The Inverness Oran

Columns and Letters

Dirt Road Rant - Ringette/hockey

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 04 May 2021 15:22

May 5, 2021

-by John Gillis

   With hockey season wound down in many places and in playoffs elsewhere, some recent sports coverage got me thinking back on some of the big changes we’ve witnessed in recent years and even decades in fact. One is the expansion, growth, and participation in women’s hockey.
   In the 1980s, very few women played ice hockey and a popular ice sport at that time for women and some men as well was ringette. I’m not sure about elsewhere in Canada, but it seems that ringette never really caught much more for women or for men locally; hence the growing desire, interest, and numbers over the past few decades for women playing ice hockey. Canada’s national women’s hockey team and a number of its players have had great success and clearly, there is much room for further development and an even brighter future ahead for those who choose to play.
   It is likely fair to say, in addition to the numerous accomplishments of women in the sport of ice hockey, that many of our smaller arenas across the country would not be operating today had that change not taken place – just in sheer numbers of participation.

Pieridae’s “Goldboro” Debacle

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 04 May 2021 15:26

May 5, 2021

Dear Editor,
What a vast majority of Canadians don’t realize is that we are on the hook for cleaning up billions (if not trillions) of dollars of environmental waste across the country. Industries continue dumping their waste into the laps of citizens, who are completely unaware of these massive and unpaid environmental bills. It is my belief that corporations should be required to post significant bonds before they start operations of any kind. These dedicated funds held in trust would be used to clean up any and all environmental messes should the corporation not be able to afford the cleanup once they have completed the extraction of whatever resources they obtained permits for. My premise is that the Canadian taxpayer should not be on the hook to clean up the environmental mess left behind by businesses that make significant profits and then walk away without cleaning up the mess they made. Big oil/gas corporations have abandoned thousands of drill sites that have not been capped properly so they continue to leak huge amounts of methane and other harmful greenhouse gases (GHGs).

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