After a two-year absence because of the pandemic, Santa is returning to downtown Peterborough on Saturday (December 3) to take part in the 47th annual Kinsmen Santa Claus Parade.

The City of Peterborough has released information about road closures along the parade route, parking, transit detours, and more related to the parade, which begins at 4:45 p.m.

With increased vehicular and pedestrian traffic expected in the late afternoon, the city is also reminding everyone to leave extra time and use caution while travelling in the downtown area on Saturday.

Road closures

To allow for both staging and the parade procession, the following road closures will be in place starting at 4 p.m.:

• Antrim Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• Edinburgh Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• Dublin Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• London Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• McDonnel Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• Murray Street — Aylmer Street to Water Street
• George Street — Parkhill Road to Brock Street
• Prince Street — George Street to Park Street
• Aylmer Street — Lansdowne Street to Romaine Street

The parade will travel south on George Street starting at McDonnel Street and passing in front of City Hall at 4:45 p.m., ending and dispersing at Prince Street. A rolling road closure, supervised by Peterborough Police Services, will be in place along George Street during the parade.

Event volunteers will be available to remove barricades to allow for local access for residents and emergency vehicles along side streets. All road closures are expected to be over by 7:30 p.m.

Parking during the parade

No on-street parking is permitted on George Street between Brock Street and Prince Street starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday, December 3. Parking staff will be on-site to help ensure cars are relocated. Any cars still parked on George Street at 3 p.m. will be towed to a nearby lot. 

People are encouraged to park in the King Street Parkade at 202 King St., the Simcoe Street parking garage at 190 Simcoe St. or municipal surface lots at the following locations: 

• Chambers Lot at 184 Hunter St.
• Reid Lot at 350 Reid St.
• Surface lot at 365 Aylmer St.
• Rehill Lot at 210 Wolfe St.
• Del Crary Lot at 100 George St. N.
• Downie Lot at 336 Downie St.

Parking in municipal lots and parking garages is free on weekends. Any parking fees that are voluntarily paid during the month of December will be donated to Kawartha Food Share.

Residents are reminded to follow all on-street parking regulations that may be in place in the downtown area, including calendar parking where applicable. Please ensure fire hydrants and driveways are not blocked.

Transit detours

Starting at 4 p.m., Peterborough Transit will have the following route detours in place for Route 2 Chemong, Route 4 Weller, Route 6 Sherbrooke, Community Bus 22 – Blue and Community Bus 23 – Red. For more details, or call Transit Customer Service at 705-745-0525.

• Route 2 Chemong – Southbound from Terminal: Simcoe to Aylmer Street to Romaine Street to Park Street to Lansdowne Street to Lock Street. Northbound from Lansdowne at Borden: Regular route to Lansdowne Street to Park Street to Romaine Street to Aylmer Street to Simcoe Street
• Route 4 Weller – During the rolling road closure #4 westbound will follow regular route to terminal only. The eastbound bus will travel to the bus stop at Simcoe at Water streets. Customers will be directed to catch the bus at the Simcoe and Water bus stop.
• Route 6 Sherbrooke – Southbound from Trent (4 to 7:30 p.m.): regular route to Parkhill Road, right on Parkhill to Reid Street, left on Reid Street, left on Simcoe Street. Northbound from Terminal (during rolling road closure): Simcoe to Aylmer Street, Aylmer to McDonnel Street, left on McDonnel to Reid Street, right onto Parkhill Road where regular route resumes.
• Community Bus 22 – Blue – Southbound on George Street to Parkhill Road, right on Parkhill to Reid Street, left from Reid to McDonnel Street, travels right on Aylmer Street and continues on Aylmer Street to Charlotte Street where regular route resumes.
• Community Bus 23 – Red – Until the rolling road closure begins: Eastbound on McDonnel Street to Aylmer Street, right on Aylmer to Simcoe Street and continues on regular route. During the rolling road closure Eastbound on McDonnel Street to Aylmer Street, right on Aylmer to Romaine Street to Park Street, where regular route resumes.

Peterborough Petes game at the Peterborough Memorial Centre

There is a Peterborough Petes game at the Peterborough Memorial Centre on Saturday evening starting at 7:05 p.m.

With the Santa Claus parade affecting traffic in the area, people attending the game are encouraged to plan for extra travel time when getting to the game. Paid parking at the Memorial Centre opens at 4 p.m. and the arena doors open at 6 p.m.

A group of young hockey players has demonstrated the holiday spirit is alive and well by making Christmas a little more magical for a few local families in need.

The under-13 team of the Central Ontario Wolves AAA hockey program, which includes kids from the City of Kawartha Lakes, Peterborough, Trent Hills, and Scugog and Peterborough, donated their own money so they could purchase gifts for a family of three (two parents and a teenage boy), as well as another teenage boy and a teenage girl.

With the help of their coaches and mom, the players raised almost $1,350.

The players met with their coaches on Giving Tuesday (November 29) to decide what to purchase for each person and to shop for the items.

“The boys did an excellent job on picking out the items,” says Courtney Bribeau, ice scheduler with the Central Ontario Wolves. “They learned the joy of helping others, and that the true spirit of Christmas is all about giving, not receiving.”

“We are so proud of this group of boys and so grateful that the Wolves are able to spread some Christmas cheer and support those who need it the most.”

Back in mid-January, when anti-vax protesters concluded that it was somehow a good idea to accost Peterborough’s medical officer of health at his East City home, they would have been wise to do their homework.

The man who answered their door knock on the evening of January 19th wasn’t going to be easily intimidated, if at all. With his having worked in war zones as a field doctor with Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), this intrusion was child’s play — a nuisance, yes, but nothing that came close to shaking his resolve.

Just seven weeks earlier, on December 1st, 2021, Dr. Thomas Piggott started his new job at Peterborough Public Health, his arrival coinciding with the emergence of the life-threatening COVD-19 Omicron variant.

While serving as medical officer of health for Labrador-Grenfell Health last year, Dr. Piggott had heard that Dr. Rosana Salvaterra was retiring after 13 years as Peterborough’s top public health official. A subsequent phone chat with her, according to Dr. Piggott, “planted a seed that started to grow.”

He interviewed for the position and, on August 12th, Peterborough’s board of health announced that Dr. Piggott had the job.

“It was a little sooner than my family had anticipated leaving Labrador, but we had a pretty difficult time there during the pandemic being so far from family (in Ontario),” recalls Dr. Piggott. “It really made us think about being closer to family, which is something we deeply value. This was in the back of our minds when the opportunity came up.”

“I had heard about Peterborough Public Health, having worked in Ontario before we moved to Labrador,” Dr. Piggott adds. “I knew it was an organization that was deeply respected in the province, especially for its leadership on things like health equity, fairness, and the social determinants of health.”

His first day on the job, says Dr. Piggott, presented the “giddy excitement of a new opportunity in a new place.” However, he adds, “That was quickly eclipsed by omicron, which worried us significantly. What might have been a more slow start meant I had to hit the ground running.”

That he did, bringing himself up to speed quickly on key local public health issues and priorities with the help of input from the board of health and the senior public health leadership team. While the continued response to the pandemic was priority number one, another challenge caught Dr. Piggott’s full attention: the stress on public health staff.

“They had been working non-stop for nearly two years at that point — they were tired,” he recalls, referring to public health staff’s organization and coordination of vaccination clinics, the fielding of countless phone and email inquiries, and the communication of numerous directives and key messages.

“Also there had been events, including people coming into our building and some charges laid in conjunction with that. Staff was quite scared. I knew I was going to have to help lead the team in a way that supported and protected them; that valued them and recognized just how much they had sacrificed to help our community.”

So it was that Dr. Piggott’s mandated public health protection of the residents of Peterborough city and county and Hiawatha and Curve Lake First Nations also took in the well-being of those toiling at public health’s King Street office in downtown Peterborough.

He says the January protests at the home he shares with his wife and two young daughters “really impacted some of our staff. They became fearful.”

With two people charged with criminal harassment and intimidation of a health official in the aftermath and the matter still before the courts, Dr. Piggott won’t say much about incident, other than noting he has experienced “far more significant and concerning safety threats.”

What he will comment on is the huge outpouring of public support that followed.

Conceived and organized by a small group of residents, kawarthaNOW publisher Jeannine Taylor among them, a Facebook group — Nogojiwanong Peterborough Stands With Dr. Piggott — brought forth countless messages of support while quickly swelling to some 1,500 members.

If the relative newcomer to Peterborough didn’t know how much the vast majority valued his efforts — and those of his staff — to keep them safe, he now had full evidence.

“It was really heartwarming,” says Dr. Piggott. “I shared a lot of those messages with staff. Even though they were initially directed at me, the whole staff could see and benefit from the positive messaging. I’m not somebody who likes taking positive feedback. I’d rather focus on what can I do better and how we can do more.”

Now, as COVID continues to hang on — the latest numbers show 340 active cases in the region with two more deaths recorded last week — and influenza and RSV cases continuing to rise, Dr. Piggott expresses the same message he has since day one: take the steps necessary to keep yourself and those around you safe.

“What I think is important and what I’m really emphasizing at this point of the pandemic, is there are big societal changes we can make to continue to live with this pandemic and prepare for others in the future,” he says.

“It’s not just things like masking. It’s not just things like getting vaccinated. There’s ventilation in buildings. If you have poor ventilation, the transmission of infectious diseases can be worse. We need building codes. We need individual organizations to take leadership and say ‘We’re going to develop better ventilation and ensure that the air is cleaner and safer.'”

“We say ‘Stay home when sick’ — that’s easier said then done in practice,” Dr. Piggott notes. “If it’s between a paycheque to put food on the table and staying home to protect work colleagues, people are going to make the decision that puts their colleagues at risk. We have to improve access to adequate paid sick leave.”

“It weighs very heavily on me that we’re still seeing a lot of transmission and we’re still seeing death from COVID. It’s not over. It’s not done. Vaccines have been a game changer and have helped protect most of us, but that’s not the silver bullet. We need multiple layers — multiple measures — to really do the best that we can in saving lives.”

Dr. Piggott says while public health guidance sometimes finds itself at odds with government decisions and directives, he fully understands how things work.

“Politicians are the ones who put policies and laws into place. When they make those decisions, I think medical expertise is an important factor but it’s not the only factor. They have to weigh values and preferences of the people that elected them and that they serve. They have to weight economic considerations. I’m always mindful that my perspective is one that is grounded in medical expertise and public health evidence, but it’s a little bit more complicated when it comes to their decisions.”

If there’s a silver lining to COVID, Dr. Piggott says it can be found in the partnerships formed as part of the collaborative response to the pandemic.

“It’s not just me. It’s not even just public health. We worked with partners: family physicians, family health teams and the primary care community, the hospital, our municipalities, community organizations, and the media. I never looked at it like I’m in this work alone. The pandemic brought us together but we need to work hard to learn from what we learned and take that next step so that we can ensure we do better the next time.”

In the meantime, one year since arriving at Peterborough Public Health, Dr. Piggott is more convinced than ever that applying for position was the right move, both professionally and for his family.

“It has more than lived up to my expectations,” he says. “It has been a pretty interesting year. I hope that future years are little bit less dramatic. I’m so grateful for the incredible team I have here that works tirelessly to try to improve the health of our region. I have so much respect for them.”

As for his life outside of work in Peterborough, Dr. Piggott also has only positive things to say.

“The region is wonderful,” he says. “I’ve had the chance to do lots of hiking, canoeing, and cross-country skiing. My family is really happy and we look forward to many, many more years here.”

Fleming College graduate and Anishinaabe professional and entrepreneur Steve DeRoy is one of seven recipients of the 2022 Premier’s Awards.

Launched in 1992 and administered by Colleges Ontario, the advocacy voice for the province’s 24 colleges, the Premier’s Awards recognize past and recent graduates from Ontario colleges who have made outstanding social and economic contributions in their fields and in the community.

A total of 126 graduates were nominated for this year’s seven award categories, with DeRoy receiving the award in the technology category.

A 1998 graduate from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) – Cartographic Specialist at Fleming’s Frost Campus in Lindsay, DeRoy is the co-founder and director of the Firelight Group, which provides community-based research and technical support to Indigenous peoples.

In 2014, he founded the Indigenous Mapping Collective — an annual workshop that aims to build a global community of Indigenous mappers who tell their own stories of place and space — with technology partners Google, Esri Canada, Mapbox, NASA, and the Canadian Space Agency.

The Indigenous Mapping Collective has since trained more than 2,500 Indigenous community mappers on emerging geospatial tools, becoming the largest global Indigenous geospatial network. More than 3,000 Indigenous communities in Canada have been added to Google Maps and Google Earth thanks to DeRoy’s work.

“Fleming College prepared me with the tools to engage in storytelling through maps and geographic information systems technologies, to stay curious, and find creative solutions to tough problems,” DeRoy says in a media release. “These foundational skills continue to be applied in my daily work as we build a global community of Indigenous mappers.”

DeRoy received his Premier’s Award at a gala event on Monday (November 28) at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel.

“We are so proud of Steve and all of his achievements,” says Fleming College president Maureen Adamson. “His work has helped thousands of Indigenous people mark their place and space in this world, on their terms. We are proud of Steve’s accomplishments and look forward to the next phase of his journey.”

The other receipients of the 2022 Premier’s Awards are Jennifer Green from Conestoga College (apprenticeship), Jason Rasevych from Confederation College (business), Shereen Ashman from Centennial College (community services),  Murray Brewster from Niagara College (creative arts and design), Mark Cameron from Humber College (health services), and  Erica Williams from Niagara College (recent graduates).

The Peterborough Petes’ annual Pink In The Rink fundraising campaign will celebrate and honour local hockey moms who have been affected by cancer, with proceeds supporting cancer care at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC).

The 14th annual Pink in the Rink games takes place at the Peterborough Memorial Centre at 7:05 p.m. on February 4, 2023, when the Petes will face off against the Oshawa Generals.

Details of the campaign were announced on Wednesday morning (November 30) in a media conference at the hospital with the Petes organization and the PRHC Foundation.

“The number of patients from Peterborough and the surrounding area who rely on PRHC to support their cancer journey continues to climb,” said PRHC Foundation president and CEO Lesley Heighway. “It’s events like Pink in the Rink and organizations like the Peterborough Petes — along with the people and businesses who support them — that fund the tools our experts need to save and improve lives.”

The Petes are now accepting nominations at gopetesgo.com/pink-in-the-rink-2023 of local hockey moms who will be honoured leading up to and during the February Pink in the Rink game.

You can also honour someone who has been affected by cancer by having their name appear in the design of the official Pink in the Rink game jerseys, which will be worn at the game. The cost fo each name is $20 and can be purchased by contacting Ian MacGregor at the Petes Office at 705-743-3681 ext. 201 or at imacgregor@gopetesgo.com or online at gopetesgo.com/petes-pink-in-the-rink-official-jersey-name-order-form.

Over the past 13 years, the annual Pink in the Rink campaign has raised a total of $900,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society. This year’s fundraising goal is $50,000, with proceeds going to the PRHC Foundation.

“With your help, we’ll continue investing in vital technology upgrades like our interventional radiology suites, where cancer is just one of the conditions treated, and experts perform minimally invasive biopsies, install intravenous chemotherapy ports, and even offer precise, targeted cancer treatments — safely and quickly so patients can go home sooner,” Heighway said.

Tickets for the 14th annual Pink in the Rink game on Saturday, February 4th against the Oshawa Generals are available now in person at the Grant Thornton Box Office (151 Lansdowne St. W., Peterborough), by phone at 705-743-3561 during regular business hours, or online anytime at tickets.memorialcentre.ca. Group ticket are available by contacting Hailey Bentley at the Petes Office at 705-743-3681 or at hbentley@gopetesgo.com.

“On behalf of PRHC’s patients and everyone who loves them, thank you,” Heighway said. “Together we’re ensuring our hospital remains a trusted place of healing and hope for you, your family and our entire community, now and always.”

Police are investigating after a 25-year-old man died when his vehicle struck a tree in Peterborough early Wednesday morning (November 30).

At around 2 a.m., officers were called to the area between Armour Road and Rogers Street, south of Parkhill Road, after reports a vehicle had struck a tree at the entrance to Nicholls Oval Park.

A 25-year-old man who was driving the vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not released the name of the victim.

A 26-year-old man who was a passenger suffered minor injuries.

Police say they will be in the area while they continue the investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to call Peterborough police at 705-876-1122 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or online at www.stopcrimehere.ca.