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2 - Orono Weekly Times 1937 - 2012 · Celebrating 75 Year Subscriptions $42.86 + $2.14 GST = $45.00 per year. No Refunds. Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund for our publishing activities." Wednesday, October 3, 2012 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 www.oronoweeklytimes.com Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Roxanne Johnston Classified/Sports - Christopher W. Brown The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. Lifeblood of the community With the Thanksgiving Day holiday just around the corner now is as good a time as any to take stock of all the good things going on. School kids often do this exercise around the holiday, but us older folks sometimes need to be make a conscious effort to look at the things going on around us for which we are thankful. In his address to the Clarington Board of Trade on Thursday evening Mayor Adrian Foster listed a number of the good things that have been happening in Clarington. He mentioned the free publicity the municipality received from the big daily papers in late August when volunteers were manually lifting spawning salmon over the Goodyear Dam in the Bowmanville Creek, in advance of the completion of the fish ladder. The municipality also received wide spread press coverage as the host community of the Boots and Hearts the biggest county music concert in Canada. The municipality, and Bowmanville specifically, was chosen as the setting for the second season of the Oprah Winfrey Network's Million Dollar Neighbourhood, a reality TV show where 100 families try and increase their net worth by $1 million in ten weeks. We will have to wait and see when the show airs, if Bowmanville is in fact portrayed in a positive light or not. Early publicity for the show described Bowmanville as a bedroom community; a label the municipal administration has tried desperately to distance the community from over the years. The mayor neglected to mention the attention the Village of Orono received from the big city media last week over the dog hanging incident. The story of the Orono family who returned home from work one day two weeks ago to find their miniature schnauzer named Heidi hanging from a chain in their backyard, made front page news in the big city press. When listing the good things happening in Clarington, one would be remiss if they did not mention the community events taking place right across this municipality almost every weekend. Since the beginning of September we have had the four day Orono Fair, which up until this year was the biggest event in the Region, (Boots and Hearts is bigger). On September 23rd a Heritage Harvest, the first ever public community event in Courtice at the former site of Tooley's Mill Park on the same day as Orono's Chili Cook-off. Last weekend Culture Days was this weekend, Newcastle will be holding their Fall Festival which includes a full day of activities centered on that village's downtown core, and the following weekend Bowmanville will host their very popular Apple Festival. While we all love to get out and attend these functions, not one of these events gets pulled off without a huge amount of volunteer activity. By the time we get out and enjoy these community events the hard work and the many, many months of planning to get the events off the ground is done. The volunteer hours that go into planning the community events and functions held throughout the year in vibrant communities is countless. We don't see the amount of volunteer time and effort that goes into organizing these events, because when they run smoothly, it looks to easy to pull off. You don't see all they behind-thescenes organization that went into the event when they are well run. For every one of the 60,000 Canadians who received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee medal this year, there are untold thousands more who toil in the trenches, behind the scenes doing the grunt work, not being recognized for the valuable contributions they make. When all the fall events are behind us we are right into the Christmas Season with an entirely new slate of community events taking place. With volunteerism on the decline everywhere, we are thankful there are still people willing and able to put on the events all enjoy and make our communities great places to live. `Big Bad Terrorist' Think about it To The Editor: Re: Orono Crown Lands I couldn't agree more with Tracy Tonkinson's editorial in last week's paper. Earlier this summer while reading a glossy solicitation for donations from a mainstream charity, a light bulb went on in my head. Why am I donating to these large charities while only giving a token amount to local causes? Many large charities spend half of my donation on administration and promotion aimed at getting me to give more! I have no idea how effectively the rest of the money is used. Contrast that to giving your charity donations to local groups that are run by committed volunteers, have little or no overhead and spend all the money locally to make our communities better places to live. A no brainer when you stop to think about it. THINK ABOUT IT! John Windatt Starkville Walking the dog To The Editor: Orono's character has been sullied as a result of the unfortunate dog issue. I feel we have a "great town", one we should be very proud of and one we should continue to celebrate. This picture depicts the "safe, family, down home" atmosphere we have have come to know and love about Orono. Pictured are Orono residents Corbin and Wiser Harting. Sincerely, Randy Huebert Ochonski Rd, Orono