Let's see - we're five days into 2010 and I don't feel much different than I did on December 31st 2009. I'm still very sad. And a whole lot frustrated.
Windsor is still in a major Depression. Double-digit numbers of people all ages are still unemployed. The Provincial government is still ignoring what Windsorites want and need with regards to the new border crossing. It isn't much - tunnels for those millions of trucks barreling down our streets to get to the crossing.
Why do we want them underground? So we stop dying from the diseases that come with that pollution those trucks produce.
We have excessively high incidents of cancers -all kinds, lung diseases, heart diseases, MS, ADHD. Liver disease is huge here...of course it is. The liver is part of our auto-immune system. And everyone has the famous Windsor nose. You know the one - it's 'stuffy' all of the time, it can't smell anymore, and it causes your tastebuds to be somewhat ineffectual.I used to average out the ages of men and women dying in this region but it got too depressing. At one point the average age of death in Windsor last year for men was 68 years. Women- 70. Needless to say that's way below the national average.
Is our health care good enough to handle all of this extra illness? No.
I was just told yesterday about a woman who felt a lump in her throat a year ago. Doctors thought it was a malignant tumour. They couldn't get her booked for that emergency surgery for at least six months. She went back to her homeland and had it done in two days. The cost of the surgery was less than her flight home. I know hundreds of such cases. Malignant melanomas of the face having to wait four or five months before they can see a specialist, let alone having the darn thing removed. A man had to wait six months for testing of his head when he developed headaches. He died of the brain tumour they found during his autopsy. He never did get those tests. The health care we have is certainly not the health care that was envisioned by the people so many years ago.
McGuinty and his lot refused to look at the plans Windsor had for the border crossing. There was another 1.3 km. of tunnel. Not much really. Just enough where it would have lowered pollution to a level where we could survive. To add insult to injury, McGuinty's planners have the truckway to the crossing rising high over the west end, over our only natural habitat. Now we'll not only have increased air pollution, we'll have dramatically increased NOISE pollution. Yeah, way to go Liberals. We now know the worth of a human being and it's not very much, less than five hundred thousand a person. And they wonder why Windsorites have low self-esteem!
So, I have spent these five days of 2010 looking around for anything positive and you know what? There's a lot. It's in the spirits of the people of this region.
Goodfellows gave out a record 24,000 turkeys this year, so kids could have a good Christmas dinner. Just two days ago a man and his buddie raced their boats into the freezing water to save four deer that were stranded on an ice flow. They nearly drowned themselves as they worked. It took a while but three out of the four were saved. Those guys are heroes.
Children in local schools collected thousands of cans of food for foodbanks.
When a single parent's house burned down and she and her kids had lost everything, Windsorites came through and replaced it all in less than 72 hours.
One Windsor girl has taken it upon herself to work in an orphanage in Tanzania to save 34 children there. Amazing.
When a dead soldier was brought home to be buried, there were more people lining the streets for his funeral procession than there were for the Santa Clause parade.
With spirit like that, how can anyone turn their backs on Windsor? I can't.
And in the time it took me to write this, my dog Max has been at our fence visiting with his new friend - a lone female coyote. Their tails are wagging. How can one be sad when that happens? Not me.
Happy New Year everybody.