South Dundas deputy mayor first to file

Attractions Ontario has named Darren Dalgleish, General Manager & CEO of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission as one of two recipients of the Tourism Champion of the Year award. 

Attractions Ontario introduced the new award category “Tourism Champion of the Year” in 2013, to recognize individuals in the tourism industry with the following criteria:

•provided significant organizational employee assistance, commitment, enthusiasm and used specific expertise in guiding the business

•provided exceptional internal and external customer service

•shown exemplary initiative and leadership

•illustrated depth of involvement in the business.

Darren Dalgleish joined the SLPC in April 2011, charged with the challenge to execute a corporate transformation to create business growth and long term sustainability.  

Bringing with him extensive experience in business renewal and development, in just two years he has led the implementation of significant changes at the St. Lawrence Parks Commission to ‘lean’ business processes and reduce waste, improve market share, cost effectiveness, preserve the core attractions and enrich opportunities around them, research and build new events with a primary focus on customer satisfaction.  

Dalgleish introduced the ‘Kaizen’ business philosophy of continuous improvement and has engaged staff from all levels of the organization to identify and bring forward ideas for incremental change improvement.  The results of a net performance improvement of 40 percent speaks for itself.

Dalgleish is quick to share the honour with his team commenting: “We wouldn’t realize the business results we’ve achieved in the past two years without the entire St. Lawrence Parks team working cohesively and without the combined innovation and enthusiasm that our staff share for our attractions, recreational products and experiential integration and satisfaction.”

The SLPC staff have enjoyed recent industry accolades for event excellence from Festivals and Events Ontario including 2012 Top New Event of the Year honours for Upper Canada Village’s new fall event Pumpkinferno and Top 100 Events in Ontario for Fort Henry’s Sunset Ceremonies (eighth time) and Upper Canada Village’s winter lights festival Alight at Night (third time).

Looking forward to 2013, Dalgleish has exciting plans for more improvements and the introduction of exciting new events and program enhancements.  

“We are just starting to hit our stride.  This summer we will introduce an exciting new high-tech sound and light wall projection experience as part of Fort Henry’s Sunset Ceremonies that will transform the visitor experience.  In August we will host the PGA Tour Canada ‘Great Waterway Classic’ at Upper Canada Golf Course.  This will be the first PGA Tour Canada event in Ontario.”  

“Upper Canada Village is developing another new event called ‘Food Lover’s Field Days’ scheduled for August.  Plus we have invested over $1.6 million in our parks infrastructure to vastly improve our visitor services and their experience camping in our campgrounds. It’s another exciting year of growth and support for our surrounding communities and partners.”

Celebrate Ontario recently awarded the SLPC $300,000 to fund four events including Fort Henry’s Concert Series and Fort Fright and Upper Canada Village’s Pumpkinferno and Alight at Night.

The SLPC strives to boost the local economy through the enrichment of product mix and is confident that the regional communities and municipalities will realize significant benefits. 

 Product enrichment is a key part of the SLPC’s strategic direction to serve the community in a thoughtful and entrepreneurial manner by making its vast array of attractions and experiences more economically accessible and collaborative while at the same time ensuring future growth and fiscal improvement.

[…]

All a person has to do is just mention the name of guitarist Adrian Legg. 

Immediately music lovers explode into rapturous descriptions of his multi genre style, his extraordinary and original compositions, his legendary showmanship, his infectious joie de vivre. In short, they love this transplanted Englishman and artist, who will be lighting up the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage in concert on Saturday, November 15, at 7 p.m.

“I have been fortunate enough to have seen Adrian Legg in concert twice – and would gladly see him nightly…” said Eric Thom (a former Morrisburg resident who writes music reviews for Maverick, Sing Out, Roots Music Canada among others). “(Legg’s) standalone style combines with elements of classical, jazz, folk, rock and even country, to create something altogether other-worldly and completely captivating.” 

Adrian Legg has built an international reputation based on his completely unique finger style approach to the guitar. Recipient of numerous musical awards, and consistently on top of musical polls, Legg performs on a custom guitar that is a hybrid of electronic and acoustic. I asked him about “inventing” his instrument.

“The guitar wouldn’t do what I wanted,” he said, “so I changed it. For me, the American guitar goes from Elizabeth Cotten to Lonnie Mack, taking in banjo and steel guitar. While others devotedly tend individual trees, I just love the whole wood. I need an instrument that can come close to reflecting that.” 

A teacher and mentor to other artists, Legg has just released his 12th album, Dead Bankers, to great acclaim. I asked him where the inspirational ideas for his music come from. “Tunes have a technical vehicle and an emotional idea. Sometimes they meet and work, sometimes they don’t…sometimes the music just arrives. I don’t really see music as a business. I keep learning. I have to, I keep writing things I can’t play,” he laughed. “We have to learn new words sometimes to say more clearly what we want to communicate, and so it is with music.”

His on stage versatility is the stuff of legend. “(My heart) lies in the moment…Sometimes music is very simple. A good piece of pop can tell a human story very quickly and simply. Sometimes the story is more complex and there are more layers to discover and understand. How can anyone lose a passion for music? That must be a kind of death.”

Live performance is Legg’s forte. He loves an audience. As he once wrote, “Playing live is the whole point. Everyone makes a journey:..we all come together to share this wonderful, universal, human emotional interaction. This is where music lives.”

And, as Eric Thom puts it, Adrian Legg’s sense of humour is as infectious as his music. “This warm, completely affable Brit…generously provides hilarious banter along the way. (Concert-goers) are in for one unforgettable experience.” 

Opening for Adrian Legg on Saturday evening will be a young guitarist who is just beginning to make his mark on the Canadian music scene. Chris Thompson first appeared on the Stage in an Intimate Acoustics show case in 2011. A finger style guitarist himself, Thompson said that he is “excited and honoured to be sharing a stage with a musician as talented and decorated as Adrian. He’s a true genius and a guitar master.”

Thompson has two albums to his name now, and is a composer who “tries to write songs that meet a balance between catchy and melodic, while still being musically and visually exciting.” About two years ago, he went back to basics, focusing more on “building a strong melody and recognizable cohesiveness to my music.” He’s been working on improvisation, blues and jazz. Like Adrian Legg, Chris Thompson loves live performance. 

“I really feel strongly that music should always be genuine and from the heart. Part of what makes music performance so powerful is its power to connect you with people. When you’re singing or playing a song that really hits home to an audience member, that’s when the magic happens. The fact that you can tell a story, evoke emotion, and share a connection with someone over some sounds on a guitar is beautifully fascinating to me.”

Tickets for Adrian Legg in concert at the St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage on Saturday, November 15 at 7 p.m. are $18 in advance or $20 at the door. Contact the Stage website at www.st-lawrencestage.com/shows.

[…]

Like everyone else, even the township gets hit with unexpected costs now and again.

On October 4th, Don Lewis, Manager of Recreation, informed the South Dundas council that three of their roof top units for two of their buildings had been red-tagged by the gas company, meaning that the gas won’t be turned on until the heaters are replaced or fixed.

The Morrisburg Justice Building has two roof top units needing immediate attention. One, almost 20 years old, will be completely replaced. The other, only ten years old, will require only the heat exchanger to be replaced.

The remaining roof top unit in question is also close to 20 years old and can be found in Iroquois at the Civic Centre. This unit will be completely replaced.

A tender invitation is being advertised in this week’s papers.

In terms of financing the repairs, Treasurer Shannon Geraghty told council that there “are some potential items we’ve saved on this year” as well as “savings we could pull from.”

As Mayor Steven Byvelds pointed out, “things break unexpectedly.” He said that he agreed with Geraghty, “we should find savings out of the existing budget.”

[…]