Dear editor:

How could Expedia and Lord Mayor Betty Disero get it so wrong? Reviewers on the travel website voted NOTL the third friendliest town in Canada. Pleased by the recognition, the lord mayor praised the locals as “some of the most kind, generous and community-minded individuals I’ve ever known.”

How could that be when, in the same issue of The Lake Report, we read that it is with trepidation and hesitation that Diana Westwood of Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, contemplates another vacation in NOTL.

In a letter to the editor, she referred to a pervasive and increasing scourge of unbearable, outrageous and deplorable bird cannons. They stun her, she said, make her heart skip and her ears ring, stop speech and thought, and repeatedly subject her to a state of panic/danger. 

“As visitors, surely we are entitled to expect a safe and peaceful time.” Instead the situation has become prohibitive, she wrote. 

One has to wonder, though, why Ms Westwood and her son would vacation year after year in a location that makes them miserable: “It’s difficult to say I had a lovely time.” If they still choose NOTL, short-term rental accommodations are widely available well out of earshot of bangers.

They also could substitute a winter vacation, although living beside a vineyard I would not recommend it. The bangers will be silent but she may not get a wink of sleep from the roar of the windmills. My wife, however, says the steady thrum helps her nod off, so therein may lie the solution.

Something must be done, lest the next Expedia survey declare NOTL “the town most hazardous to a visitor’s health.”

Don Cameron

NOTL