It’s hard to believe another tourist season is upon us but the walleye opener Saturday marks the start of the annual influx of visitors flooding into Northwestern Ontario—a great majority of whom enter Canada right here in Fort Frances.
The shooting incident last Wednesday morning, in which an off-duty employee of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources fired a shot at two Rainy River First Nation men netting sturgeon on the river, shows just how strained relations are between the band and DNR.
The Reform Party came to Ottawa vowing to be different. It pledged to stay above the petty politics that often made an unruly kindergarten class look well-behaved compared to the House of Commons, and promised to refrain from the tired rhetoric and staged antics practised by the other parties.
Suddenly lost in the glare of the arena debate, and word council has to chop almost $1 million more from the town’s 1998 budget if it wants to keep a lid on taxes for the fifth-straight year, is the question of whether 384 parking meters should be re-installed in the downtown core.
It’s safe to say that last Friday night’s fourth-annual “Quest for the Best” was the best one yet—a sentiment echoed among spectators and contestants alike.
In fact, you felt sorry for the judges who faced the unenviable task of having to choose not only the top five but also rank them from first to fifth. Frankly, any one of them could have walked away with the top honours.
While mayors and reeves across Rainy River District agree that “downloading” presents the biggest challenge in the year ahead, most—if not all—are bullish on 1998.
Many people, at least around here, appear willing to accept a reduction in limits for such fish as walleye, bass and northern from six to four.
Monday is election day. It may be the most important municipal election in the twentieth century, not because it’s the last of the millennium, but it’s the first involving a major restructuring of provincial/municipal financial responsibility.
Those who have been spearheading the “Ice for Kids” movement here for the past six years earned a well-deserved standing ovation from the crowd of supporters on hand at the Civic Centre on Monday night.
If nothing else, those involved with the Northern Action Group (NAG) and the “Save the Bus” coalition have put their money with their mouths are.
