Did We forget to wish you all a Happy New Year? So here we the Sudbury five pictured gathered on Arthur Peach’s driveway drinking what were rapidly becoming champagne slushies in the relatively warm -18 degree New Year’s Day afternoon in our totally covid compliant New Year’s Levee. You can see us all pictured here (Left to right Hazel, Keith, Arthur, Hazel’s fancy man Evan and me, Patrick) giving our customary New Years salute to Jessie Timmons and all his / her axis of evil KED lackeys. We also want to welcome sudbury.com cub reporter Tyler Clarke to Sudbury from Brandon, Manitoba and remind the council and Mayor Biggar (bigger salary, bigger mistakes, bigger ego than ever before) that it’s election year. We can’t effing wait!
Hazel, Keith and Arthur and Patrick all want to send our wishes to everyone who has come together to support the Petition this year. The presentation to council in December was duly accomplished without a whimper proving Arthur Peach’s point that the council could not care less. They didn’t even read it out loud - a courtesy that was however extended to another petition about something much less important, trivial even, so trivial we can’t remember what it was about prompting some people to say “so we endure in a sacked city - for what?”
Well Council may offer little comment in their infuriating, disrespectful way but the Petition is proof of opposition to their looney scheme to move the arena to the dump while bankrupting the city.
Seriously, who do these jokers think they are? They are public servants, not our masters. Let’s vow to kick the bulk of them (acknowledging that there are a few gems among them shining even here in this ultra low grade ore deposit) out of council this year and introduce a progressive group of lawmakers who care about this city, its urban future, the climate catastrophe unfolding around us and our treatment of the poor and desperate people dying of drugs and disease huddling for warmth on the bitterly cold night streets of our city. Our ability to ameliorate their fate should be our measure of our civic pride not some absurd hockey rink in the middle of nowhere. We can do better people!!! And we can still have a new and renovated rink right in the heart of our city where it has always been for less money than it will take to service Dario’s ego.
I also wanted to take the opportunity to share with you a poem I wrote in honour of Hazel Ecclestone’s January birthday. She is a boss woman, a fantastic mother to five kids, a dynamic entrepreneur whose businesses have helped raise Sudbury out of the muck of suburban irrelevance and you don’t want to get in her way!!! We love you, our very own Hurricane Hazel of Sudbury!!!!
Sudbury from the Ashes (an homage to “Slough” by John Betjeman)
by Patrick Crowe
Come friendly space junk now and fall.
We're ready for the wrecking ball.
Our town is just a shopping mall
of opioids and meth.
Ast'roid blow to smithereens
those big box, drive-through obscene scenes.
Fast food, fast cars, fast lives, fast dreams,
fast forward death.
Oh meteor from outer space,
please smack us squarely in the face.
This KED is just a sad disgrace
A foolish huckster’s scam/
So council meets to view the books
with secret deals, and furtive looks
cause some of them are surely crooks.
Wham bam thank you ma'am!
Knock the selfish bastards off their feet!
Kind comet smash all this concrete!
But spare the homeless on the street
who we don’t help a bit.
A governmental appointee.
implodes the university,
and still no public inquiry.
Nobody gives a shit.
The weather is in disarray.
Lakes melts in April not in May
but still we want to drive away
in our SUVs
They regreened the rocks one thousand years
ahead of time though racketeers
with lame careers give us the gears
now but there used to be no trees.
Get those fat men with double chin.
who never lose and always win!
Now the hospital’s thrown in.
They have no sense of guilt.
And so we drive around and jump
in praise of gambling in the dump.
Better were we a molten lump
that could be rebuilt.
Patrick Crowe is a Sudbury author and two time Emmy Award winning producer and documentary filmmaker perhaps best known for his semi autobiographical musical documentary about growing up gay in Sudbury, The pINCO Triangle. He’s also a professional, pompous pain-in-the-ass and one of the organizers of the www.change.org/stoptheKED petition which he encourages you to sign if you haven’t already.