In the past two months, Gordon Sinclair Jr. of the Free Press has written 13 columns about Upper Fort Garry, including FIVE in the past week alone. At what point does the Freep start charging the Friends of Upper Fort Garry for all this free advertising?
Today’s piece is about Premier Doer’s suggestion that the Fort site be turned into a provincial park. I don’t really appreciate the significance of this designation, other than possibly qualifying the site for ongoing operational funding from the province. At any rate, it shouldn’t make much difference to the looming Mar. 31 deadline for the Friends to raise $10 million and purchase the Grain Exchange Curling Club, so I’m not sure what Sinclair is droning on about.
At this point, I’m ready to write the Friends off altogether. Their stubborn insistence on building an unnecessary interpretive centre — a place that would be largely empty except for occasional visits from reluctant school children — is completely baffling to me. I’m tired of their plan, their ads, their misplaced moral indignation and all their deceptive spin. With all due respect to the “leaders” of our community: keep your money and piss off.
There’s already $3 million on the table from the Feds and Province. The City should chip in $1.5 million from what it’s making on the sale of the adjacent parking lot, and the three levels of government can build a nice outdoor space commemorating the old fort site. Maybe something like the plan that Heritage Winnipeg originally proposed for the site back in 2003. That plan — which the Friends of Upper Fort Garry are apparently using as a model — was costed out at $2.6 million at the time, and doesn’t include an interpretive centre.
You might expect alternate solutions like this to come from other local politicians with an interest in this issue. But instead, we get these two:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, they’re all synonyms for “bozos”.
Related:
- The Rise and Sprawl – This is too easy (love the last line of this post)
- Hacks & Wonks – Just Wondering
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: friends of upper fort garry, gordon sinclair jr, upper fort garry
I don’t trust Doer. I think he’s going to stick his hand into our pockets and come up with the rest of the cash at the 11th hour, using this provincial park thing as justification.