The glorious sunshine blazes down on Canada’s London and we are ready for June, safe in the knowledge we can cast a cloot now May is oot. The conversation is bubbling, the election is heating up and there are goslings everywhere, so this must be Ontario’s best little big city, filled with joy, contradictions and potholes.
Welcome to London Ontario Online News, your local news service that’s about to scale up, honest, I’m doing the admin, I’m an entrepreneur now, sigh. This is your weekly local news ROUNDUP, which will remain free and is designed to support our whole community with a news briefing.
The idea is: we need to know this, to lead well, but it’s hard to track. So an expert (that’s me, with an utter lack of humility) is helping out in a way that’s not too scary or depressing, usually. All you have to do is follow along, pay attention as best you can, and continue to give a damn about our community and the people in it. Simple, right?
I’m going to need a community to make it work, though.
Soundtrack of the week
Every week I hit you with some good noise that can play while you scroll safely. This week, with nothing particularly appropriate coming to mind, let’s get inappropriate with some classic Happy Mondays, which includes rude lyrics and Shaun Ryder leaving his fly undone. With music in my ears it’s a Happy Friday, too.
Backyard Chickens and other municipal matters
Of course, I already covered a lot of City Hall matters in my post yesterday, including those $300 fines for lazy owners who leave their dogs to boil in vehicles.
(I also found time to get the location of the Planning story completely wrong, and again I send my thanks to the folks who noticed and told me so I could do a quick edit.)
That post includes an update on candidates for city council and our school boards, and a few other bits.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Oh no. Here are more notable City Hall stories:
$1 billion plan to fix community housing
This was impressive stuff. Former councillor Phil Squire was back in the chamber as chair of London Middlesex Community Housing, and part of the team presenting a plan to improve housing stock.
You can find out more from Daryl Newcombe at CTV London here. And here’s the LMHC website with useful stats, such as: 3,286 housing units across 32 properties for more than 5,000 people.
Backyards and property lines
Imagine being stuck with (or without) a “pocket” of land at the end of your yard, trapped in paperwork pain from nineteen oatcake, and having to deal with City Hall to resolve it.
There’s a great story here from CBC London’s Andrew Lupton, talking to an affected Londoner and explaining the bureaucratic background1. Holy guacamole do not include me in that experience, wow.
Transit - oh my
So, here’s how I understand this: there was some kind of difficulty with running the buses and some folks resigned from the London Transit Commission’s oversight board. So councillors appointed themselves instead, continued for a while, and then asked a consultant what to do next. The consultant effectively said to put it back the way it was, and charged us lots of money for it. LINK and ANOTHER LINK
Replacing City Hall
Again, oh my. Is this just a debacle or a full omnishambles? Many councillors had pointed questions about the failed attempt to replace City Hall, and you can bet this one will run and run. I bet we hear about it in the election debates this year - it’s an open goal for any mayoral challenger, for a start.
And it’s all downhill from here
I would usually hesitate to link to a candidate’s event, but this one is just too good to ignore:
An election just ain’t enough to fill 2026 - we also need a soapbox derby. I’m delighted to see the 1950s return.
You can do your own jokes on this one - they write themselves.
Cartoon time
Here is a text message I sent this week.
I often talk about living in a cartoon. I used to live among foxes, hedgehogs and the like, and now it’s chipmunks, skunks, racoons and even a neighbourhood coyote. Like some kind of real-life gif, I can tell when it’s duck season or rabbit season. If a human-sized rooster showed up at my door, I wouldn’t be surprised - I say I wouldn’t be surprised, now looka, I say looka here.
Anyway2. Back to that local news we love to experience together.
Housing
Still hoping some sparky local journalist will gather all the current housing programs into one place. And, here’s the latest, 77 affordable housing units on Hill Street, in SoHo. Reporting from Lauren Stallone at CTV London there.
Roads
Pausing for a serious message now.
I used to be a news reporter in Perth and Kinross3, a beautiful place and the central point in Scotland’s roads network, and I can say without a word of a lie that a major factor in summer road deaths is empty-nesters buying their dream motorcycle and overestimating their own skills. I fully appreciate that road safety involves many complex factors and is everyone’s responsibility, and I also saw a lot of middle-aged men make bad choices.
Anyway, take care on the roads. Here’s a Free Press story about motorcycle safety.
Homelessness
There’s been an important local discussion this week about the closure of House of Hope, and it’s featured heavily in local media. This leads me to my first professional disclosure on this blog: through my main job as a Strategic Communications Consultant, I’ve been supporting House of Hope with communications services4.
And, it remains an important local story, so I will share an informational link, and thank everyone involved for engaging in the conversation: House of Hope worked.
And here’s a Craig Needles podcast episode that covers it well.
Education
Next, let’s find out more about Kevin Auckland, the new CEO of our public school board, who gave his first proper interview to Bryan Bicknell at CTV London. It’s interesting stuff, and I’m pleased he quickly fessed up to being part of THAT trip to the baseball. We should probably leave that behind now.
Local events
Hey, did you know London is hosting the Special Olympics Ontario Championships? It’s a massive event, covered by Rogers tv here, and attracting 1,100 people.
Events, eh? Want something highlighted? Tell me.
The Lightning Round
Blink and you’ll miss it! Here are some stories that might strike you.
It’s Eid al-Adha, and it’s a busy time for Londoners. Bit of Rogers tv community news there.
Now confirmed: THREE tornadoes - also CTV here.
A love a new mural, and here’s one in OEV.
Carfax wants to move from 100 Kellogg to Westmount mall. It’s all about space, apparently.
Outside London, but I strongly support the idea of Scone Fest5.
Fireworks displays are cancelled. Hello from me, with 10 years of experience in Bonfire Night6 events, telling you to go to an organized display, for safety.
And the City of London’s new street sweepers have names. Maybe I save you the click and share those names are Beeper the Sweeper, and Kevin.
Phew, that’s a lot this time. Let’s wrap up with…
Meet the locals
It’s been a strong start to the season for the London Majors, and you can find out all about it from local writer Todd Devlin here.
Todd runs a donation/subscription based outlet that I heartily recommend: Gameday London.
And here are more local storytellers you might follow:
Cedric Richards’ Southwestern Ontario Journal.
Steve Cordes’ Community Matters.
Matt Brown’s podcast.
…and look out for a new episode dropping on Matt’s podcast this afternoon.Larry Cornies’ audio blog.
Enough
A much longer roundup than last week, as our city continues to wake up for the summer. It’s exciting to see so much going on, and so much public conversation, of all kinds7. Now I get to spend time being a dad, which is easily the best hat I can wear.
I hope your weekend is filled with flowers.
Don’t sit on anything spiky.
- Mike
No apologies.
I’ll do my bit for tourism and link to Tripadvisor.
To find out more about my main job, you can visit my website.
Rhymes with “gone” and not with “moan”.
Not online message boards, no.