Tom Young

It didn’t happen this way, but suppose Irving Oil had decided to move their world headquarters out of Saint John.  Irving can only locate a certain number of Irving gas stations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island and Quebec.  Their real growth potential is in the neighbour to our South.

Just for the sake of discussion, suppose that after examining all of their options the Saint John based company called a news conference to announce the decision has been made to move their world headquarters to into a brand new state of the art building on the waterfront in Portland, Maine.

There would have been hue-and-cry from people in Saint John like you have never heard before.

Many would ask, “Why are you moving all of these high paying jobs out of our city?”  Others would ask, “Has much is the price of my house going to go down with all of the homes for sale?”  Others would want to know how many local people are going to lose their jobs and on, and on, and on it would go…

It would be devastating to the economy of this city for it to happen that way and thank goodness in reality it didn’t.

Irving had cut a deal with the local port corporation to locate it’s brand new multi-million dollar world headquarters on a primarily unused piece of land on the Saint John waterfront.  Nothing but good news for everybody in the Saint John area.  Everybody that is except the nay-sayers.

The imagined hue-and-cry of moving out of town was surpassed only by the hue-and-cry of them staying.

It’s hard to imagine some of the things that have been said by some local people who at the very least like to refer to themselves as being reasonably intelligent.  The jobs would remain in the city, in fact more jobs could well be created.  Maybe hundreds of men and women could find work in building this new headquarters and all the other projects which would go with it.  But for some, it simply isn’t good enough. 

Aren’t we lucky these people weren’t around when the first steam ship pulled into the port of Saint John many, many years ago.  If they were — even today — we’d be waiting for the next sailing ship to bring in it’s small load of cargo and have it delivered by ox-cart, the same which dominated the waterfront in the sailing years.

There are many reasons the city of Saint John trails other cities in development and most of the reasons are some of the people who live here.

If you’re opposed to the relocation of the Irving headquarters to their desired site, there’s only one thing I can say…

…Shake your head if you can stand the noise.

I’m Tom Young.

A few short years ago, the city of Saint John and the province of New Brunswick collaborated on the total reconstruction of Rothesay Avenue in the city. 

For those of you who don’t know, Rothesay Ave is a four lane road, and other than the thru-way, is perhaps the main link between the city centre and the uptown.  It could best be described as “the auto mile,” because most car dealers in the city are located on this stretch of road.

The road was in terrible shape and many folks claim it was because it was never built right in the first place.  So, for weeks on end, what looked like at the time, “open pit mining” was carried on.  Traffic was reduced and often stopped, businesses were inconvenienced and in general — the entire thing was a pain in the ass.  But, we were told at the time, that this rebuilding of the road is absolutely necessary and when it’s done “you’ll be able to drive on it forever…”

I’ve checked every dictionary I can find and no where does it say that forever means five years or less.  Because you can’t imagine what they’re doing to Rothesay Avenue –  they’re rebuilding it!  In some areas, traffic is down to two lanes, one in each direction and being stopped by the movement of heavy equipment is not unknown.

I have to ask the question, if the last rebuilding of Rothesay Avenue was to last forever will this one last forever and a day?  Or, is this another of those great plans that five years from now will be rebuilt again?

I’m Tom Young. 

Over the past 20 years as I’ve aged and my bones and joints have deteriorated.
 
I’ve had a number of surgeries and I’ve recently discovered something about them –  the doctors have been doing it wrong.

As I face minor dental surgery, I’ve opted to have it done under full anaesthetic. The simple reason — I’m a coward!

I have a very low pain tolerance and crying in the dentist chair to me is NOT an option. So, they’ll put me to sleep.

My dentist, (who by the way is a great dentist) will do the deal — then I’ll wake up and my son will take me home where I can spend hours feeling sorry for myself.

Now here’s what’s changed — Today, as I was undergoing what’s called “the pre-op consultation,” the anaesthesiologist pointed to my goatee which been there for the better part of 10 years and said, “That’s got to go…”  And then, much to my amazement, he pointed to my moustache, which has been there for nearly forty years and said “That’s gotta go too…”

I have been put to sleep on a number of previous occasions and the goatee and moustache always survived. 

I said, “If you don’t mind me asking, please tell me why?”

The doctor replied, “We have recently discovered that facial hair can interfere with the oxygen mask which we will place over your face,” and in fact he said, “If you don’t shave them off, we may not do the surgery.”

So, my two options are, 1) leave the goatee and moustache as they are and tough it out in the dentists chair.  Or, 2) shave them off, go to sleep and do it the way I really want to.

No choice here, the moustache and the goatee are going to go.

One blessing even at my age as my hair has moved from dark brown to light brown to grey and in some cases white, it still grows — very quickly. 

So, I shouldn’t have to wait too long to again look like I do right now, a guy with a perfect face for radio.

I’m Tom Young.

How come we can send a man to the moon and bring him back safely, we can build a space craft which can land on the surface of the planet Mars, internet on our computer that gives us information in seconds and yet I can’t get clean drinking water in my house?

A number of years ago, the Mayor and Council of the day in the Village of Renforth, (now Rothesay, NB) signed an agreement with the City of Saint John for the city to provide clean drinking water to a segment of our community.  To this day, I can’t tell you what we pay each year, but I can tell you that I’m waiting for my latest refund.  I think the initial agreement called for the city to provide this drinking water 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Over the past little while there have been three substantial interruptions in that 24/7 agreement.

The ugly sign is up on the side of the road entering into my subdivision saying “Boil Water Order in Effect, Call town office at etc, etc…”  The latest interruption began earlier this week and is expected to last until at least Friday at the earliest.

The rub in this whole thing is that you don’t mind paying for the water, (if it is drinkable) but since it isn’t — I would hope the accounts payable department at Saint John City Hall has discovered the names and addresses of those living outside the city who have been let down, and the cheque will soon be in the mail.

You often hear people boasting that Canada has the largest supply of fresh water in the world, and I’m sure that’s true.  I’d just like to see the city discover some way of getting this water from their reservoir into our homes.

As many as 50-thousand people may be effected by this latest boil order. 

Please, if you’re not going to live up to your agreement, a small refund would be greatly appreciated.

I’m Tom Young.

It was a pretty big deal, an expansion worth nearly 13-million dollars to Samuel de Champlain, a school community centre which services the needs of the French speaking members of the Saint John area.  All of the correspondence to our news room, (and we assume other news rooms in our city) came to us in English.

It somehow made sense to us that we send one of our reporters to cover the opening to hear from among others, Premier Shawn Graham and a representative speaking on behalf of the honourable Josee Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Let me explain for just a moment — Our news department at News 88.9 is staffed by very competent news people who speak and understand English.  That makes some sense, since we are an English language radio station in a listening area where more than 90 per cent of listeners use English as a their first language.

The process is, the reporter goes to the gathering, makes notes on what he or she thinks are the important parts of the speeches, comes back to the radio station, writes a number of stories and incorporates what we call “clips” of the voices involved in the announcement.  There was however, a problem.

Whoever was in charge and for whatever reason, decided the entire proceedings should be done in French only.

Not much good for us and not much good for the other English language stations in the city, prompting one reporter to simply walk out.  We think it was a great story to tell, but we couldn’t tell it very well.  There was precious little need for us to write our stories in English and incorporate the voices of those making the announcement, all done in French.

At the very least, a dual translation should have been offered so the story could be told to everybody in our area in the manner in which the story deserved.

I can only imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and opening had been in Tracadie — where far and away the mother tongue is French and all the festivities had been conducted in English — there would be a great human cry.

In plain terms, whoever decided to do it this way on Friday in Saint John, blew it.

I’m Tom Young.

Constable Don Ranni of the Halifax Regional Police must think of himself as being the luckiest police officer in Canada over the past seven days.  Back in November 2007, in the early morning, an off duty Ranni took a breathalyzer which produced readings of 0.15 and 0.14, well above the legal limit 0.08. He pleaded guilty earlier this year to driving above the legal alcohol limit and was sentenced last Thursday.

It was a “conditional sentence,” which means if he follows the terms and conditions, his conviction will eventually be discharged and he’ll have no criminal record.  The judge in this case has ordered him to take part in substance abuse treatment and counselling as directed by his probation officer while making his best effort to not consume alcohol.

This entire episode causes me to wonder how many average Canadians under the same set of circumstances would have had the same sentence imposed upon them. Oh, and did I mention that Ranni can’t drive for a year?

It occurs to me that police officers who come in contact on an almost daily basis with the death and destruction caused by drunk drivers must be held to a higher standard and not to this kind of sentence.

On an average day in Canada, four people are killed and 187 others are injured by drivers who have consumed too much booze.

On Monday’s show,  not one caller agreed with the disposition of the courts and all of them called for a tougher sentence.  Some callers stated that they too have had a previous impaired driving conviction and not one of them got the same treatment out of the courts as constable Ranni did.

This entire episode is an outrage.

I’m Tom Young.

If it’s at all possible to become friends with a washing machine, the Youngs’ — Tom and Diana — this past weekend, finally say goodbye to an old friend.

I’m quite sure neither one of us will be around to find out whether or not they still build em’ like they used to.  If your television viewing goes back ten years or more, then you likely remember the late Gordon Jump.  After his role as Mr. Carlson on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” Jump went on to become “The loneliest man in town,” playing the role of the Maytag repair man who never got called — because the Maytag washing machine simply never broke down.

The Youngs’ can attest to this claim.  More than 40 years ago, shortly after we married, we purchased a Maytag washing machine.  This past weekend, we said goodbye to our 40 year old friend.  The machine still worked fine, but redoing our basement and installing new carpeting seemed like a perfect time to be out with the old and in with the new.  The machine was so old that all of the numbers and letters had been worn off of it’s rotary dial and replaced with magic marker to show where the washing cycle began and where it ended.

We’ve concluded that machine did somewhere around 18-thousand washings while in our home.  Our first daughter, Meaghan, was one of those who used the cloth diapers so Mom had to make sure they were washed everyday.  The other children in the house graduated from disposable diapers, but even then — one or two loads of washing per day were not uncommon. 

Thousands of pounds of detergent, hundreds of gallons liquid and fabric softener and hundreds of thousands of litres of water have all combined to provide the Young family with 40 years of clean clothes.  I haven’t had a chance to use the new machine, but one thing I do know — it’s got more dials than the old one.  How well it works — will only be answered by the passage of time.

Replacing the machine didn’t exactly bring a tear to my eye, since white always looked better than green anyway.  By the way, three dryers came and went before our parting of the ways.

I’m Tom Young.

Many people have called or emailed myself or our producer Tyler McLean for more info on some of the things we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks.  For the benefit of those looking for the right information for some of our recent guests and topics, here it is again…

We’ve had many requests for more info on how to obtain Dr. Anthony Martin’s book “Medical Crisis: Secrets your doctor won’t share with you”  You can find that info by going to www.drmartin.ca

Roger Hainault, from Help 4 Taxes and Tax Help in New Brunswick appeared on The Afternoon News for over the tax season answering your calls on anything tax related up to this year’s deadline.  If you’re still unsure that you may not be getting everything back to which you’re entitled you can find out how to get help by calling 1-888-450-1212 or by emailing help@help4taxes.ca

On Friday we spoke to Jonathan Howard who’s running roughly 40-to-50 km per day to raise awareness and money for autism research.  We spoke with him while running from New Glasgow to Truro, NS.  He expects to reach Victoria, B.C. ideally by the end of the year.  If you’d like to follow his progress, you can do so by going to www.runthedream.ca  Links are also provided to donate if you’re interested.

And finally, we took time on Friday’s show to listen to the story of Lucy Proulx, who lives in San Jose, CA and wants nothing more than to be recognized as a Canadian before she dies of terminal cancer.  She’s written a letter to the Hon. Diane Finley, Canada’s Minister for Citizenship and Immigration to be covered under recently approved bill C-37 which still does not recognize her or her husband as Canadian citizens.  I feel she should get her Canadian citizenship.  If you’d like to help Lucy with her dying wish to become a Canadian citizen, you can write an email on her behalf and your concerns will be forwarded to Ottawa. The email address to use for a letter of support:  dcinbc@hotmail.com

No show on Monday due to the long weekend, but we’ll be back with The Afternoon News on Tuesday right after the news at noon!

Have a great long weekend, I’m Tom Young.

There are lessons to be learned from the latest municipal election in Saint John, particularly by some of the losers.

Perhaps the largest lesson needs to be learned by those who operate the daily newspaper.  I have no idea how often they conduct “focus groups” or even if they do.  It would be interesting to know who gets invited to them and what questions are asked of the participants.

My advice to the powers that be, would be for the newspaper to return to what newspapers do best — report the news.

For years, the quality of the local paper could at best be described as less than ideal.  Less than five years ago, the owners, (the Irvings) turned the paper over to a fourth generation member of the family.  He was a bright, well educated, very keen, energetic newspaper man and in the beginning made lots of the right moves.  He had the local paper reporting the news.  However, over the last few months, the paper appears to have lost it’s way.  Instead of reporting the news, a decision appears to have been made that the paper would “make the news” and then “be the news.”

For some reason, it established itself as a city hall watch dog and has been prepared, fair or foul, to take on both elected civic officials and the city employees who operate in various city departments.  There has been no secret that both the paper, along with an unknown number of people, have been grooming the city’s deputy mayor for a move into the mayor’s chair.  In their eyes, she has done nothing wrong and virtually no one else at city hall has done anything right.

For the first time that I can ever remember, (and I’ve lived here for about 35 years)  the paper endorsed a full slate of candidates.  It is interesting to note how many of them will occupy council seats under new mayor Ivan Court when he takes over.  For the betterment of this city, one can only hope that the mayor-elect and the hatchet men at the Telegraph Journal can somehow develop a “let’s get along” relationship.

There are so many good things on the horizon and the paper can be an integral part of allowing the good things to happen — if that’s the root they choose to take.  If not, the paper will join the long growing list of papers from both Canada and the United States who complain about both declining readership and advertising revenue.

Hopefully the course that was charted a few short years ago can somehow take over once again.

I’m Tom Young.

You don’t have to look very far to read see and hear all the nasty things going on in the world.  Listen to the radio, watch the television news or pick up your local paper — it’s just story, after story, after story about man’s inhumanity to man.

Suddenly, there’s a small incident that tells you every once in awhile, everything is right with the world.

This story comes from a softball game, a women’s softball game in Portland, Oregon.

Sara Tucholsky plays for Western Oregon University.  In all of her years playing softball, she’s never hit a home run.

Two runners on base, a one-strike count when her bat hits the ball like it never has and it clears the centre field fence.  She obviously has not perfected “a home run trot” around the bases and she fails to touch first base.  So, she stops attempts to quickly go back to first — and blows out her knee.  She manages to crawl back to first base, but if she can’t negotiate the rest of the bases, she will be credited with having hit a single.

Her teammates, according to the rules can’t help her either.  So, what to do?

Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the league — and a player from the other team — asked the umpire if she and her teammates can help Sara around the bases.  The umpire says there’s no rule against it.  So Holtman and her teammate Liz Wallace put their arms under the injured players legs and with her arms over their shoulders the three set out around the bases — stopping at each base to allow the injured player to touch the bag with her good leg.

By the way, Sara’s three-run homer was enough to lead her team from Western Oregon University to victory.

Said one of those who carried her around the bases, “In the end it’s not about winning and losing so much as it is about this girl.  She hit it over the fence, she ended up in severe pain — and she deserved the home run.”

My faith is restored and suddenly everything is right with my world.

I’m Tom Young.