Smart municipalities across Ontario, and Canada, are realizing that electronic vote counters make sense. They proved themselves again Monday night. In Guelph, these machines were able to count 28,072 ballots more quickly than any human and told us who had been elected well before bedtime Monday night. Voters could tune in to the city’s...
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It hasn’t been a good week to be a fella. The lights of Monday and another work day were just blinking on, and our national press was already bringing news that maledom itself was losing its way. The Globe and Mail called the male elementary school teacher the rare spotted owl of the education...
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The toll operator was talking like a preacher. “Do you trust in the GPS?” We blinked. Pardon? We just wanted directions. “Do you trust in the GPS?” Uh, hardly. We were stuck on some unfamiliar highway in Buffalo at night, trying to get home. And a woman in a slightly condescending British voice was...
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The last shot in the 21-gun salute was fired off, rattling the whole of Parliament Hill like an earthquake. Four Canadian fighter jets went roaring above the Peace Tower, so loud and so close you’d swear you could reach out and touch them. In their wake, the quiet was striking. David Johnston, the Sudbury...
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Guelph Mercury, 09/29/10 Look over there, kids! A man selling a used Pontiac for $600! Over here, tales of hijinks in City Hall! Around the corner, a woman predicting the future! All this, and much more on any given day inside the pages of a newspaper, a strange contraption made of the fibers from...
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Guelph Mercury, 09/15/10 Listen up, kids. There’s a place worse than calculus class on the first day of school. It’s called traffic court. And you never, ever, want to end up there. It’s a strange, crowded place where rolling stoppers, close followers, illegal parkers and lead-footers sit shoulder to shoulder with the officers who...
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Guelph Mercury, 10/09/01 Buh-buh-buh-bedbugs? Say it ain’t so! Across North America, it’s the Summer of the Bedbug, and people are losing it. Never mind that we’ve got an economy that dips and swings like a drunk, new oil spills every week and relentless, scorching heat – what really scares us is a few, tiny...
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Guelph Mercury, 10/25/08 Frosh Week is just around the corner, and already residents are barricading the doors and putting the police on speed dial. But after a quiet, peaceful summer, we don’t have to start living in fear again. The Mercer Retort offers these helpful tips to make this upcoming student season a safe...
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Guelph Mercury, 18/08/10 Of course. Haiti, barely crawling seven months after an earthquake left it a shattered nation, knows exactly what it needs right now – a rapper for president. Wyclef Jean, the hip-hop producer and former Fugees millionaire, says he wants to lead his native island after the November election. Jean says he’s...
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Guelph Mercury, 10/11/08 Once was a time you could walk into any business with a wallet or purse full of cash and be a valued customer. Imagine that. Increasingly, cash is becoming as unwelcome in the marketplace as a bad rash in a hot tub. It costs companies time and money to handle it,...
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