Hello Londoners! It’s Friday, so it’s time for a ROUNDUP. Oh wow and more wow, what a week - let’s get stuck in.
Welcome to London Ontario Online News, your fast-growing local news service where we collect useful information to support our community. Thanks for being a London Leader and reading The Loon. Every day we send you a wee thing, always about our shared city and always with public interest in mind, and we are grateful for your eyeballs, brains and hearts1. If you donate via a Paid Subscription, or you support one of our five splendid sponsors, we think you’re especially cool. Nice shoes.
And this is London, Ontario, where we are so sick of election signs and we’re counting the days: 39 until the vote, and they have just a few days to clear the damn things away. But we’re also loving the democratic process, which appears to be functioning well, to some extent, as we shall see. Keep scrolling - it’s wholesome here.
This, of course, is the ROUNDUP, a weekly buffet of newsy things to nibble on, so you’re +++ METAPHOR ABANDONED +++ well-informed when you need to make a decision. Thanks for being an engaged Londoner and skimming through this article to look for items of interest.
You rock.
Soundtrack of the week
Speaking of which, this week I found myself hanging out in East London in a fairly lively spot. There were several competing sources of music on the street and a lot of chatter, but I heard something familiar in the cacophony. I followed the sound and soon realized it was the keyboard playing of Ray Manzarek on this song, and it’s been in my head ever since. You can have it in your head too, if you like.
Seven minutes of music to aid your reading focus. Remember clicking a link will pause the play, as will playing the next video.
Local news time. Here we go.
Election 2026
Well, this was a remarkable week. Three of your content creators from The Loon - me, Matt Brown, and Steve Cordes - spent a stimulating afternoon at the Aeolian Hall, providing the questions for the Rogers tv Mayoral Debate, which you can find embedded here.
Do you like local municipal politics more than The Doors2? Click below.
It’s also over on YouTube here and will be broadcast regularly on a cycle over the next few weeks. The debate is 90 minutes long and features nine of the 12 registered mayoral candidates answering seven questions from the three of us. Host Christine Taleski was fabulous, of course.
It feels obvious, but I will say it. This is a wonderful opportunity for a local media start-up, and we appreciate this partnership with a media company at the other end of the scale. Thank you to everyone at Rogers for giving us a go.
We also appreciate all the participants: the candidates took on the questions gamely and even worked together to make the debate really buzz with life. I feel we all combined to make something that helps Londoners to choose their new mayor, and I’m so proud to be a part of it.
No, I won’t be watching it. It has me in it3.
More elex
As usual, let’s point you at City Hall Notes, where I covered this topic in some detail on Wednesday. And, of course, events continue apace. Here are a few updates:
Looks like Susan Stevenson is making weekly policy statements, starting with taxes - raises under 1%. The CTV headine was:
Meanwhile, Craig Needles gives us a good introduction to Ward 4 candidate Mario Jozic with this full interview on his podcast.
Ward meetings continue
The Urban League continues to host these meetings. Click the piccie for info.
Here’s some coverage from the Freeps of Ward 14 and Ward 9 events, but it’s better to go and experience this, if you have the strength. These have been packed events, often stormy, and I would go as far as to say some attendees have been quite mean-spirited. Still, thanks to the Urban League for their hard work as volunteers.
And I’m reminded of this election’s sleeping giant: infill housing. People are pissed off, in little pockets all over town. The effect on the ward races is hard to predict, but there is clearly an effect.
The 14 Wards - all 14 of 14
We did it! Cedric Richards and I somehow managed to record a podcast in every one of the city’s 14 wards, as part of his amazing series of articles diving into London’s municipal sectors. This week we completed the set with Ward 13, which includes downtown, Blackfriars and other nearby spots.
Thank you to everyone who has followed along, and remember you can take a look at those posts anytime (and that they are snapshots of when they were published, so make sure you’re aware of their dates). Special thanks to the amazing Cedric, who became a big part of my summer with these regular chats. What a great experience - and I hope it transmits some useful info, somewhere. I think it does.
Here’s that full list, oh my:
NEW - At the Core Of It All - NEW
And thank you to our sponsor, the London Bicycle Cafe, which you should totes visit.
Chekov break
I present a conversation about nuclear wessels, in celebration of the 90th birthday of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig, which was on Monday. I’m so glad to see him stick around this long. Live long and prosper, indeed.
And back to work.
Agriculture and the economy
I want to pick this one out because it’s important to our regional economy, which relies heavily on ag4.
Arva Flour Mill provided a backdrop this week as the feds announced a new $1-billion Agri-food Project Finance Fund. Local MPs Peter Fragiskatos and Arielle Kayabaga were there, as was Jack Sutton of CBC London, who gives us this story.
The idea is to fill a financing gap for projects that are too large or specialized for conventional commercial lending but not quite in mega-project territory. It’s to be delivered through Farm Credit Canada and aimed at mid-sized food and agriculture projects with capital costs between $25 million and $500 million.
Separately, Ottawa announced a $150-million investment in Velocity Agri-Capital Partners, with Arlene Dickinson on hand, focused largely on helping Canadian agri-food companies grow exports into Southeast Asia. Arva wasn’t getting a cheque but is a good example of the sort of ambitious, capital-intensive, mid-market operation the fund is designed around. Interesting stuff.
Let’s run through a few issues now.
Housing
There was some reporting about apartment construction this week, as it “continues to fuel London’s building trend”, according to this story from CTV London.
Education
I had a wee collection of education stories in the Wednesday column. Good weekend reading.
Separately, Catholic teachers have scheduled a strike vote.
Healthcare
And it’s a great relief to see more and more family doctors being encouraged to support Ontarians. Here’s a CTV story about the province’s new incentives for family docs. It’s about Learn and Stay Grants for medical students and quotes Alan Shepard, president of Western University.
The Lightning Round
Striking? Maybe. Just two this time.
Winter sun - nine flights a week from London to Cancun. LINK
Worth noting: 911 was out across Canada. LINK
Enough
How was your week? I hope you made it through with minimal damage and took time for yourself. We’re permanently two minutes from the next crisis and I’m convinced time is speeding up somehow - there will never be enough of it. Sometimes I make myself stop and look around in gratitude.
This week, I feel lucky to be here in Canada’s London, with its vibrancy and its community, mostly made up of people who want to find solutions to our problems. I was thrilled to hear that from every candidate at the mayoral debate, and I hope The Loon’s commitment to community and public interest storytelling comes across in those seven questions.
I think I’m an hour-or-so late this week. My apologies! Thanks for reading the ROUNDUP and The Loon and for all the sharp lines, from bottom-left to top-right, that feature in our platform analytics. Please keep telling your friends!
And never mind the haters. We can be better when we work together.
- Mike
The Loon (London Ontario Online News) lineup
New content every day.
We’ve teamed up to send you a new feature every weekday:
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And all the other parts, of course.
You should listen to the song first. No disrespect to the candidates or anything, but none of them are as cool as Ray Manzarek.
aieeeeeeeeeeeeee
Though much of it is soy that nobody’s actually eating.