worst. For starters, we feared for our fiscal investment. To understate, Scott has a checkered academic past, a long history of truancy, extraordinary underachieving, untapped potential and, frequently, of simply not giving a rat's behind about anything beyond his punk band (shameless plug alert) Beat Noir. Further, we feared for his well-being. Given that he never cleaned his room in the first 19 years of his life, we envisioned him living in unkempt quarters (actually, in our visions it was more like Dickensian squalour, squatting amid filth and garbage and rats the size of raccoons). Finally, and I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but we feared for his life, or at very least, his health: this was a kid who, when left to his own devices, would exist for days on end on the ill-advised All-Oreo Diet. How would he possibly survive on his own? As fully expected, over the course of the first few weeks, we heard from him often: homesick e-mails, teary Andy Juniper telephone calls saying how much he missed us -- cries for help and pleas for pity. Okay, I'm lying. He never e-mailed and he called but twice: both times with questions about, ah, laundry. That's right, aliens, laundry. I once read about a kid who wore the jersey of his favorite football team every day for two years and I remember thinking, that's nothing: when Scott heads off to university he'll wear the same unwashed outfit for the full four years. But there he was on the telephone, inquiring about whites and darks, water settings and the best way to go about not shrinking his shirts. I know what you're thinking: a few calls from a university kid getting the lowdown on laundry does not equal an alien abduction. Ah, but there's more. Honestly, how else to explain his response, uttered during three separate phone calls, to the question: Hey, what are you up to? "Just cleaning the apartment." Which, in our minds, screamed Alien Abduction (or, worse, Body Snatching by Martha Stewart). Need more proof? How about the late-night frantic phone call, not begging us to come and rescue him from the hell that had become his life, but, rather, seeking advice on how to best cook ribs: "Yeah, I've got some friends over and we're cooking a meal." For those not paying proper attention, I repeat: cooking a meal. For my wife and I, the final straw came last Friday at 5:30 in the afternoon when I called our son to see what he was up to for the weekend. He answered his cell phone in a low whisper, saying he couldn't really speak. Apparently he was... in the library. Working on an essay. Did I mention it was Friday? At 5:30 p.m.? Okay, aliens, you can't keep him. He's our son. But you can certainly borrow him for the next four years. Andy Juniper can be visited at his website, www.strangledeggs.com, or contacted at ajjuniper@gmail.com.