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Niagara Falls
Thursday, February 6, 2025
The Turner Report: Organizing the unhappy flock in NOTL
Former councillor Stuart McCormack is forging one resident group to rule them all, connecting existing groups together to have a shared voice on issues affecting NOTL. File

How do you wrestle an opinion out of someone?

Simple. Insult them. Or at least try. Eben knows that.

“Why so sheepish man?” he asked after reading last week’s pathetic posting (mostly about the toxicity of short-term rentals).

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to use the space and ink to make the case for your position? Or maybe you don’t really have a position, or the insight that someone might use to decide to take one up, and you are really good at filling up space and spilling ink? I’m so confused! Please enlighten me.”

Well, Eben, my experience has proven politicians are influenced more by facts and consensus opinion than by beating them to a pulp. Or savaging them as they walk into a meeting. It’s all about human nature. Besides, sheep are survivors. Rams end up in the freezer.

This brings us to Stuart McCormack, who may stealthily topple NOTL’s current pro-build-anything leadership.

“My kids say I sound too much like a lawyer,” the retired lawyer said when we met. The kids are right. But the former councillor — who quit in a fog of mystery during COVID — has surfaced five years later to sow the seeds of bloodless revolution.

You may have heard that local leaders just approved more hiring. So the tax increase this year ticks up a little more. It’s 9 per cent now. Add in last year’ almost-7 per cent and property taxes are running four times inflation.

That makes folks unhappy. It seems irresponsible.

Meanwhile, the former Parliament Oak school is now a snowy hole in the ground. Later it will be a significant hotel in the middle of a residential ‘hood.

At the same time another honking big new hotel is rising out by the drugstore, along with more than 40 vacation rentals jammed by the medical clinic. “We have no idea where anyone is going to park,” the LifeLabs ladies were saying this week. “Who approved this?”

More unhappiness.

The iconic Queen Street heritage property developer Rainer Hummel owns is going to be carved up now. After 203 years.

Condos will soon shadow houses on Mary Street. And one in every three — maybe two — houses in the Old Town is a short-term rental. Many unhosted. So, real estate is commercialized, long-term rentals disappear, prices rise, families fade away. Like the school. The hospital. Now the seniors place, which the Shaw is taking over.

This makes people unhappy, too. Toronto tossed rampant Airbnb exposure. So did Vancouver and Kelowna and Burlington. Most places, in fact. What was once a neat idea (rent out your spare room) has financialized homes — especially in a wee place that sees three million tourists a year.

Well, you get it. So does McCormack. He’s the guy behind a new residents association, trying hard, quietly, to thread together existing groups and folks in Virgil, St. Davids, Garrison Village, the Old Town and Chautauqua.

They’ve had meetings, adopted a mission statement and hope more bodies show up in a few days at the community centre. Then an open public forum.

It’s a movement in the making. The town, he says, “needs to make decisions that are appropriate,” especially regarding planning, budgets and transparency. “There is a high level of discontent,” he says. “That’s obvious. Witness the protest at town hall.”

He attended. But he’s a lawyer. “I did not swear. I did not raise my voice. I did not assault or behave in any untoward manner.”

“I call this death by a thousand cuts,” says the former politician. “You put up a hotel here and put up one there. You tear this building down. And suddenly you’re not living in Niagara-on-the-Lake any more.”

Next?

Mobilization. Organization. A slate of candidates. Then revolution.

All now hidden in sheep’s clothing.

Garth Turner is a NOTL resident, journalist, author, wealth manager and former federal MP and minister. garth@garth.ca

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