Trevor Dailey's Weblog

My first impressions of the way the newly elected London City Council is headed is Council is to all intents and purposes being more foolish and downright stupid. The latest is this "no kill wildlife" policy that Council is considering without, of course, knowing what they are doing is reported in the November 20, 2014 edition of the Londoner newspaper.

The City of London, which not long ago established a no-kill policy around companion animals, will now apply the same standards to wildlife - even without knowing the costs

"Car verses deer" incidents are a very serious problem. This is when a driver hits a deer that runs suddenly in front of the driver's travelling vehicle. Before a couple of years ago, I blamed this on driver error. Going too fast, not paying attention, it was the driver that was to blame. That was until I was driving down a city street in Downtown London, and a deer ran in front of my car.

Fortunately for me and the deer, my speed was slower than normal at the time of the incident, and the deer was not struck, but it was very close. The speed in which the deer appeared and blurred across the front of my compact car, partially disappearing from view, before racing onto the other side of the road in the built up residential neighbourhood was astonishing. Had I struck the deer, it is unlikely with the size and speed of my car that the deer would have been killed. I would have likely had a wreaked car, and a wounded and suffering deer to deal with. Something I could not deal with myself. The police would have to be called, and an officer would need to shoot the deer to put it out of its suffering.

London has long had a large white tail deer population that nobody ever wants to deal with, and this new stupid idea from City Council will do more to ensure the population grows to levels too large. Deer, like many other animals, do not do well when crowded. Deer are not herd animals. The more deer in a area is not better. Starvation, disease, and conflict between individiual deer (males) are just some factors that effect an over population of deer. Another factor is humans and deer coming into conflict with each other in such ways as deer destroying property, or vehicle and deer collisions. The deer population cannot be managed by natural means, as so many people seem to think. Predators naturally help to manage the populations of prey animals.

Wolves prey on deer, and occasionally bears do too, but there are none of those predators around here anymore. Coyotes have moved into the area, and are also a predator, and usually hunt deer in Winter, or fawns in the other seasons, but deer is not the coyote's main prey as coyotes are opportunistic feeders. 

A large population of prey animals will eventually attract predators to the area. A black bear came into the City a few years ago, and was shot dead by police after it became aggressive. The reason the bear came south is not known, but a large food source of deer should be examined as a slight possibility, as well as the strong possibility the bear population is not being managed properly because of unfounded restrictions on bear hunting imposed by the Provincial government.

Humane methods of killing is one way to manage wildlife. An annual deer count, and a cull if necessary to keep the deer numbers in check, and the deer population healthy. Problem wildlife need to be killed if there is no other reasonable option. City Council needs to come up with a plan based on reason and reality, and not emotions and fantasy, to manage our city wildlife. 

© Trevor Dailey 

The South Street Hospital has been completely demolished. I always feel bad when a historical building is destroyed because of my strong interest in history. The South Street Hospital was very large, and was architecturally unlike any other hospital in the City. Now it is gone. The land has been been turned over to the City after the hospital was withdrawn from service (Healthcare is Provincial jurisdiction). That is where the problem really starts for me.

London has a "City Planner". This person, an unelected bureaucrat, seems to have the power to arbitrarily decide what is built in London. His plan is a familiar one, to develop the area and "revitalize" the area. Like all of these schemes, the taxpayer is billed. In this latest one, the taxpayer was billed $10 to $15 million to destroy the South Street Hospital. This came from mostly from City and Provincial taxes. 

What the City Planner has planned for the land remains a mystery. We are patronized with games of wait and see. It is all part of the master plan that will create some extraordinary development that we will all be amazed by and revel in as it transforms the declining area into a glorious thriving place it once was. How many times have we heard this before?

Why could the City not just put a "For Sale" sign on the property, and sell the Real Property on the open market? Why could buyers not make fair real estate offers on the property? Why cannot private developers develop city properties on their own? Why cannot private architects design new city buildings on their own? Why cannot the City not meddle? Because the City has a "Plan" and a "City Planner" that is why.

© Trevor Dailey

South Street Hospital Decommissioning

Demolition of antiquated South St. Victoria Hospital campus begins in February

Interest pouring in over former South St hospital site

Audio: Just Right - 293 – Municipal meddling / Media polemics

I do a very dirty job, and the first thing I want when I come home is a shower. When I turned on the shower faucet this evening after work, there was no water. The City is doing water main work on my street. I live in an apartment building. The end of this work has been extended by about three weeks.

The first thing that goes through my mind is I am not going to have water until at least tomorrow morning. I can't take a shower, flush the toilet, wash dishes, drink water, brush my teeth, or wash my hands. It quickly reminded me how water is a necessity, and how having modern plumbing can be taken for granted. The same can be said for hydro (electricity) another necessity we take for granted.

After about an hour, the water was restored, and it got me thinking about the City spending so much money on other things besides things like water and hydro infrastructure. These are the things the City should be spending time and money on, but it never seems to be doing enough of that.

We have a newly elected City Council in London and some, including myself, see it as (another) left wing, socialist, municipal government that is inclined to monument building, social experiments, authoritarianism, and other such things, instead of doing only what a municipal governement should be doing.  

It makes me wonder if this water problem is a small sign of things to come? 

© Trevor Dailey

Suppose on a visit to my doctor, I mention I feel I am overweight, or maybe I am over weight, and that I would like to loose some of that weight. The doctor agrees that I could lose a few kilograms. I ask my doctor to help me lose some weight.

The first thing my doctor does is conduct a range of tests on me, checking my overall health, making sure I am around where I should be health wise for my age, and making sure there are no health issues that could be causing my extra weight gain. After all of this, my doctor gives me a diary with instructions to record what and how much I eat, and when, to the best of my ability for four weeks. After the four weeks, I am to return to the doctor with the diary. If the tests reveal anything of importance before, I will be contacted. At the end of the four weeks, I return to the doctor with the diary. The doctor tells me I am about as healthy as a typical man my age should be. I have no health issues of concern. We can go to the next step. My doctor refers me to a nutritionist.

My diary is examined by the nutritionist. I am taught about food, calories, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, nutrition, etc.. What my body needs, why my body needs it, and where I need more or less of something. From there, a diet plan is designed for me based on what I am currently eating. Somethings are added, somethings are removed, somethings are increased, some things are lowered. The nutritionist refers me to a physical exercise specialist.

Based on my doctor's advice, the physical exercise specialist designs for me an exercise program for my physical condition. This plan will be modified as necessary as I progress. I will have regular visits to my doctor during my weight loss program so he/she can monitor my health.  

A question might be, why one would go through all that work just to lose a few pounds when all one needs to do is go online, read a book, watch a video, or choose a popular fad or starvation diet?

Because weight loss and weight management takes time and it takes work. There is the science of human health. There is no magic in weight loss.

© Trevor Dailey

Prisoner Diet, Britain, 1862. 

Ingredients for Soup and Gruel:  The soup to contain, per pint, 3 ounces of cooked meat, without bone, 3 ounces of potatoes, 1 ounce of barley, rice, or oatmeal, and 1 ounce of onions or leeks, with pepper and salt.

The gruel to contain 2 ounces of oatmeal per pint. The gruel on alternate days to be sweetened with three quarter ounces of molasses or sugar and seasoned with salt.


In seasons when the potato crop has failed, 4 ounces of split peas made into a pudding may be occasionally substituted; but the change must not be made more than twice in each week. Boys under 14 years of age to be placed on the same diet as females.

The Hallowe'en discussion was about haunted places around the City. I mentioned one, the old McCormick factory. The people around the table looked at me, and at each other. I told the story.

The McCormick factory, as it is still known, sits vacant and dark 100 years after it was constructed in 1914. The Company was first owned by the McCormick family, then was sold in 1937 during the "Great Depression" to George Weston Limited that continued on with the business successfully for 50 years. After, the Company was sold to Culinar, and 7 years later was sold to Beta Brands. Then Beta Brands went into Court ordered receivership after 9 years, and the factory closed, left abandoned.

Frank McCormick was the youngest of the three brothers who bought the Company from their late father's estate in 1907 after working with their father, Thomas, for many years. They would construct the now century old then state of the art factory. When the Company was sold to Weston in 1937, Frank stayed with the Company. He bought shares, holdings, and interests, in the Company, and he would be President of the Company until his death in 1965. He was the last surviving McCormick to be with the Company.

The arson that occurred at the vacant factory in 2012 was the first time I heard something was strange about the old McCormick factory. After the fire, contained to the 1950s built warehouse section, was extinguished, firefighters were told someone was seen in the 1914 part of the factory in one of the upper windows. A search of the factory found no one. Then I started hearing more stories of a figure in the upper window of the vacant factory.

When people who had seen this figure contacted me, I was somewhat dismissive. There were people in the factory who had broken in. Anyone could have been in there and happen to be looking out one of the windows. No, this was not what it was. They didn't know or care anything about the McCormick factory. It was abandoned, and it was an eye sore many told me they thought. Each person told me the same story.

Walking along the sidewalk in front of the McCormick factory at night, the person would have a strange feeling, and then the urge to look at the building. When they did turn their head to look, they always looked directly at the same window, and instantly into the face of a figure in the window staring back. The figure would vanish in a instant as soon as the person looked away. The figure is seen in an upper window in the tower portion of the factory that faces the street from the front. From questioning the witnesses, I determined the window is a window of the old guest waiting room, and later possibly the Board Room, or senior level offices of the factory. The figure is described in all accounts as being an average size man, in his mid 40s, short dark hair, dressed in a dark suit and a striped tie.

Curious to find out what these people had seen, I gathered some old photographs of groups of people. All were company photos, but only two were from McCormicks. I showed these photos to each person who witnesses the figure in the window, not revealing anything about my motive. When one certain photo was shown, each person always reacted to it. "That's him!"

The photo is a group McCormick's employees posed standing on the front steps of the factory in 1928. Pointing to a person in the middle of the back row, each person identified this man as the same person seen staring out the vacant factory window at night. The man in the photo they point to, wearing a dark suit and a striped tie, is Frank McCormick.

© Trevor Dailey 

Just Right is a weekly podcast I listen to. The program airs live every Thursday from 11:00 to Noon before it is recorded to a podcast, usually within a few hours of the show. Just Right is broadcast live on the FM station CHRW 94.9 here in London (Ontario, Canada). There had been two times I have listened to Just Right live over-the-air. The first was just to find out how good the signal was, and the second was because I wanted to listen live regarding Bob's and Robert's (Just Right) opinion on the Municipal election without waiting for the podcast. The second time I listened I was at work. This means I had to carry an old small AM/FM radio in my pocket with "earbud" headphones in one ear.

I was able to hear 94.9 loud and clear most of the time, but there are a lot of "dead zone" patches in the small building I work where the signal is static, or silent as I move through them. I am uncertain why the building has this effect on some radio frequencies and not others. After listening to Just Right Live one day, on October 31, I decided to listen all day to find out if I liked the radio satiation overall.

My two two reasons for this was CHRW is an independent radio station from the University of Western Ontario (I still call it by its former formal name) that operates on almost entirely volunteers and donations, and I am sick and tired of the mainstream music radio stations airplay. When I hear the same songs repeated over and over on a radio station for years, and the radio stations are all playing the same songs as other radio stations, I've had enough. I decided to try CHRW.

CHRW is not always professional level radio. The volunteer "DJs" are mostly young and amateur. It is not always polished and smooth like a professional radio station. That doesn't matter to me. CHRW has weekly shows (some in languages other than English) that cannot be found on other radio stations. I have heared new music on CHRW, some I liked, some I did not like, but the majority of it was new music to me, and many times new music that had be recently released. While still mostly music, some music show hosts add discussion or commentary to their shows as well. CHRW is not the best radio, but it is different, it is independent, and because of this it will grow and evolve, It will not go stale or rigid as so many other radio stations on the air around here have. 

© Trevor Dailey