Eyelash Man #19: “The Yearly Shed”

“Yeah, annually. It’s thematic, but I always miss the parties…”

HARRISTON – Just as Fire Prevention Week was wrapping up, a fire caused by a lithium-ion battery led to major damage at a Harriston home on Saturday.

Minto and Wellington North firefighters responded to a “serious structure fire” in a residential garage at about 10pm on Oct. 10 near the intersection of Elora and Union streets, deputy fire chief Callise Loos told the Advertiser. 

The blaze was contained before it could spread to neighbouring homes.

No injuries were reported, but the fire caused an estimated $500,000 in damages.

“The incident highlights the growing risk associated with lithium-ion batteries, which are commonly used in rechargeable tools, e-bikes and household devices,” Loos stated.

The blaze was fought by firefighters on Oct. 10. Submitted photo

The theme for Fire Prevention Week this year, which ran Oct. 5 to 11, was based on spreading awareness around the dangers of lithium-ion batteries.

Fire department officials say the Harriston blaze proves fire safety is a year-round message. 

Battery safety tips from Minto Fire include:

• charge batteries away from flammable materials and never leave them unattended;
• use only the charger provided by the manufacturer;
• store batteries in cool, dry areas – never in direct sunlight or near heat sources;
• do not use or charge damaged or swollen  batteries; and
• recycle batteries properly at designated drop-off locations.

“Minto fire thanks the community for its support during Fire Prevention Week and encourages residents to stay vigilant and informed about fire risks in the home,” Loos stated.

For more information about fire safety visit nfpa.org.

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CENTRE WELLINGTON – Multiple people were injured in a serious three-vehicle crash at the intersection of Highway 6 and Wellington Road 22 on Monday.

Emergency crews responded to the scene, south Ennotville, on Oct. 13 at about 3:30pm.

“There are reports of various injuries, with occupants being sent to hospital, and one being sent to a trauma centre via air ambulance,” stated a Wellington County OPP press release.

“At this time, the number of occupants injured or involved, are currently being established.”

Police added “early reports indicate that of the reported injuries, all were deemed as non-life-threatening or altering.”

The intersection, where multiple crashes have occurred over the years, was closed for several hours.

Anyone who witnessed the collision, or has information or dashcam footage, can contact the OPP at 1-888-310-1122.

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WELLINGTON COUNTY – Local postal workers are expected back on the job after the Thanksgiving long weekend with a switch from a nation-wide walkout to local, rotating strikes.

The change in tactics was announced by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) following an Oct. 8 meeting with procurement minister Joel Lightbound aimed at reversing changes to Canada Post’s mandate announced last month.

The switch, CUPW president Jam Simpson said in a statement, “will start mail and parcels moving, while continuing our struggle for good collective agreements and a strong postal service.”

Delivery is expected to ramp up locally starting Tuesday morning, according to CUPW Local 546 president Remegius Cheeke.

But direction on which local branches will participate in rotating strikes, and when, will come from the national level with little notice, Cheeke cautioned.

If the Guelph-based union branch, which represents postal workers in Wellington County, isn’t told otherwise, it means mail can be dropped off, retail counters will reopen, and post office boxes will be accessible come Tuesday.

Canada Post said in a statement on Friday afternoon it “will welcome back employees” starting Saturday, but service guarantees are suspended.

“While postal services will begin to resume next week, uncertainty and instability in the postal service will continue with the union’s decision to conduct rotating strikes,” Canada Post stated.

The union last used rotational strikes in 2018, before members were legislated back to work.

Fergus post office union steward Connor Ehrlich finds it “frustrating” to shift to rotating strikes as the walkout was building momentum.

The point of the strike is to get attention and cause discomfort, Ehrlich said.

But postal workers are “worn out” and some are “living paycheque to paycheque,” he said.

• Small businesses frustrated by postal strikes turn to private carriers
• Postal workers strike after feds move to end home delivery

Ehrlich suggested that’s why CUPW is switching tactics.

“I think there’s a lot of fear and anxiety from all the members,” he said.

“We’re also pissed off that we still don’t have a contract, and having to face layoffs on top of that, everyone’s just worn out by that.”

CUPW’s nationwide membership took to picket lines the day after Lightbound’s Sept. 25 announcement amid a nearly two-year impasse between the union and Canada Post on new collective agreements for letter carriers.

The strike has lasted 15 days.

Lightbound announced the government was loosening restrictions on Canada Post’s operations to help save millions of dollars for the Crown corporation.

Among the most significant changes:

• lowering of delivery standards;
• prioritizing community mailboxes over door-to-door delivery; and
• lifting of a moratorium protecting some rural post offices from closure.

Canada Post CEO Doug Ettinger has welcomed the government’s direction.

The mail service has 45 days to provide the government with a plan to implement operational changes.

CUPW national president Jan Simpson issued a statement following the Lighthouse meeting, saying the government’s involvement during the labour dispute has “undermined free and fair collective bargaining.”

“The Union also reminded the minister that the only way for this dispute to come to an end is for Canada Post to offer postal workers ratifiable collective agreements,” Simpson said.

Ehrlich, the Fergus union steward, said local members agree change is needed, but shuttering rural post offices should be off the table.

There are 12 rural post offices in the county protected by moratorium, including the Fergus location, which was also protected by past collective agreements.

“Some members agree that door-to-door delivery can be phased out, same as daily mail delivery,” Ehrlich said.

“I think that is more of a middle ground.”

But the lingering, unanswered question, Ehrlich added, is what Canadians see for the future of the nation’s mail service.

“We’ve been trying to stand up for them, but it sometimes feels like a lost cause, that nobody cares.”

Canada Post’s latest Oct. 3 submission to the union spans 500 pages, and hasn’t yet been formally responded to by the union.

In its Oct. 10 statement, Canada Post urged the union back to the bargaining table.

“The company is waiting to hear back from the union on its latest offers,” the statement said.

“Only new collective agreements will provide the certainty Canadians require to confidently use the postal system.”

But the union says little has improved from offers rejected by 69 per cent of its membership in August, following a forced vote by federal jobs minister Patty Hajdu.

The latest offers keeps a 13.6 per cent compounded wage increase across four years, but removes a signing bonus and proposes a certain workforce reduction through attrition and departure incentives.

Canada Post has blamed striking workers for worsening its “critical financial situation” and said its latest offers reflect the company’s “financial realities.”

But in an Oct. 3 statement, Simpson said Canada Post “seems hell-bent on making workers pay for the financial crisis it created and trying to turn the public against the very workers who keep this service alive.”

In an Oct. 9 statement, she added the union “will continue our fight for strong public services, good jobs and a sustainable public post office for all Canadians.”

A followup meeting with Lightbound is planned next week, according to the union.

The post Local mail delivery to resume during postal union rotational strikes appeared first on Wellington Advertiser.

GUELPH – Hospice Wellington has set its sights on a fundraising goal of $45,000 to celebrate its 45th anniversary.

The charitable organization was established in 1980 to provide the Wellington-Guelph area with emotional support, care and practical assistance to community members with life-threatening illnesses. 

“A few ladies sat around a table 45 years ago and … they decided that people really needed help in the community with end-of-life care,” executive director Pat Stuart told the Advertiser.

The organization’s 10-bed residence facility, located at 795 Scottsdale Drive in Guelph, came 30 years later in 2010. 

Hospice Wellington executive director Pat Stuart. Submitted photo

“It’s 45 years for the community and 15 years for our hospice,” she added.

“We’re very proud and very thankful to our community because without our community we wouldn’t be here.”

Stuart has been a hospice employee for 13 years and a nurse for 47.

“It’s such an honour to do this kind of work,” she said.

“We help people live their best life here right to the end. It’s all about comfort, care and compassion.”

The hospice is funded 45 per cent by the government, meaning “everything else we have to work for,” Stuart said.

The 45 Days of Giving fundraiser began on Sept. 17 and runs till Oct. 31.

“We have someone that is matching $10,000,” she said.

“You can give whatever amount you want and honestly we appreciate anything at all.”

As of Oct. 8, just over 50% of the goal ($23,500) had been raised.

“We make sure every cent is spent properly,” Stuart said.

Most of the funds go towards operational costs, with a large portion funding hospice programs such as:

• grief and bereavement group;
• music therapy;
• art therapy;
• public workshops; and
• palliative support.

Stuart noted the fundraiser isn’t just a celebration of the past, but a way to plant the seed for 45 more years.

“It’s about our future and this need for compassionate care and support,” she said.

“It doesn’t fade with time, it only grows.”

To donate visit hospicewellington.org.

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WELLINGTON COUNTY – Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) crews are completing the annual fall removal of safety booms and buoys over the coming days. 

The booms and buoys are installed each spring upstream of dams to alert paddlers, anglers and boaters to stay away from the dams. 

The removal of these buoys and booms is set to be completed by Oct. 31, depending on weather conditions. 

GRCA officials say removal is necessary as the buoys and booms would be damaged or displaced if left during the winter months during ice and high-water flow events.

The GRCA follows Transport Canada regulatory approvals which indicate safety booms or buoys should be in place during the navigation season (May to October).

“Dams can pose serious hazards that can result in injuries or even fatalities if warning signs are ignored,” officials stated. “Water surges through gates and valves or over the dams, creating strong undertows and currents around the structures, which can be extremely dangerous.”

The GRCA urges people to heed all warning signs and stay away from the dams for their own safety.

In addition to the installation of buoys and booms and associated signage, the GRCA attends community events to promote dam safety, and educates children about the hazards associated with dam structures through its Outdoor Environmental Education Program and at children’s water festivals, officials say. 

For more information about safety around dams, visit the GRCA website.

The post GRCA’s annual removal of booms and buoys underway appeared first on Wellington Advertiser.

WELLINGTON COUNTY – Small business owners across Wellington County say the damage is done despite the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announcing a partial return to work on Oct. 11, following a walkout lasting over two weeks.

Scented Market owner Kristy Miller said the Guelph-based business, with a Fergus location, “used to use Canada Post 100 per cent, all the time.”

Last year’s four-week strike “definitely affected our sales,” Miller said.

The company now uses six private carriers to move roughly 500 orders each week of candles and body care and home décor products to customers.

During peak holiday season, the number of outgoing parcels ranges between 1,500 and 2,000.

“Canada Post used to show up here every day and pick up hundreds of parcels,” Miller said.

Now, Miller ensures customers “over and over again that we don’t use Canada Post.”

Roughly 53,000 unionized Canada Post workers walked off the job on Sept. 25 – their second strike in less than a year – in response to the federal government’s changes to the crown corporation, the most significant being an end to daily home delivery.

CUPW has said changes would result in job losses and potential post office closures.

The union and employer have been embattled in an almost two-year-long impasse to negotiate a contract.

Following an Oct. 8 meeting between the union and federal procurement minister Joël Lightbound, CUPW announced its nation-wide strike would be replaced with rotating strikes starting Oct. 11.

Delivery will slowly resume, but several small business owners have moved on from the national postal service after twice being left in the lurch.

• Postal workers strike after feds move to end home delivery

Mary Lloyd, owner of Sensational You, a women’s undergarment store in Fergus, said the latest strike has created “another burden” for small businesses.

“I have lost patience and I don’t have a lot of empathy for the workers right now because it’s affecting business,” she said.

Lloyd, also a Wellington County councillor, said she returned to Canada Post after the first strike – but not this time around.

She’s now mailing two to four orders per week with Freightcom service ClickShip, which brings multiple carrier shipping options into one platform.

“Canada Post has had so many opportunities to modernize … and they never modernized,” Lloyd said.

With shipping costs already built into business plans, owners are forced to rethink pricing, Centre Wellington Chamber of Commerce CEO Brock Aldersley said.

“It adds to the already high costs of doing business in Ontario and Canada,” Aldersley noted.

“Shop and spend your money where you live; it’s what builds your community.”

Chris and Stephanie Bailey, owners of Brighten Up Toys and Games, with locations in Erin and Fergus, switched from Canada Post after the first strike.

“We just felt it wasn’t going to be reliable, so we just never went back,” Bailey said, adding, “there are so many other options.”

The Baileys are also using a Freightcom service, often choosing private companies like Purolator (majority owned by Canada Post) and Canpar.

“It’s going to hit that point where the entire thing is going to be privatized,” Bailey said.

Freightcom marketing VP Michael Rochon said the company, and its e-commerce platform ClickShip, are the “Expedia of shipping,” connecting businesses with more than 50 carriers.

“We’ve had a pretty massive influx of new customers as result of the Canada Post strike,” Rochon said.

Canada Post loses more of its customer base with every strike, Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) legislative affairs VP Ryan Mallough said.

“It’s a big ask to have a small business owner do a ton of research into every available option,” Mallough said.

That’s where companies like Freightcom, a CFIB partner, fill the void.

“There are a lot of options in the ecosystem, but Canada Post should still be one,” Mallough said.

He suggested the mail service should cover “areas that just don’t make economic sense for those other companies to service.”

Hides in Hand owner Teresa Paul, who designs and creates leather goods in Erin, now relies on private carriers to deliver 20 to 30 orders per week.

“As much as I want to support Canada Post, I can’t do this when I run a business,” she said.

“They don’t give you any notice and boom, they’re shut down again.”

Erin residents Brent and Annette Kilner, owners of Mississauga-based The Playing Card Factory, manufacture custom-made card decks.

The Kilners have relied on Canada Post to ship roughly 12 weekly orders of smaller deck quantities via letter mail.

The cost is usually better than private carriers, Brent said, which have rural delivery restrictions and don’t do post office boxes.

“People do complain they’re being forced to use a more expensive service now,” he said.

The price on some smaller product quantities has been adjusted to just above cost, with the company absorbing the hit.

Tia Biro, who co-owns TNT Fishing Lures with Ty Henry, said her trust in the postal service is broken.

The couple manufactures and distributes lures across the globe from Harriston.

“It affects us greatly because Canada Post was our most inexpensive method,” Biro said.

A retailer in Chile orders around 800 to 2,000 lures this time of year, but shipping costs with private carriers are double or triple that of Canada Post’s.

Biro and Henry dealt with the same problem during last year’s strike.

Ultimately the Chilean retailer ate the cost, but Biro and Henry have covered some of the difference out-of-pocket to make it economical to ship North American and local orders.

Biro has made a trip across the border once already to get packages out of Canada and into the U.S. postal system, but she said that’s unsustainable.

With postal disruptions and prohibitively expensive shipping costs with carriers like DHL or Purolator, customers aren’t placing orders.

Carriers also won’t deliver to the more remote places that Canada Post is mandated to serve

Orders have fallen to, at most, 20 in a week, from an average of 30 to 60 per week.

“We’ve taken quite a big hit,” Biro said.

She noted when postal workers strike, it puts small businesses out. And yet she understands employees needing full-time work that pays a living wage.

“I hope that our government understand this,” she said. “We have to have a more reliable postal service.”

Canada Post did not immediately reply to an Advertiser request for comment.

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If you asked Trevor Clare six years ago if he could see himself painting nostalgic locations for a living, he probably would have said that’s a “wild” idea.

Back then, Clare didn’t see art as a serious hobby, let alone a full-time career. If anything, he saw painting as a way to distract himself from his mental battles.

But what Clare didn’t realize was that his digital recreations of iconic neon signs, beloved mom-and-pop shops, and other nostalgic landmarks in Kitchener and Waterloo would do more than just help him deal with his mental health struggles. It drew in a community who appreciated how his expertise on colour theory, values, and balance turned digital art into something that brought back warm, fuzzy memories they so cherished.

Clare transformed what originally was just a personal distraction into something emotionally powerful and impactful for everyone around him.

Clare is a multimedia artist from Kitchener. He painted most of his life using traditional media focusing on landscapes and architecture. He also dabbled in graphic design for about 15 years. The Kitchener artist only started digitally painting nostalgic locations near his house on Guelph Street, just off Lancaster Street to keep his mind busy six years ago, when he was left unemployed and mentally struggling.

He wanted to get away from the “endless ruminations and unhealthy coping patterns.”

“I’m a very nostalgic person by heart,” he said. “I started capturing these [nostalgic] places because I felt like they really kind of spoke to me somehow.”

“I realized just how powerful that emotion was.”

This love for emotion and nostalgia is what made Clare gravitate towards painting places that were familiar to him, especially ones that had sentimental value. It’s this same ability – encapsulating emotion in art – that drew people to his work.

“Paintings must give a sense of comfort for many people, perhaps tinged with sadness for times and memories of the past,” Joan Coutu said of Clare’s artwork.

Coutu is a fine arts professor at the University of Waterloo. She teaches visual culture and art history courses. She classifies Clare’s art as “iconic local heritage paintings influenced by American Realism.”

The style is not new. There’s a long tradition to what Clare is doing. Coutu said that painting nostalgic scenes, especially rural ones, was “extremely popular in Europe and North America in the 19th century.”

American painter and illustrator Edward Hopper is a good example of an artist who focuses on the emotions and anxieties of everyday life in his art. According to the National Gallery of Art, Hopper had a “recognizable style in which ordinary places [such as] motels, gas stations, restaurants, while realistically rendered, are pervaded with a sense of estrangement or loneliness.”

Hopper is one of Clare’s inspirations for his work.

“I think that was important to [Hopper]… the nostalgia and the emotional part of architecture and place,” he said.

It’s what Clare captures in his creations. His painting of the Schneiders sign on Highway 401, he says, is an example of how art can remind people about memories and emotions they might have forgotten.

“It’s kind of like a landmark where we’re like, okay, we know we’re 20 minutes from home, welcome back,” he said. “The warmth of the neon… [it] really is an emotional thing for people.”

Clare transitioned to painting as a full-time job last November 2024. He sees the lucrative potential in his art. At the same time, he knows he’s running a business out of a passion; balance is paramount.

He doesn’t always paint a location just because people want him to do it.

“Would I be able to convey it in a way that would be powerful in an artistic capacity, not just the story itself?”

It’s a question he often asks himself – or rather one of many. There are many things about business that Clare doesn’t understand, especially as someone who doesn’t have an “entrepreneurial spirit.”

But again, he’s a dreamer.

“I would love to do a Canadian version of this where it’s cities across Canada or potentially worldwide,” he said with enthusiasm.

Through it all, Clare wants to make sure he doesn’t lose sight of his original goal. That is, to paint these places that are so near and dear to people’s hearts with sincerity, and not with money in his mind.

“At the end of the day, it is about community and connecting with everybody,” he said.

“That is still most important to me.”