The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) has released its 2024 canine unit calendar to raise money for the OPP Youth Foundation and Friends of The OPP Museum.

More than 50 police service dogs and their 33 handlers serve the OPP in various ways, including search and rescue, narcotics detection, suspect apprehension, and firearms, explosives, and physical evidence search and detection.

Canine unit members also provide community engagement at local events and safety demonstrations. During the calendar’s launch event, children from the Mnjikaning Kendaaswin Elementary School in Orillia enjoyed a demonstration featuring members of the canine unit.

The 2024 calendar showcases 12 police service dogs from across Ontario, including photos, age, breed, specialty, location, and a brief description.

This year’s cover model features Aaron, a four-year-old Belgian Malinois who was the winner of the obedience category at the 2023 Canadian Police Canine Association’s National Police Dog Competition. Embedded in the OPP Tactics and Rescue Unit, Aaron is deployed with his handler to support high-risk incidents.

The calendar’s 12 dogs also include Hopper (April),a two-year-old yellow lab whose speciality is search and rescue, and Rico (December), a six-year-old Malinois-shepherd mix who is a general service dog.

Each calendar costs $15 and can be purchased online at www.oppshop.on.ca or in person at the OPP Off Duty Shop at 777 Memorial Avenue in Orillia.

All proceeds go to the OPP Youth Foundation, which provides funds to disadvantaged youth throughout the province of Ontario, and The Friends of The OPP Museum, a volunteer-based charitable organization that supports, promotes, and assists in the preservation of the history of the OPP.

Last year’s calendar sales raised more than $32,800 for the two organizations.

Acceptance Nurse Psychotherapy in Peterborough, founded and owned by registered nurse psychotherapist Sheena Howard, has won a Nurse Innovator Award from the Registered Nurses’ Foundation of Ontario.

Howard’s clinic is one of five innovative nursing projects in Ontario that were recognized with the award during a reception on Tuesday (November 7) hosted by CBC radio host Mary Ito at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Acceptance Nurse Psychotherapy, which opened in October in the Be Well Centre at 459 George Street North in downtown Peterborough, is Canada’s only psychotherapy clinic staffed exclusively by nurses.

“Acceptance Nurse Psychotherapy offers a comprehensive range of mental health services to clients facing various challenges, including anxiety, depression, grief, ADHD, affirming gender and sexuality exploration, trauma, chronic pain and illness, substance use, parenting, infertility, and infant and baby loss,” reads a media release. “Acceptance’s nurse psychotherapists see adults, youth, couples, and families and provide workshops and group therapy.”

The five innovative nursing projects — which also include the “iMentor” program based at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, “Empowering Goals of Care Conversations” based at Perley Health in Ottawa, “Neuropathy Screening App” based in Simcoe County, and “WeeCare Pediatric Home Care” based in Cambridge — will receive a total of $122,000 as part of the award.

The Registered Nurses’ Foundation of Ontario is a charitable organization that provides financial support, including awards and scholarships, to registered nurses and nursing students. Funded by honorary members as well as donors and supporters, the Nurse Innovator Award was created in 2019 to encourage and celebrate innovative and entrepreneurial nurses in Ontario. More than $400,000 has been awarded to 19 nursing innovation projects in the past five years.

For more information about Acceptance Nurse Psychotherapy or to book an appointment, visit acceptanceclinic.ca.

Environment Canada has now issued a freezing rain warning for Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes for late Wednesday afternoon and evening (November 8), with freezing rain also possible in Haliburton County and Hastings Highlands until Thursday morning.

An approaching low pressure system is expected to bring snow, ice pellets and freezing rain to the area. Precipitation may begin as snow or ice pellets this afternoon before transitioning to freezing rain late Wednesday afternoon or early in the evening.

Ice build-up of 2 to 5 mm on some surfaces is expected, especially over areas of higher terrain.

Surfaces such as highways, roads, walkways and parking lots may become icy and slippery. Take extra care when walking or driving in affected areas.

For Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes, freezing rain is expected to transition to rain overnight.

For Haliburton County and Hastings Highlands, any freezing rain is expected to transition to rain showers Thursday morning.

The original version of this story has been updated with the latest forecast from Environment Canada.

The City of Peterborough’s draft budget for 2024 proposes a substantial 9.59 per cent increase to the city’s all-inclusive rate, which includes the municipal property tax, education tax, and municipal storm and sanitary sewer surcharge rates.

City staff presented the draft budget to Peterborough city council during its finance committee meeting on Monday evening (November 6), in advance of a series of public meetings that will be held in November and December.

The 9.59 per cent increase is 6.44 per cent higher than the 3.15 per cent rate increase approved for the city’s 2023 budget, which was a quarter of a per cent higher than the 2.87 per cent rate increase in 2022.

A 9.59 per cent increase would add $167.17 per year for each $100,000 of residential assessment for the typical household. For example, a city household with a home assessed at $260,000 would pay an additional $434.61 annually.

In August, city council approved a rate increase guideline of between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent for the draft 2024 budget. While the budget was prepared with a 5.5 per cent increase, council-approved directions, external organization requests, and city service delivery enhancements totalling over $8 million have added another 4.09 per cent to that increase.

Council-approved directions contributing to the additional 9.59 per cent rate increase include over $2.96 million for compensation initiatives, around $575,000 for transit modifications, and around $388,000 for municipal law enforcement expansion.

External organization requests include an additional request of over $3.4 million for the Peterborough Police Service, around $69,000 for Peterborough Public Health, and around $96,000 for Peterborough County-City Paramedics.

City service delivery enhancements include around $69,000 for in-house snow removal at city-owned facilities, over $308,000 for generator maintenance, and almost $130,000 for a management position at Service Peterborough.

The draft 2024 budget includes $359 million in operating expenses — with $173.9 million from property taxes and the remainder funded by other revenues such as grants from other governments, user fees, and service charges — and $128.2 million in capital expenditures for 147 projects.

The draft budget also includes a number of spending cuts, an increase in revenue estimates, and use of reserves to reduce operating expenses by $2.5 million, partially offsetting the increases in other areas. The tax requirement for the capital budget was reduced by $11.9 million by delaying projects until future years, reducing investments in capital programs such as sidewalk installations, and the use of reserves.

As part of 405-page draft budget highlights document, city staff have provided city council with a large number of possible service cuts to reduce the tax requirement, including deferring hiring by-law officers, cutting operation of the Centennial Fountain in Little Lake, cutting the individual artist grant program and the public art program, removing lifeguards from city beaches, and closing directly operated child care.

The city is hosting a number of public meetings on the draft 2024 budget, including a public meeting from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday (November 9) at McDonnel Street Community Centre (577 McDonnel St.) and an informal drop-in from 4:45 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14th in the main foyer at City Hall (500 George St. N.), followed by a finance committee meeting at 6 p.m. with registered delegations presenting to council.

In addition to the public meetings, finance committee will hold a meeting on Wednesday, November 15th to hear presentations from invited local boards and agencies, and will review, discuss, and debate the draft budget from November 20 to 23. There will be no public delegations at these meetings.

City council is scheduled to consider approving the 2024 budget at its meeting on Monday, December 11th, where registered delegations can present to council.

For more information about the draft 2024 budget, visit peterborough.ca/budget.

As Remembrance Day nears, my thoughts turn to my father, and how proud he was of his service during the Second World War, limited as it was.

Stationed in England, he was slated to join the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. But just a week prior, he contracted pneumonia and was held back. His condition worsened and, not long after, he was returned home to Toronto.

Dad was afflicted with asthma until he passed in 2007 — a byproduct of his wartime illness — but he came home to live a productive and full life. Many of his friends did not. He sometimes lamented he that he ‘missed out.’ My siblings and I still thank God that he did.

Close to 20 years after returning to his wife and young daughter — my mom and sister — Dad planted the seed for my lifelong reading of as many fact-based accounts of armed conflict past as I could, in particular any and all books pertaining to the lead up, waging, and aftermath of the Second World War.

It was the summer of 1963 when Dad loaded me into the family sedan for a rare father-son night out. After settling in at the storied Fox Theatre on Queen Street in Toronto’s Beaches district, I was transfixed for three hours as The Great Escape, John Sturges’ epic film based on Paul Brickhill’s 1950 book of the same name, flickered across the screen.

To put things in context, my only cinema experience up that point was accompanying my mom for the debut of every Elvis Presley movie released up to that point. Dad wasn’t an Elvis guy, and my siblings were old enough to do their own thing, so I was it. Good times with mom, for sure, but a far cry from Steve McQueen jumping successive barbwire fences atop a Triumph TR6 motorcycle. This six year old had a new Superman to idolize and he was coolest of the cool. I’d argue he still is.

VIDEO: “The Great Escape” (1963) trailer

A few years later, my first library card proudly secured, I checked out Brickhill’s book from the Main Street library branch and read a good chunk of it during the long walk home. And so my affinity for all books war-related began. The gift of a Kobo reader a few years back put an end to my buying hard copies of books, but the home office retains that lovely musky book smell. I can’t part with them.

As the day when we pause and remember nears, the following are five books in my collection that I’m in the process of re-reading.

Each reminds me not only of remarkable courage displayed and painful sacrifices made, but also that history has something to teach us. Based on current world events, particularly in Ukraine and in the Middle East, we haven’t heeded the lessons of the past. That is a tragedy greater than war itself.

“Vimy” by Pierre Berton

At 5:30 am on Easter Monday in 1917, just north of Arras, France, a deafening artillery barrage marked the beginning of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Within three days, four divisions of the Canadian Corps had done what their British and French brethren had failed to do in successive attempts over the two years prior: seize and hold the best-defended German position on the Western Front.

Victory didn’t come without a tragic cost — 10,000 Canadians breathed their last in the mud and slime — but as many a historian has noted and rightly so, Canada, in short order, emerged as a nation unto itself as opposed to a colonial British outpost.

Pierre Berton’s recounting of what transpired prior, during, and after the battle is as riveting as it is vital in terms of reminding us that the men who stormed Vimy Ridge were ordinary Canadians — farmers, fishermen, and shopkeepers — who did some extraordinary things.

I’m reminded each November 11th that sculptor Walter Allward, who designed the striking Canadian National Vimy Memorial that was unveiled in 1935 on French soil gifted to Canada, also designed the Peterborough Citizens War Memorial. It was unveiled six years earlier in Confederation Park as a tribute to those from Peterborough city and county who left for France but never came home.

“Their Finest Hour” by Winston S. Churchill

Those looking to understand how David possibly found the resolve, and the required strength of character, to put Goliath down would be wise to turn the pages of the second volume of Winston Churchill’s epic six-volume account of the Second World War.

Few had the ringside seat the wartime prime minister of England had, from the fall of France to the Nazis in 1940 to Victory In Europe Day five years later. This volume focuses on events post-Dunkirk as England stood alone, the threat of seaborne invasion very real and foreboding; the book’s title borrowed from his still-stirring House of Commons tribute to the Royal Air Force’s stunning defeat of the superior Luftwaffe in the skies over the Channel and England itself.

I can’t say with it any degree of certainty that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a copy of Their Finest Hour close at hand but, if not, he should. His small country is fighting a behemoth, not unlike England in 1940-41. Supporting allies have given his forces armaments. Churchill gives him reason to believe.

“Behind The Glory: Canada’s Role In The Allied Air War” by Ted Barris

I list this book but, for the definitive perspective on Canada’s immense contributions to the two world wars and the Korean War, any book written by Ted Barris will do the job.

A journalist by profession, Barris’ first military-themed book was Behind The Glory. Published in 1992, it tells the story of Canada’s largest Second World War expenditure: $1.75 billion to train close to 250,000 Allied airmen for action overseas. In doing so, he brought a little known aspect of Canada’s contribution to the war effort to light.

Barris’ subsequent books covered the Canadian experience on Juno Beach, in Korea, and at Vimy Ridge. He is a masterful storyteller who, not unlike any historian worth his or her weight in gold, relentlessly seeks out those who were there and asks the one question that matters most: What was your experience?

Last year, just prior to Remembrance Day, I had the honour of interviewing Barris, a 2022 Order of Canada recipient, for my YourTV program. That we chatted in the shadow of Peterborough’s remarkable cenotaph was poignant. As we later scanned the names of those long gone, I couldn’t help but sense the gratitude of those who Barris has so fittingly honoured.

“D-Day: The Climactic Battle of World War II” by Stephen E. Ambrose

For my money, this is the definitive account of what General Dwight D. Eisenhower termed The Great Crusade — the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6th, 1944.

Countless books have detailed what transpired on the day of days that saw five beaches in the Normandy region stormed by Canadian, American, and British troops but Ambrose, by way of close to 1,500 interviews of veterans, and German survivors too, captures the horror and glory of the D-Day landings like few have — one exception being Cornelius Ryan, whose 1959 book The Longest Day has well withstood the test of time and remains very worthy of a read.

Ambrose is an American and, as such, his D-Day tome primarily relates the invasion experiences of American soldiers who came ashore on Omaha Beach, albeit there is a chapter dedicated to what transpired on Juno Beach on which a combined Canadian-British force landed. Still, the man who also penned Band of Brothers stays true to a formula of getting the most from his interview subjects and putting the reader right there with them as they pray, crawl forward … and then pray again.

“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William L. Shirer

Decades after the fact, it’s still difficult to comprehend how a nation of cultured and enlightened people could throw their lot behind a politician hell bent on world domination, making no secret, via a widely published book, of his plan to exterminate those he viewed as inferior human beings.

American journalist William Shirer’s exhaustive 1,140-page study of the birth of Nazi Germany — and the horrors and persecutions that followed — is arguably the most important book of the 20th century, it’s still relevant lesson being that appeasement to a dictator’s demands will never have a good ending.

With a front-row seat during those turbulent times until his ouster from Germany in December 1941 following Germany’s declaration of war against the United States, Shirer was a witness to a people seduced by false promises, relieved by Germany’s release from the shackle of the Versailles Treaty and overjoyed by early military victories.

This book is must reading for anyone even remotely interested in how sheep will gladly follow a shepherd over a cliff if they’re told it won’t hurt much when they hit the ground. As Nazi Germany’s corrupt Minister of Propaganda said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Tragically he’s been proven right time and time again since. Will we never learn?

Peterborough will pause to remember on Saturday, November 11th, with the major public commemoration again held at the Cenotaph in Confederation Park.

Organized and hosted by Branch 52 of the Royal Canadian Legion, the 10:30 a.m. service will be preceded at 10 a.m. by a veterans’ parade in the downtown core.

Prior to the moment of silence at 11 a.m., Mayor Jeff Leal and past Legion president Joel Chandler will speak, followed later in the ceremony by invited guest speaker Peterborough police chief Stuart Betts.

One person is dead following a two-vehicle collision in Haliburton County on Monday afternoon (November 6).

Shortly after 2 p.m., Bancroft Detachment Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) responded to the collision, which happened on Highway 118 near Dyno Road, west of Cardiff in the municipality of Highlands East.

The driver of one of the vehicles was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not released any other information about the victim.

Police are continuing to investigate the cause of the collision.

For the second year in a row, Peterborough’s Little Lake Cemetery is hosting a public sunrise service on Remembrance Day.

The service will begin at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday (November 11) at the war memorial in the veterans’ section of Little Lake Cemetery (915 Haggart St., Peterborough).

“Approximately 70 people attended the service last year and we hope even more people are able to attend this year,” says Little Lake Cemetery Co. CEO James Belk in a media release. “We had many attendees voice their appreciation to us for putting on the service”.

The sunrise service will again be officiated by Regimental Chaplain Nancy Wilson of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, and will include playing of “The Last Post” followed by two minutes of silence. Staff will be at the main gates of Little Lake Cemetery to direct attendees to the service.

Little Lake Cemetery and Highland Park Funeral Centre are also continuing to work with various area schools in association with the No Stone Left Alone Memorial Foundation, which focuses on educating youth in Canada about Canadian veterans.

Local students will be placing Canadian flags at individual veteran’s graves in the days prior to Remembrance Day.