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Beavers fleeing St. Catharines for Thorold will have new bridge
Posted By DOUG HEROD

A pall of gloom descended on my column-writing world last week. The City of St. Catharines finally held its ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Merritt Street bridge. With a snip of the scissors, the life of a dependable, go-to topic had ended.

What, the city couldn’t have waited another six months for the bridge’s one-year anniversary?

Anyway, I was feeling pretty blue until I saw an ad this week about a new bridge project in Thorold. The project has a potentially controversial Laura Secord/War of 1812 connection.

Heck, all I had with the Merritt Street bridge was a Ricci’s Tavern link. And I quickly ran out of disco jokes.

Goodbye Ricci, hello Laura.

Briefly, the bridge in question is on DeCew Road, near Merrittville Highway, and traverses a water channel off Lake Gibson.

It’s a narrow, sub-standard structure that is used by relatively few travellers -- a few area residents, hikers, visitors to Morningstar Mill and scared beavers fleeing St. Catharines.

The bridge had been the property of Ontario Power Generation, but ownership was recently transferred to the City of Thorold. As part of the transfer arrangement, OPG agreed to pay for a bridge replacement.

Sweet deal, eh? I mean, as long as it’s on OPG’s tab, Thorold might as well insist on titanium footings and solid gold railings.

The city will be unveiling the preferred design at a public information meeting Feb. 12. The plan calls for a 13-metre-wide bridge that would accommodate two lanes of traffic, two bike lanes and one sidewalk.

The new bridge will be on the same alignment as the old one, which means that section of road will be closed during construction. A significant detour will be in order for travellers, except, presumably, for the displaced beavers.

If all goes well, Thorold officials hope the bridge replacement can take place this year.

The bridge is just east of DeCew House, Secord’s destination in 1813 when she left her home in Queenston to tell British Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon of a pending American attack.

Presumably in honour of her trek, OPG dubbed the structure the Laura Secord bridge. It was the name used during the transfer negotiations between Thorold and OPG.

This upset Thorold resident, local historian and Brock geography professor Alun Hughes to no end.

In a letter to The Standard last month, Hughes suggested the bridge name was an affront to history.

That’s because it’s "99.99 per cent" certain Secord came to DeCew House from the west, said Hughes.

OK, granted, it’s highly unlikely Secord’s route took her past the site of to-day’s bridge. And the bridge name may serve to convince people otherwise.

Still, the bridge is near the house she ended up at. Naming it after her gives the area additional historical cachet, right?

I asked Hughes if, in light of this, he wasn’t being, well, a bit of a fusspot.

"Oh, sure I am," he happily responded. Accepted local history is rife with errors or misleading information, he said, "so every opportunity I get, I correct things."

Neale, who grew up in Thorold, claims the bridge name exists primarily, perhaps exclusively, in OPG documentation.

He knows of no locals who refer to it as the Laura Secord bridge. It’s simply the DeCew bridge.

Neale vows to end any confusion. Now that Thorold officially owns the bridge, it’s in a position to change the name to DeCew.

Whoa, whoa, what’s the rush? If stretched out, this could be a new go-to topic.

Sonnofabitch! Ok, "Santa" happens to get a Guitar Hero World Tour set for the lad at Christmas! Woo fucking Hoo! Cool shit. Only if it all works......

There’s a guitar, drums, microphone, suddenly we’re the fucking Jackson 5’s, minus the colour shifting skinny pedo. And we are white with remarkably little music ability. Well me anyways. Coolio, microphone works. Drums, smash boom bah, it’s all good. Guitar - no sync. Press all sorts of buttons, many many times, even buttons that don’t make sense, I pressed em all.

Next logical step is to go through the support web page to see if we are doing something wrong. Nope. Ok, talk to tech support, get a link to create a RMA online, no sweat. Create an RMA, and wait. Waity waity wait. Keep checking RMA#1 status, "new" - no tracking number. I post a question to see what’s up - get some ridiculous advice about the drum set - wtf? Case closed. Wait a tic you fucking tree dweller, fuck all is closed! Shit has been closed!

Ok, time for the big guns, open up an express ticket, with a helpful customer support person. Holy shit, the HR department must have worked overtime to find someone this fucking stupid. Many people complain about the support line people in India, I wish. Fuck me talk about stupid. After a 15 minute painful episode of spelling out my email address "B as in BOPBALONGBONG........... G as in goop, M as in mango, A as in ape, I as in idiot, L as in lizzard, dot like on your fucking head....." Ugh. RMA#2 created, excellant. Make damn sure she hears that it is the guitar that is defective, not the drums, not the wireless USB dongle.

Email arrives today with packing slip and customs shit to print out: "Items to be returned in this RMA: CMP-00024 GH4 Guitar Wireless Dongle PS3 (Qty=1) "

Spoke to a very nice fellow named Tarik, who spoke english QUITE nicely, booyah progresss! New RMA entered, email received stating that I will be receiving an email from the logistics company with a PDF packing slip to FEDEX muh shit.......

Finally got the email for the packing slip in PDF format - it’s so blurry there’s no fucking way it would get to where it’s supposed to.

Got the Email, and the PDF Packing slip is legible! Just might get that fucking guitar before the kids graduate University.

Fedex Truck comes sliding to a stop, like they are in a hurry to hand me a working guitar!

Head over to Fedex store to return the RMA#2 dongle that was in no way shape or form shoved up any farm animals ass before shipping it back to Activision, in fact it was never even present when I visited my friends dairy farm over on Kottmier Road. Also ship the guitar in accordance to RMA#3. The guitar was in no way shape or form in contact with human scrotum, testicles and or penis prior to packaging either.

"You recently contacted Activision Technical Support about one of our games. We would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete a questionnaire that will help us improve our product. Click here to take this survey."

"The game itself is fine, the main issue was the frustrating and time consuming RMA process. The first RMA went nowhere, the inept customer service rep for the second RMA had marginal use of the English language and sent the wrong part, and the third RMA was handled efficiently. Perhaps if all the customer service reps hired were at least third generation upright walkers, the process would have been much smoother. Maybe if the HR department were to dismiss employees found lounging in treetops during lunch, an even greater customer satisfaction level could be gained."

The guitar arrived! And it was for the right system! And it had all the parts! And it came with batteries! And Duracell batteries no less! And it came with a new dongle! And it works! And I am so uncoordinated that I can’t play it!

It’s fucking cold. This winter sucks.
And since I have nothing good to write about,
Here’s some pictures of girls with really big tits!

After working a whipped-cream bikini in the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie, Chris Evans fried phone lines in Cellular and melted hearts as The Human Torch in the Fantastic Four films. Next seen as a telekinetic troublemaker in February’s sci-fi thriller Push, the 27-year-old revisits his steamiest photo shoot and outs his even hotter gay brother.

This may come as quite a shock, but gay men enjoy you.
I was well aware of that. I remember my mother saying, “Chris, do you know you’re #2 on some gay list [AfterElton.com’s Hot 100]. Brad Pitt is #12!” I was like, “What?!” I couldn’t believe it.

That was 2007. I hate to break bad news, but you dropped to #8 in ’08.
Aww, that’s outrageous! Who took my spot?

I forget, but Jake Gyllenhaal was #1 for both years.
What? Jake? Unacceptable. [Laughs]

It couldn’t hurt to play a gay role next.
I really wanted to be a part of Milk, but I lost out to James Franco. I guess if you’ve got to lose, he’s the guy to lose to. I did a movie called Fierce People where I played a sociopath who wasn’t gay, but he does rape a teenage boy. You come to find out he didn’t do it for sexual reasons; he just did it because he could. He really was a sick character.

Entire Article - http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid69526.asp

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