{"id":5540,"date":"2014-02-12T18:37:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T23:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=5540"},"modified":"2014-02-19T17:47:12","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T22:47:12","slug":"brocks-banter-onward-for-the-onleys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-onward-for-the-onleys\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Onward for the Onleys"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite knowing it has been coming for a while, it now seems like the time has come to think about just who Prime Minister Stephen Harper will choose as David Onley\u2019s successor as the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario in the coming weeks.
\nAfter two extensions since his appointment in 2008, this week Mr. Onley will become Ontario\u2019s longest-serving Lieutenant-Governor since the end of the Second World War.
\nI don\u2019t know if his previous profession had anything to do with it, but I have been watching his tenure as the Vice Regal representative in Ontario with great interest over the years. I was familiar with his work as an on-camera reporter and, later, a weatherman for CITY TV and, as such, he brought a modicum of star power to the office.
\nOn Sunday, I was thrilled to be invited to attend an event in Toronto to pay tribute to the Onley\u2019s service to Ontario.
\nAlthough there is always a degree of formality when the Queen\u2019s Representative \u2013 whether Federally or Provincially \u2013 is in attendance, it was intended to be an informal way for people from all walks of life who had been touched by the vice-regal couple in one way or another, to pay tribute to their service.
\nSome individuals came forward to salute their promotion of the Crown, while others recalled working with one or both of them on a variety of charitable endeavours, or simply praying alongside them in their Scarborough community church.
\nSome speeches, however, shone an unlikely light on the guests of honour.
\nOne such speaker was Derwin Mak, a science fiction writer and Dr. Who enthusiast who spoke of his efforts to get Mr. Onley, himself a one-hit science fiction novelist, to grace a Toronto comic book convention. He accepted the invitation.
\n\u201cWe were really glad that you didn\u2019t give us the typical speech by a public dignitary,\u201d said Derwin. \u201cInstead, you talked about assembling the model kit to the flying saucer for the TV series The Invaders. You also talked about Lost In Space and the Land of the Giants. To show that you\u2019re keeping in touch with current affairs, you compared the original Battlestar Galactica to the reboot.
\n\u201cOne of the convention attendees told me, \u2018He has geek cred!\u2019 I thought he was just a weatherman at CITY!\u2019\u201d
\nSigning off, by telling Mr. Onley to live long and prosper, the Man of the Hour jokingly scolded the speaker for not mentioning that his once sci-fi novel is now available on Kindle.
\nIn his remarks in reply, Mr. Onley shared his mixed emotions knowing his term was coming to an end. \u201cAll the world is a stage\u2026\u201d he said, introducing the well-worn phrase, adding that when he and Ruth Ann take their cues to step off the stage, they will do so into undetermined roles \u2013 and they have yet to know when exactly when Mr. Harper will give them the proverbial hook.
\nIn addition to paying tributes to the Queen herself, he also shed light on some of his own objectives when he was appointed to Queen\u2019s Park over six years ago.
\n\u201cThe paramount objective bas been to enhance the role of the office for the community and the culture of Ontario,\u201d he said. \u201cThe overarching theme of my term of office has been accessibility and I define it as that which allows people to achieve their full potential.
\n\u201cAccessibility is not the sole prerogative of people with disabilities. Many people are isolated on the margins of society because they live with invisible disabilities, or they are in a state of poverty, or lack education.\u201d
\nAfter noting his alarm at the \u201cunacceptably high level of unemployment for disabled people\u201d in the Province of Ontario, it struck me that this definition of accessibility is one everyone should take to heart, across the Province, including Aurora, where people who have taken it upon themselves to advocate for accessibility issues seem to be at loggerheads over the very idea to turn Queen\u2019s Diamond Jubilee Park, formerly Civic Square Park, into a showpiece of an open space featuring an accessible playground.
\nRegular readers of Page 4 here will be familiar with both sides of the debate, with local accessibility advocate Tyler Barker taking the \u201cpro\u201d position and Councillor Wendy Gaertner, a fellow member of Aurora\u2019s Accessibility Advisory Committee, citing financial matters, taking the \u201ccon.\u201d
\nI will not rehash the points of either in that debate, but remarks made at Sunday\u2019s event provided an interesting contrast to our own debate.
\nRecalling a visit being made by Mr. and Mrs. Onley to Port Hope to unveil a memorial to Joseph Scriven, who wrote the hymn \u201cWhat a Friend We Have in Jesus\u201d in the Town in the 1850s, Port Hope\u2019s Stephen Smith attempted to portray a \u201clesser known\u201d aspect of Mr. Onley\u2019s service. \u201cWhile their honours were participating in the event, His Honour noticed an accessible children\u2019s playground being built in another corner of the same park and asked about it,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI had been told it was the result of a severely disabled young boy wondering why he couldn\u2019t play with other kids.
\n\u201c[Onley] asked to meet this boy, Zac. The playground is called Zac\u2019s Dream because Zac figured prominently in creating the awareness and raising the money to build it. I saw Zac and His Honour have an extended chat at the Scriven Event, after which their honours asked to be invited back to the opening of the finished Zac\u2019s Dream.\u201d
\nThey got the invite, and they were on hand to cut the ribbon.
\nAt the end of the day, Port Hope constructed Zac\u2019s Dream at one end of their Memorial Park to the tune of approximately $135,000. Through Zac\u2019s efforts and the community at large, over $70,000 was contributed by groups such as the Port Hope Rotary Club, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, various local foundations and corporations, to make the project a reality.
\nLast week, Councillor Gaertner wrote that the reasons she objected to the park plan, along with Councillors Chris Ballard and John Gallo, was that $240,000 of tax dollars had been used to create the park, which now includes small rolling hills and a diminutive soccer pitch.
\n\u201cCouncillors Ballard, Gallo and I thought that it would be completely fiscally irresponsible to spend another $150,000 of your hard earned money to redo this existing park!\u201d she concluded, questioning why an undeveloped piece of parkland was not chosen for a new accessible park.
\nRegardless, the deed is done, the decision to go forward with the accessibility playground in the Queen\u2019s Diamond Jubilee Park is more or less a done deal, so let\u2019s now get creative to lessen that particular tax burden like Port Hope. If they can do it, so can we \u2013 and whether they are still public citizens, or have been sent by the PM back to private life, let\u2019s make sure we have the Onleys on hand to do the honours.\u201d <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Despite knowing it has been coming for a while, it now seems like the time has come to think about just who Prime Minister Stephen Harper will choose as David Onley\u2019s successor as the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario in the coming weeks. After two extensions since his appointment in 2008, this week Mr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1rm","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 15:35:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}