Londoners have reasons to be thankful
Londoners have reasons to be thankful
The weather went to bat for area farmers, the city's building boom piled up a mountain of sawdust and an improbable end to a junior hockey season left fans on the edge of their seats.
Southwestern Ontarians are celebrating Thanksgiving in a thousand personal ways, from quiet family reunions and dinners out to movies and sports.
That's the Canadian way -- understated and personal, unlike the U.S. version of the fall harvest holiday that hits with a blizzard of civic events, football and parades.
But the London region as a whole -- despite the inevitable tragedies and grim headlines each year brings -- also has a horn of plenty stuffed with things to be thankful for during the last year on this holiday.
Following, culled from Free Press reports and listed in no particular order, is a breakdown of 10 area reasons to celebrate this Thanksgiving:
1. The harvest: Crop commodity prices may be in the muck and area farmers face no shortage of rising costs. But this year, for a change, the weather co-operated in the country's richest farm belt, with none of the natural disasters -- drought, excessive heat or flooding -- that make agriculture such a risky business.
2. No election snore pie: Longtime London MP Joe Fontana's late entry into the London mayoral race guaranteed voters a high-profile contest for the first time in years, with the 18-year veteran of Parliament Hill taking on a popular incumbent, Anne Marie DeCicco-Best, as she goes for a three-peat in office in the Nov. 13 civic election.
3. An axe blunted: Bleeding billions of dollars and market share, North America's Big Three automakers shed thousands of workers and began massive rounds of plant closings in 2006. But Ford's huge St. Thomas assembly plant, crucial in the area's manufacturing muscle, dodged the bullet and will even gain a new product, the Lincoln Town Car, though production will remain at only one shift daily.
5. Knight fever: In a junior hockey world where keeping talented teams of teenagers together is tough, the London Knights followed up their first national championship with an improbable run for a return trip in 2006 to the Memorial Cup tournament, finishing oh-so close in the Ontario Hockey League playoffs before falling to the Peterborough Petes.
6. Busing compromise: The school year began this fall on a sour note for thousands of area kids, for whom busing for field trips and sports events was jeopardized when bus lines threatened to pull that service without more money to cope with rising costs. A last-minute deal between the bus lines and area school boards rescued the service.
7. Rainbow politics: The rare, mid-winter federal election in January produced a first for London -- its first New Democrat MP. Irene Mathyssen won the London- Fanshawe seat vacated by longtime Liberal Pat O'Brien. Now, with Fontana retired from the Liberal ranks and his seat vacant, London is one of the few Canadian cities that covers the waterfront in mainstream political choices, with one MP each from the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP.
8. Building boom: The hammers keep swinging and sawdust flying in London, with its building boom this year poised to shatter the city's record construction year, 2004, which produced $647 million in projects. This year's frenzy includes a just-started, twin-tower residential project near the John Labatt Centre that will add the first new highrises in years on the downtown's western end, adding a new twist to the city skyline.
9. Once dubbed by a Toronto paper as "the dozey village on the Thames," London showed it's no cultural backwater when filmmaker and native son Paul Haggis picked up two Oscars at the Academy Awards this year, including best picture, for his movie Crash. Haggis was feted in a hometown tribute when he returned to his old London stomping grounds last month.
10. Underlining the old adage that charity begins at home, area residents ponied up big for the United Way in 2006, helping it set a $6.57-million fundraising record and providing a springboard for an even more ambitious goal this coming year, $6.85 million.
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