Dear editor:
Niagara-on-the-Lake is my home. I have lived here my whole life. I’m 13 years old and I go to Royal Oak Community School right in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It is also the only grade school in the town. I want to tell you about what it’s like growing up here.
All through NOTL, you can see beautiful scenery. The town comes together to have flowers and other plants along the streets in the spring and summer. I bike to school past all of them.
Kids throughout town and kids outside the town join together to be part of community events.
In the fall, the kids come out for Remembrance Day and replace all the flags on the veterans’ graves. We can walk to the graveyard from our school. In the winter we walk to the Shaw theatre and see a play like “A Christmas Carol.” All these things make us care about the town.
It is important to have a school in the town where you live because it causes kids to get in touch with the town and learn how to be part of the community so that people who grow up here care about where they live. Making core memories helps a small town grow in strength and in heart.
This week my school went to a ribbon cutting ceremony at Simcoe Park because the town had just put in new park equipment.
When we got there, the mayor did his spiel and when he did, he asked the kids who were there if the park needed new equipment and they all said “No!” Showing that even the littlest of kids don’t want unnecessary change.
I hear that my town is supposed to be a “tourist town” and that’s okay but it’s still a town and a town needs a school to be a real town.
Niagara-on-the-Lake is special. It is much more than just a tourist town; it is home to tons of people and animals that deserve to live in a small, lively town where people can grow up.
If the town continues to tear down buildings for tourism and build parking lots in place of schools, it removes the scenery and voices of school kids entirely from its streets.
As someone who goes to a school here and loves going to school here, I believe we need to keep the school where it is and stop tearing things down just for money.
The town has to start caring about the people of NOTL and as one of them, I am asking: please don’t pave paradise to put up a parking lot.
Aspen Ziraldo
NOTL
