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	<title>GregMercer.ca</title>
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	<description>Newspapering and other adventures</description>
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		<title>What ailing our city workers?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Psst! Don’t tell City Hall, but I know a guy who knows a guy who can get you bottles of vitamin C for just $5.99. If you’re willing to spend a little extra, he can find you some of that echinacea all the kids are into, too. He buys the stuff at the local drugstore, I’m told. I don’t ask too many questions, but I hear it helps to ward off colds and generally boosts your immune system. Combine that with sleep and you’ve got a good recipe for getting sick less often. But I know what you’re thinking. That’s just crazy talk. If you really want to cut down sick days, the City of Guelph has stumbled on a far more sensible way to do it. This week, they agreed to spend $150,000 on a software program that will help them figure out how to get their employees to show up for work. It turns out our fair city has a bit of a sick days problem among staff on the municipal payroll. They’re apparently as illness-prone as those kids in daycare who lick door handles. And it’s getting worse. City of Guelph employees took an average of 10.2 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2012/05/03/what-ailing-our-city-workers/</link>
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		<title>Let’s run these beavers out of town</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Look into their cold, beady eyes my friends. Do you see any speck of compassion, any concern for our well-being? No you do not. Why? Because beavers do not have hearts. They do not care for our troubles. They do not care for us. Beavers care only for themselves and nothing else. But I am mistaken. There is one thing beavers care for more than themselves. And that’s killing our trees. And they will stop at nothing to kill and maim and destroy as many of them as possible. Think about it. They creep around at all hours of the night, doing God knows what, swimming completely nude in our rivers and generally acting like they own the place. It just goes against the natural order of things. Norm Bazinet, an aquatic biologist, recently raised the alarm about these oversized rats who are slowly taking over our city, leaving a path of stumps and wood chips behind. He’s talking Armageddon, beaver-style. “If the population gets high enough, and I have seen situations where the population is high enough, they will take out whole forests,” he said. Whole forests. Imagine that — a creature so callous it wipes out entire forests [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2012/03/26/let%e2%80%99s-run-these-beavers-out-of-town/</link>
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		<title>The week’s news in 600 words or less</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What a wild week for news. Without warning, Guelph was thrown into the national media spotlight. The stories only grew stranger by the minute. If you’re looking for someone to explain it all, call Peter Mansbridge. But if he’s busy, here’s all you really need to know: Robo-calls: A rash of phone calls made by a group of robots who really, really didn’t want you to vote Liberal in the last election. Somehow they overthrew their human masters and figured out how to make long-distance phone calls to anyone who wasn’t a Conservative party supporter in tight races. Just let this be a lesson next time you start thinking how cute R2D2 looks. Pierre’s Poutine: A small, Macdonell Street poutine joint that secretly doubles as the front for robots trying to undermine democracy in Canada. Try the smoked-meat poutine. It’s lovely. Elections Canada: “Hello, you’ve reached Elections Canada. There’s no one available to take your call right now. At the tone, please leave your message. We’ll add it to the thousands of other complaints we’ve received and done nothing with.” Tiger Dunlop: A legendary Scottish booze hound who apparently helped John Galt establish Guelph while drunk on whisky. Historians say [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2012/03/05/the-week%e2%80%99s-news-in-600-words-or-less/</link>
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		<title>Let&#8217;s grow our canopy, but don’t miss the forest for the trees</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ah, city life. Guelph’s municipal leaders recently announced they want to double the city’s so-called tree canopy, or the amount of land covered by trees when viewed from above, to up to 40 per cent of our total space. Right now, we’re at 20 per cent, about on par with most Canadian cities. Mayor Karen Farbridge said she’d like to see Guelph have more trees than any other city of our size. It’s a formidable goal, and should be embraced on principle. We all want to live in a city with more trees. If you don’t, you’re probably dead inside. Or from Toronto. As the city grows and becomes a denser, more urban place — our population is nearly 122,000 now, Statistics Canada revealed this week — we’re going to need those trees even more. But like everything, the devil is always in the details. If Guelph plans to grow its urban forest largely through city owned and maintained properties, we could wind up with a real mess on our hands years from now, foresters and urban experts warn. Our neighbours in Kitchener can tell you that. They’re stuck with a $10-million bill for tree maintenance after 4,500 ash trees [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2012/02/11/lets-grow-our-canopy-don%e2%80%99t-miss-the-forest-for-the-trees/</link>
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		<title>Female boxers still fighting for respect</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The middle-aged lady sitting next to me on the plane leaned over and confessed. “I don’t think women should be boxing. It doesn’t seem right to me,” she said. This was after I’d just told her I had spent the week in Sydney, N. S., covering the Canadian amateur boxing championships for my newspaper, where men and women were fighting. It was a good thing she kept her voice down. In the seat behind her was Mandy Bujold, Kitchener’s seven-time national flyweight champion. Two rows up was fellow flyweight fighter Amanda Galle, sporting a black eye so gruesome it looked like it was added by a Hollywood makeup artist. Try telling those women they shouldn’t be boxing. Canada has some of the best amateur female boxers in the world, giving our northern country a dominance on the international scene normally reserved for hockey or curling. And yet so many of us, like the lady on the plane, think there’s something inherently uncomfortable about it. Women have been boxing since early 18th century, and have encountered opposition nearly every step of the way. So many people still feel it’s just plain wrong – even if we don’t know exactly why we [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2012/01/25/female-boxers-still-fighting-for-respect/</link>
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		<title>My predictions for 2012</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If we could see into the future, how our lives would be different. I would probably never have grown that mullet in Grade 3, for starters. But enough about that. On this day, as another December prepares to fade from view, we’re looking forward, not back. Without further delay, here at my predictions for 2012. • You will wake up the morning after New Year’s Eve with a very bad headache, gaps in your memory and a lampshade for a hat. Strangely, your face will begin to appear on cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon under the title “missing person.” • Sales of skinny jeans will plummet when teenagers everywhere learn you can achieve the same flattering look with a $5 can of blue spray paint. • Iran will “unfriend” America on Facebook. America will respond by creeping on Iran’s new friends Libya and Syria and spreading hurtful rumours that Iran is a bad kisser. • In response to Ontario’s crushing $16-billion debt and troubled credit rating, public sector employees will tighten their belts and cut their lunchtime massages down to one hour. They’ll get carried away and reduce their wage demands to increases of only 10 per cent per year, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2011/12/31/my-predictions-for-2012/</link>
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		<title>Bad news in a company town</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s the kind of story that seems too far-fetched, too ridiculous to be true. Two top executives from the biggest company in the land get so stinko on an overnight flight to Beijing that the pilot has to make an emergency detour hours out of the way just to have them arrested. When the story broke last week, media from around the world ran with the story, almost gleefully. Here were two suits from that struggling smartphone giant Research In Motion, flying first class on a business trip for a company that doesn’t need any more bad news – and they go and provide it in spades. As hundreds of newspapers, websites, blogs and tech industry pundits have already repeated, the RIM execs single-handedly managed to force their packed commercial flight to turn south from Alaska and make an unplanned stop to meet some Mounties in Vancouver. The unpopular pair weren’t just a little buzzed, they were reportedly drunker than skunks, so divinely pickled and throwing punches the airline crew had to physically restrain and handcuff them to seats, according to other passengers. After spending a night in jail, the RIM execs pleaded guilty to mischief, were ordered to pay [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2011/12/10/bad-news-in-a-company-town/</link>
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		<title>Honey, the assassins called again</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We try to lead good lives. We help old ladies cross the street. We donate to charity and always call our mother on her birthday. So, doesn’t it just seem so terribly unfair when an assassin is hired to kill you, all for a measly $80,000? The Ontario Provincial Police in Wellington County recently alerted citizens to a scam letter circulating around local e-mail inboxes. The letter begins, “Hello, how are you doing today? I was paid to assassinate you, but I felt it will be right for me to inform…” The e-mail goes on to say that for a small sum of $10,000, this killer with a heart of gold won’t carry out their orders. It reads like it was written by a 12-year-old who’s read one too many Hardy Boys adventures. All that’s missing is a really cool plan to meet in a cave somewhere just at the stroke of midnight. And yet, remarkably, some of us are scared enough to call the cops. “As you can see there is no need of introducing myself to you because I don’t have any business with you, my duty as I am mailing you now is just to KILL you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2011/11/29/honey-the-assassins-called-again/</link>
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		<title>Forge on, noise crusaders</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Shhhh, use your inside voice. That’s better. Our fair city, it turns out, has a problem with noise. And city hall, like an angry father banging on the bedroom door, looks like it’s finally had it with all the racket. Just this week, two residents told city councillors they need to crack down on the loud motorcycles and cars that roar up and down our streets with annoying after-market mufflers and amplifiers, causing all kinds of headaches. This, not so surprisingly, hasn’t sat well with some motorcycle owners, who say driving a quiet bike is kind of like bringing pink lemonade to a bachelor party or talking about your feelings. Basically, it’s for wussies. Police, for their part, reportedly told a Cardigan Street man they couldn’t do anything about his concerns because officers don’t have the training and, more specifically, men who drive loud motorcycles are scary. Still, the noise crusaders forge on. Earlier this month, a city hall committee was updated on a review of the city’s 11-year-old noise bylaw — including a proposed amendment that would ban “unnecessary yelling 24 hours a day.” Currently, all our shouting needs to be done between the hours of 9 a.m. and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2011/11/01/let%e2%80%99s-turn-down-the-volume-on-noise-complaints/</link>
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		<title>Can condos ‘disrespect’ a city park?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[At the very least, give them an award for creativity. Guelph residents wrote impassioned letters and made pleas to city council this week voicing their opposition to a proposed condo building at 180 Gordon St., near the Speed River. One man summed it all up by saying the whole project is “downright disrespectful to… a very sensitive piece of land,” namely, a small park next door. You see, it’s not that they’re opposed to a condo development in their neighbourhood — why, that’s preposterous, they love condos! — it’s that they feel condos beside a park honouring the memory of a woman killed by her partner is inappropriate. Here’s the basics: A Toronto company wants to build a four-storey, 11-unit brick condo building in a vacant lot at the end of Water Street. It’s a big building, sure, but the Empire State Building this is not. It’s also an infill project, which puts new housing on unused brownfield sites within the city rather than bulldozing more farmland at the edge of town. Most of us can agree that’s generally a good thing. The problem is, the condos would be next door to Marianne’s Park, named after Marianne Goulden, a women’s [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://gregmercer.ca/2011/10/12/can-condos-%e2%80%98disrespect%e2%80%99-a-city-park/</link>
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