The City of Peterborough is providing a total of $212,505 in community grants to 30 local community groups and not-for-profit and charitable organizations — including INSPIRE: The Women’s Portrait Project, Nogojiwanong Indigenous Fringe Festival, Peterborough VegFest, Peterborough Poetry Slam, Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts, New Stages Peterborough, and The Theatre on King.

City council endorsed a staff recommendation for the 2022 grants at the general committee meeting on Monday (March 7).

A total of $15,525 will be provided to 18 community groups under the community project grant stream, which is intended for smaller organizations and smaller programs and events from $250 to $1,000. A total of $196,980 will be provided to 12 local not-for-profit and charitable organizations under the community investment grant stream, which provides supports for projects and special events, specific programs, or operating budgets from $1,000 to $15,000.

Here are the organizations receiving community project grants, with the amount of the grant and the organization’s stated purpose for the grant:

• INSPIRE: The Women’s Portrait Project ($1,000) – “The funding will be used to create a video that tells the story of survivors of domestic abuse through photographic imagery and audio files accompanied by interviews with front line workers. The video will be accessible on the INSPIRE website, on social media and at the exhibit.”
• Quilts for Cancer Peterborough County ($1,000) – “The funding is used to purchase cotton fabric, quilting thread, quilting batting and flannel. The quilt tops are 100% cotton fabric. The quilts are given to cancer patients free of charge.”
• Bonaccord Community Garden ($1,000) – “As part of our wider interest in making Bonaccord a welcoming and accessible space for everyone, this proposal is for seed money towards the construction of 2 elevated 4’x4’x36inch garden beds. Currently Bonaccord offers only ground-level plots that pose significant barriers for people with a wide range of mobility challenges.”
• Peterborough Friends in Music Community Band ($1,000) – “Subsidizing students/at-risk youth, to recognize that music is important in their lives ($333); assist with cost to purchase a keyboard and timpani pad to enhance our community performances ($333); new music for learning and performing ($333).”
• Kawartha Wildlife Centre ($1,000) – “Funds will support the continuation of our educational outreach programs within elementary schools within Peterborough. This program teaches students how to build bee, bird, and bat houses for installation in schoolyards and in surrounding greenspace. Programming encourages students to think critically and apply their skills to benefit local wildlife.”
• Peterborough Veterinary Outreach ($1,000) – “Funds will be used to purchase necessary consumable medical supplies for the animals that we serve. These include core vaccines (rabies, distemper, feline upper resp) and flea/tick and parasite treatments. We carry a very limited supply of pain medications and antibiotics. Other supplies include syringes/needles, hand sanitizer, face masks, etc.”
• Sheet Seven Community Garden ($1,000) – “This year we are hoping to double the number of raised garden beds (add 14) to expand our community garden and allow us to provide gardening space for an even greater number of people. This project funding reflects tool rental, lumber, and hardware costs.”
• Operation Catnip Peterborough ($1,000) – “OC will commit $2500 to help subsidize the cost of spay/neuters for low-income caregivers. We pay our participating veterinary clinics a reduced cost of $140/cat, which includes spay/neuter surgeries, rabies and FVRCP vaccines. We would appreciate the full funding available again, as prices have also gone up (last year $130/cat).”
• Ashburnham Memorial Stewardship Group ($400) – “This funding will be used for outreach and engagement within the local community. We want to build local awareness of the group, engage residents and partners in planning for positive changes to the park, through environmental education (Guided Nature Walk, Bird Walks, Heritage Walks).”
• Nogojiwanong Indigenous Fringe Festival ($1,000) – “Funds will be used again to rent equipment and hire local technical personnel for our performance festival.”
• Peterborough Gleans ($1,000) – “We are requesting $1,000.00 from the City of Peterborough, as we did last year. These funds will be used for communication, co-ordination, and transportation to glean (pick) local produce for those who have low income and food insecurity in Peterborough. Eg.Lone parent-led families, Indigenous and welfare recipients.”
• Peterborough Community Medicine Garden ($800) – “The request is to provide weekly mentoring meetups to mentor and onboard new participants. Although current participants happily manage the gardens, only a handful are able to onboard and mentor new participants. The funds would enable our project to provide small honoraria for mentors to run weekly meet-ups.”
• Peterborough VegFest ($1,000) – “We hope to run a full in-person VegFest once again in 2021, on whatever scale is possible. Our free event features diverse food and product vendors with an emphasis on local businesses, as well as speakers, workshops, performers, and children’s activities.”
• Peterborough County Stewardship ($325) – “The requested funds will be used to support the building of habitat nesting boxes for community groups and individuals in Peterborough. Building materials are purchased locally and PCS works with Fleming College (Industrial Arts program) to build nesting boxes which are then sold to the public.”
• Peterborough Chinese Community Organization ($1,000) – “The funding will be used for a Chinese Culture Enhancement program involving the celebrations of Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese transitional arts show. The show will present Chinese transitional calligraphy, painting, and transitional Opera. We are excepting to have 450-500 clients to be serviced.”
• Peterborough Poetry Slam ($1,000) – “This year’s funds are intended to help us re-launch the PPS with a series of 15 virtual and/or in-person performances, as well as providing workshops, and writing-circles. We have worked virtually since 2020 and are eager to again expand audiences and support artists with safe, Covid-compliant virtual and in-person activities.”
• ME/FM Association of Peterborough & District ($750 – “The requested funds will supplement our 2022 budget, allowing us to continue providing education, encouragement and understanding to sufferers and family members during these uncertain times.”
• Dance Works ($250) – “This funding would allow the workshops to be shared amongst a variety of Impoverished communities such as persons living with disability. It would also allow for rental space within the City of Peterborough.”

Here are the organizations receiving community investment grants, with the amount of the grant and the organization’s stated purpose for the grant:

• The Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts ($15,000) – “To increase the effectiveness of our social programming to Peterborough’s Marginalized populations, to professionally develop our staff, and to adapt for performing conditions in 2022.”
• New Stages Peterborough ($8,000) – “New Stages Peterborough is requesting a Community Investment Grant towards operating costs for our season in 2022-2023.”
• Creating Space Community Arts Studio ($3,630) – “Please continue to sponsor this volunteer-run community arts studio, fostering connection, belonging, and resilience through free low barrier art making for 460-1400 community members annually.”
• The Down Syndrome Association of Peterborough ($8,000) – “The Down Syndrome Association of Peterborough is requesting $10,000 to support its’ Summer School to be held in August 2011 for students with Down syndrome.”
• Peterborough Theatre Users Group ($15,000) – “City funding will support the operations of The Theatre on King, an accessible community art space offering para-professional arts experiences and training.”
• Heads Up for Inclusion ($8,000) – “HUI is seeking support to continue development of a virtual platform, allowing persons with barriers to inclusion to connect to each other and their community.”
• The Art School of Peterborough ($8,250) – “The Art School of Peterborough requires financial assistance to help with the cost of clay for online pottery workshops and community outreach programs.”
• Junior Achievement of Northern and Eastern Ontario ($1,000) – “The investment grant allows Junior Achievement of Northern and Eastern Ontario to continue to inspireand prepare students to succeed in a global economy.”
• Trent Radio ($3,250) – “Supporting our local Producer Oriented Radio Undertaking which provides a media platform for community engagement, as well as training in communication and broadcasting.”
• Peterborough Concert Band ($3,200) – “The Peterborough Concert Band looks forward to continuing its 160 year tradition of live music for the citizens of Peterborough with this generous grant.”
• Artisans Centre Peterborough ($9,250) – “ACP is requesting funding to support an accessible artisan facility in downtown Peterborough and the advancement of its instruction in artisan disciplines.”
• P. R. Community and Student Association (Sadleir House Facility) ($1,400) – “We are requesting $15,000 to assist us in covering operating costs to cover the day-to-day costs associated with running a community facility.”

The city’s approved 2022 budget has allocated $20,350 for community project grants and $212,642 for community investment grants, leaving a surplus of $4,825 and $15,662 for each stream.

Surplus funds will be used for emerging 2022 community requests that are approved, and any unused funds at the end of the year will be carried over to the 2023 budget for the community grants.

The Kinsmen Club of Lindsay has donated $50,000 to the Ross Memorial Hospital (RMH) Foundation — the largest single donation the club has made to the foundation.

The funds will support the cost of medical equipment and technology at Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay that are not covered by provincial funding, including the hospital’s new CT scanner and MRI and digital transformation technology.

“This gift will help the hospital acquire the most advanced medical technology and bedside tools, and connect them to patients’ health information records, so that every test and treatment is noted in real time and available to patients and their healthcare team,” says RMH Foundation CEO Erin Coons in a media release.

“The volunteers who champion community causes through their service organizations are local champions,” Coons adds. “They are valued members of our donor family at the Ross.”

The Kinsmen Club of Lindsay, who announced the donation as as part of Kin Canada’s celebrations for the National Day of KINdness on February 20, attribute the significant increase in local
contributions to the growth of the Kinsmen Super TV Bingo.

“If there was any silver lining out of COVID at all, it’s that you stayed home to play bingo with Kinsmen Super TV Bingo,” says Brad Fraser, president of the Kinsmen Club of Lindsay. “As a result, we are able to share those proceeds. Thank you.”

Along with the $50,000 donation, the Kinsmen Club of Lindsay has previously donated to support the Ross Memorial Hospital’s first CT scanner, the redevelopment of the hospital’s maternity ward, and the capital campaign that doubled the size of the hospital 20 years ago. The Kinsmen Club of Lindsay’s cumulative giving has earned it a founder plaque on the hospital’s donor recognition wall.

The second Sunday of March is almost here, which means it’s time to “spring forward” as daylight saving time (DST) begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 13th and clocks move forward an hour.

Whether you call it “daylight savings” or “summer time” or “cottage time”, the good news is that we’ll get more daylight in the evening hours (the sun will set at 7:17 p.m. on Sunday night). The bad news is that we’ll lose an hour of sleep and it will be darker in the morning (the sun will rise at 7:29 a.m. on Sunday morning).

If you still have any manual clocks, remember to set them forward an hour before you go to bed on Saturday night.

The time change is also when you should replace the batteries in your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors and check whether the devices need to be replaced (if they are more than 10 years old, they probably do).

Who invented DST and why?

Although it’s commonly believed Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea for DST, it was actually New Zealand entomologist George Hudson.

In 1895, Hudson proposed a two-hour shift in the clocks (he wanted more daylight to collect insects).

“The effect of this alteration would be to advance all the day’s operations in summer two hours compared with the present system,” Hudson wrote in 1898, explaining his original proposal. “In this way the early-morning daylight would be utilised, and a long period of daylight leisure would be made available in the evening for cricket, gardening, cycling, or any other outdoor pursuit desired.”

A few years later, English outdoorsman William Willett also proposed advancing the clocks during the summer months (he wanted more daylight to golf).

The first governments to implement DST were Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1916, as a way to conserve coal during World War I. Britain and most other European countries adopted it shortly after, with the United States and Canada adopting it in 1918.

DST used to begin the first Sunday of April and end the last Sunday of October, but in 2007 the U.S. decided to change it to begin the second Sunday of March and end the first Sunday of November in an attempt to conserve energy.

To avoid issues with economic and social interactions with the U.S., the Canadian provinces that observe DST followed suit.

Why don’t we just get rid of DST?

If the Ontario government has its way, we’ll be ending the practice of changing our clocks twice a year — but by making DST permanent rather than getting rid of it.

On November 25, 2020, the Ontario government gave royal assent to The Time Amendment Act, a private members’ bill tabled by Ottawa-West Nepean MPP Jeremy Roberts that proposed making “the time now called daylight saving time the standard time year-round”.

Researchers in chronobiology (the study of biological rhythms) agree that we should get rid of the bi-annual time change, but not by making DST permanent. They say we should be permanently adopting standard time instead.

“Based on current chronobiology knowledge, permanent Standard Time (ST) would be a wiser, healthier choice,” the Canadian Society for Chronobiology writes on Twitter.

Chronobiologists say adopting permanent standard time would move sunrise closer to our body’s internal clock, while permanent daylight saving time would move it further away. It’s the light in the morning that is most important in resetting our biological clocks, they say.

And it’s not just the Canadian Society for Chronobiology advocating for the permanent adoption of standard time. The U.S.-based Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the European Biological Rhythms Society, and the European Sleep Research Society have all issued statements supporting getting rid of DST.

As for the province’s The Time Amendment Act actually being enacted, don’t hold your breath. Ontario will only make DST permanent if the province of Quebec and the state of New York do the same.

“We’ve built in a contingency to make sure that this bill will only come into force at the discretion of Ontario’s Attorney General,” MPP Roberts said in the Ontario legislature on November 25th. “The Attorney General has given me his word that he will not do this until we get our other neighbouring jurisdictions on board.”

What are the health effects of DST?

While the evidence is mixed, some research has found that when we “spring forward” the risk of heart attacks and traffic accidents increases.

Losing an hour of sleep in the spring can affect both your cognitive ability and your physical health, especially if you aren’t getting enough sleep to begin with.

That’s because moving clocks forward changes our exposure to daylight and affects our circadian rhythm (the body’s natural internal clock).

It can take up to a week to adjust your internal clock to the shift in daylight hours, so here are some suggestions for how you and your family can adapt more quickly to the coming time change:

• Each morning leading up to the time change on Sunday, try waking up 15 minutes earlier than normal.
• Also try going to bed 15 minutes earlier than normal each night. You can help prepare your body for an earlier bedtime by not eating two hours before you go to sleep, and put down your devices an hour before bed.
• Eat a healthy breakfast when you first wake up, as food is one way to tell your body it’s the beginning of the day.
• After the time change, expose yourself to daylight during waking hours as much as possible.
• Reduce your use of caffeine and alcohol during the day and increase your physical activity.

Beloved Peterborough costume designer and artist Howard Berry passed away on Thursday (March 3) in his 84th year.

Berry, who designed costumes for the Peterborough Theatre Guild for almost 40 years, had a lifelong passion for colour and design.

“I was just born this crazy creative person,” he told kawarthaNOW in a 2017 interview, in advance of a three-day retrospective of his work at The Mount Community Centre. “My father bought me my first sewing machine at the age of five. It was a little hand-cranked one. By age eight, I had a regular Singer machine and was making clothes for my mother and my sister.”

Born in Toronto and raised in Huntsville, Berry returned to Toronto in 1956 to enrol in Ryerson’s fashion design program. After they refused to admit him because he was a man, he enrolled in a three-year course at a private design school run by Toronto designer Galasso.

After he graduated in 1959, his father offered to either send him to Paris to work as an apprentice or help him set up his own design shop. For three years, he designed custom-made clothing from his shop on Avenue Road in Toronto.

After a series of other jobs, including one designing costumes for the early days of the Shaw Festival, in 1977 he moved to the Peterborough area. He eventually opened Howard Berry Designs in Charlotte Mews and, in 1980, began designing costumes for the Peterborough Theatre Guild.

“I will never forget going over to the Theatre Guild shortly after I arrived in Canada,” writes playwright Robert Ainsworth in a Peterborough Theatre Guild tribute to Berry. “The production was Oliver, directed by Gillian Wilson. I was so impressed with the production that I had to go backstage to see the behind scenes of this amazing local theatre.”

“The first person I met was the costume designer, Howard, who was altering the costume of a cast member, and boy did he know what he was doing! He was in charge and had everyone hopping. He was loud, direct and totally dedicated to his art. I have to say I was actually a little star stuck by his persona. That was 1982, and anyone who knows Howard will agree that dedication to his art never waned.”

“Over the years I got to know Howard’s work. I would chat to actors backstage before the production. When the curtain opened and those actors walked onstage they were totally transformed into their characters by Howard’s amazing costumes. You could walk into the theatre and know immediately who had dressed the set. The audience would be transported to nineteenth century France or fourteenth century Italy.”

“Howard was known to research not only what people wore in that country in that time period, but what materials were used, even down to the exact buttons and gloves. Much more than that was the man we all loved. Howard was a beautiful, talented man who always had a smile on his face.”

One of Berry’s final accomplishments for the stage was designing both the costumes and the set for the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s acclaimed 2015 production of of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.

“For Cats, you didn’t just make a costume.” Berry recalled in his 2017 interview with kawarthaNOW. “A cat’s head matches its body, so I worked with Carol Jones who was in charge of makeup at the time, and we went through catalogues to order wigs that would be the right colour to match the makeup and costume. Then I had a friend come in who styled each wig to get the character of each cat. Then when it came to the makeup, we had to match that in the face.”

“So we had to make the costume to match everything else,” Berry said. “That a lot of fun. We had a huge team of workers on that. We had twelve ladies doing costumes, and another eight ladies doing hair and makeup every night.”

The Eastern Ontario Drama League recognized Berry’s talents with a set design award in 1990, a best visual presentation award in 2008, and a costume design award in 2009. In 2009, Theatre Ontario also recognized Berry’s talents with a costume design award. In 2015, he and the cast and crew of the production of Twelfth Night received a cultural betterment award from the City of Peterborough. In 2018, Berry was inducted into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame.

According to the Peterborough Theatre Guild, a celebration of Berry’s life will be announced at a future date in the spring.

“When I pass I don’t want a big funeral,” Berry told Peterborough This Week in a 2017 interview. “I want a party at The Guild with six bottles of Scotch and someone singing ‘I Did It My Way.'”

Sobeys in Fenelon Falls has presented The Salvation Army with Sobeys gift cards worth more than $13,000.

During the Christmas season, Sobeys encouraged its customers and employees to make donations in support of the local food bank, which is operated by The Salvation Army.

“The help we are able to give is made possible by community partners such as Sobeys,” says Miya Bradburn, pastor at The Salvation Army Fenelon Falls, in a media release. “Sobeys gives back to its community, which inspires others to join them.”

With a building renovation completed, including a new commercial kitchen, The Salvation Army is planning to provide fresh snacks and possibly even meals for those facing food insecurity.

“With this wonderful gift, we have greater opportunity to provide healthy, fresh food to clients who might otherwise be unable to do so,” Bradburn says. “We have the means to provide fruit and vegetables now, supplementing the non-perishables the community so graciously donates on a regular basis.”

The Salvation Army also raised $51,257 during its Christmas kettle campaign in Fenelon Falls, Bobcaygeon, and Coboconk.