Central Elgin councillors are preparing to adopt a budget that will increase the municipal property tax levy by 3.95 percent or $450,085. Finance Director Karen DePrest, citing a real example, said a $254,000 home last year increasing in assessed value to $259,000 this year would pay an additional $47.05 on its property tax bill from…
Port Burwell Public School pupil Leah Giesbrecht looked inside a bucket for the collected sap from a maple tree during a tour of the Springwater Forest sugar bush on Monday morning, March 30. Leah and the rest of teacher Lori Hill’s Grade 2/3 class first took a guided walk through much of the nearby forest on the…
An early morning fire on Monday, March 30 destroyed an apartment at the back of 332 John Street South in Aylmer. Located right across the street from the town fire hall, the occupants of the home, Darrel and Lily Ralf and their Husky dog Comanchie, came home at about 12:20 a.m. to find their home…
Swimmers reacted to the frigid waters of Lake Erie during a Polar Bear Dip organized by Port Stanley volunteer firefighters on Saturday, March 28. The event was a fundraiser for Childcan, which assists families with a young one receiving cancer treatments.
About two centimetres of wet snow fell in the Aylmer area on Thursday morning, March 26 making for slick roads and pretty landscapes like this one in Optimist Park looking west towards the Elm Street bridge that spans Catfish Creek in town. Colder than usual temperatures were to remain in the region over the following…
Malahide volunteer firefighter Karl Baumgarten stopped to take a closer look at some artefacts from his fire department’s history that were on display at Aylmer-Malahide Museum and Archives on Wednesday evening, March 25. He and most of the rest of the firefighters from Malahide Station One (Mount Salem) visited the Museum in their dress uniforms…
McGregor Public School pupils Grace Smith, left, Olivia Thompson, front, Adrianna Borm and Rachel Ross learned how static electricity works by rubbing cups against their hair and, in the case of what is pictured, sticking them to the top of their heads so that the cups would stick during the Mad Science after school club…
Central Elgin councillors on Monday night, March 23, and Elgin County councillors the next day unanimously backed the decision of Thames Valley District School Board to transfer some French-immersion pupils from overcrowded Pierre Elliot Trudeau Public School in St. Thomas to undercrowded Port Stanley Public School starting Sept. 1. Trudeau has just under 800 pupils,…
In an over three and a half hour joint council session on Monday, March 23, elected officials from both Aylmer and Malahide decided to take no action on sending out a request for proposals to look for an outside, private management firm to take over the operations of East Elgin Community Complex. One of the…
Carter Nevill, 9, left, Christina Funk, 12, and Community Access Program site intern Faith Braun played the Wii game Just Dance 2015 and danced to the song You Look So Perfect by Five Seconds of Summer during a Wii camp at Straffordville Public Library on Friday afternoon, March 20. The Wii camp was the last of…
A “flood watch” issued by Catfish Creek Conservation Authority on Tuesday morning, March 17 was downgraded to a “watershed conditions statement” on the morning of Friday, March 20. The change from a watch to a statement indicated that creek conditions had improved, CCCA Water Management Technician Peter Dragunas wrote in a media release. “Flooding in low-lying…
Sisters Emily Froese, 7, left, and Lynn, 10, made green “slime” out of some water, white glue, food colouring and some detergent during the Lil’ Scientists-themed day camp at East Elgin Community Complex on Thursday afternoon, March 19. The Complex offered the camps each weekday of the March Break that week. Other activities included skating,…