Kingston waterfront news: May 2009

THE SNOWBIRDS PATROLLED SAFETY ZONE in Kingston Harbour is unchanged this year.

This year's 45-minute show goes-off on Wednesday May 27th at exactly 6 p.m.

Here's the Snowbirds' website

ON ICE: ALEXANDER HENRY AT FIFTY is a new Marine Museum exhibit which opens tomorrow, Sunday May 24th, at 2 pm.

Guest speaker Captain Patrick Toomey, one of Canada's top marine ice experts, will speak about the Alexander Henry, the Canadian Coast Guard and the challenges of navigating in ice.

FINALLY the Whig publishes something about the pain surrounding the Belle Harbour / Morch Marine receivership in Belleville.

If the article is to be believed, apparently BDO Dunwoody has a harbour's worth of boat owners pissed-off at them, and now you know all about it too.

AFTER A FEW DAYS AWAY sailing on Lake Erie including a transit through a sadly delapidated and disfunctional Welland Canal, some catching-up:

• Morch Marine in Belleville, in its more-recent incarnation as a condo development corporation, is belly-up. The latest: at least boat owners were able to finally launch and get out-of-there.

• Kingston's stalled beach dossier from The Whig on Wednesday. Some great comments from readers too.

• Funding for the Tett Centre appears to be coming together.

  Looking at the concept drawing of a water-side perspective, there's apparently zero direct water-accessibility in the plans. One of Kingston's best shore-dives lies just off the property.

LEMOINE POINT CONSERVATION AREA now has a Wikipedia page, thanks to the initiative of a user named SoftwareSimian, who created the page yesterday. This is great!

Whenever you Google something, have you noticed that Wikipedia always ranks very high in the list of returned results?

Wikipedia is highly authoritative in the eyes of Google. This means that if a Google search returns a million results, Wikipedia's entry is typically in the top-10, sometimes top-5.

Kingston's Waterfront continues to have a Wikipedia deficit. That needs to change.

If you care about something, document it. That, in and of itself, makes it harder for the clueless among us to mess with it.

THE SITE PLAN FOR TOKEN PARK goes before the City Planning Committee on Thursday night.

Highlights:

• No shoreline access. It's tumble-rock shoreline. Like we don't have enough of that.
• No jetty access. The Confedration Basin breakwall remains a birds-only place.
• A spot reserved for a marina building which makes no sense at all.

Related: Token Park news archive.

THE MAY ISSUE OF THOUSAND ISLANDS LIFE is online.

A RICHARDSON BEACH UPDATE is on the Council agenda for next Tuesday. 12-pages in all.

The words "windsurf" and "sail", and any reference to current users of the beach, appear exactly zero-times.

So the railroad is running perfectly. How perfectly? The consultant's report is dated April 9th. What's a five-week disclosure delay when you and your plans aren't accountable to anyone in particular?

Oh, and the plan changes drastically. You thought maybe the old plan wasn't windsurfer-friendly? Here's the new (5-week-old) schematic.

This much appears certain: another summer will pass with no beach improvements in Kingston.

DontRockTheBoat.ca is the website for the annual Don't Rock the Boat Event, this year on May 23rd, at Collins Bay Marina.

TWO EXCELLENT LETTERS this week in The Whig:

• Get serious about going green and cancel the Poker Run from Norm Macintosh, and
• City should withdraw support for 'sordid' Poker Run from Guy Oram of SPLASH Kingston.

Here's a summary of Poker Run-related news items here on K7 going back to 2006.

See also the articles in this Whig-Standard search on 'Poker Run'.

MAYORS WANT GREAT LAKES BEACHES PROMOTED according to a report released today.

Here is a link to the 44-page report which, take note, isn't provided by any of the online "professional" mainstream media "covering" this today.

It's a 5-point plan.

1. Create a Municipal-Provincial-Federal Great Lakes Table.
2. Improve and promote beaches, natural areas, wetlands, trails and tourism.
3. Attack nuisance and toxic algae.
4. Reduce untreated sewage and stormwater discharges entering the great lakes, especially in light of climate change and technical innovations.
5. Build a business case and measure results from Great Lakes investments.

There may be no better way to strengthen the public's connection to the Great Lakes than to enhance and promote beaches and other shoreline activities such as wetlands, natural areas and trails. Drawing more people to the shoreline can also boost local economies and contribute to healthier lifestyles. With a greater share of Great Lakes shoreline than any other jurisdiction, it makes sense to promote Ontario as a major beach and shoreline destination.

One wonders about Harvey Rosen's role in all this.

When it comes to waterfront around here, it's been absolutely all-downhill during his tenure.

One can easily imagine Harvey Rosen, a minority dissenter, clinging instead to some half-baked plan to siphon more tax-dollars for his cronies Downtown.

Beaches? Trails? Parks and wetlands? Harvey Rosen? Please!

Remember this scene from the July 22 2008 Mass Swim (also here)? The event sought to raise awareness about our woefully neglected beaches.

All signs indicate that 2009 will be another summer woeful beach maintenance, woeful beach safety reporting (also here), and more of the usual Kingston recreational infrastruture degradation.

Scroll this page for the full-story on Kingston's beaches since 2006.

TWO SEPARATE REPORTS from last weekend's apparently very successful Nautical Archaeology course.

It's good to see such a strong level of interest in this.

KINGSTON ROWING CLUB'S 2009 PROGRAMS have been posted. Better late than never.

SWEET DEAL, CONTINUED at Crawford Wharf and Confederation Park for Kingston and the Islands Boat Lines.