Raise the Hammer

@Chris Angel (are you trying to tell me that is your real name?) Mine is Greg Galante. It's registered here. I don't know why it doesn't show up.

You say you aren't angry and then you go on to call people who post here who are pro WH as gutless. Say you're not angry again. Really with conviction now.

Have you ever read what the Future Fund is about? It's not about building shopping malls on top of wheat fields. And if you really want to know. I run my own business based out of downtown, I am a capitalist at heart and am probably slightly right of Attilla the Hun on the political spectrum. I started posting here and getting involved in this process because a private business tried to hijack a public process and parlay that into a sweet heart deal for itself. It's just wrong. The fact that pro sports teams have been able to do it in other places doesn't make it right here. Council and the mayor did the right thing. Period. The Future Fund was established exactly for the types of projects envisioned in the West Harbour. These types of investments work. Ignore the evidence of this all over North America all you want. The West Harbour was not pulled out of left field. It was in the bid book sent to Pan Am. It was in the bid book sent to two previous Common Wealth Games bids. If Bob Young and the TiCats had a problem with it, they should have spoke up a long time ago. Instead they gambled and lost and now they are trying to sabotage the entire process so they can say I told you so.

As far as embracing dissenting opinion I do it everyday on this issue during my everyday activities and on forums like this. The refrain from people opposed to the WH is the same every where. " The mayor and council have lost the TiCats and the stadium"..... "Why is the city trying to screw Bob Young"..... " a stadium in the WH won't work".... "you left wing socialists just hate sports" and on and on and on...... never backed up by one ounce of fact.

May I remind you that this website, this movement did not start off as an organized political movement. It does not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising campaigns to try and sway public opinion. There is no Kool Aid served here. People flocked to this site and movement in frustration, anger and concern that the democratic process was being hijacked. If you are unhappy with the results, sorry for your loss. You have an opportunity to voice your feelings come election time. Tell me Chris. Did you attend the committee of the whole meeting on August 10th? I did. I sat there from start until about 4:30pm. Overwhelmingly the people that spoke in support of the West Harbour came from diverse and disimilar back grounds, socio economic strata and across a broad range of ages. There were socialist activists, students, and captialists. None of them bashed Bob Young as a person, or the Tiger Cats as an institution. Your ranting has no basis in fact. For some reason your view on this is so slanted that you have lost the ability to remove fact from opinion.

And yes it is about the core. For most of my lifetime I've watched the downtown ignored, while zoning and development was allowed to run rampant on the mountain and the suburbs. Mistake after mistake made downtown followed by neglect, lack of property standards enforcement, the proliferation of dollar stores and bingo halls, little to no residential developments, ridiculously high business taxes and the embracing of a suburban development mentality. Jackson Square, the Eaton Centre, Copps Coliseum were all built as centers of commerce and entertainment while paying no attention to the fact that you actually need more people living downtown in order for places like that to flourish. We seem to have turned a corner. Now we have to see it through.

As far as your talk is cheap shots. Again.... merely your opinon. You have no way whatsoever to qualify or quantify your assertions. Your generalizations about "pointy heads" not being sports fans again give you away. FYI, some of us "pointy heads" played elite level sports. Some of the "pointy heads" that played those sports have been key in developing the plan for the WH Stadium.

There is no stipulation that the Tiger Cats be on board with the WH stadium. Its been reaffirmed by both senior levels of government. If they waffle again on this it will be political suicide in this town for them. This isn't over yet but I'm much more confident than you that this city will move forward positively in the West Harbour WITH a new stadium.