GROWING LIKE A WEED: Councillor Shad Qadri told the Fairwinds Community Association last week that the city’s latest population estimates put our ward at 31,841 people in 2015, up by 857 (or 2.77%) over the previous year.
Overall, the city’s population grew by just under 1% to 960,756 residents. The fastest-growing wards were Somerset (4.19%), Gloucester-South Nepean (3.53%), and Barrhaven (2.78%).
Qadri said Stittsville will eventually grow to 70,000 residents, more than double today’s size. He said that a trend to watch for is increased density in older areas as property owners subdivide large single-home lots to build multiple houses. (Disclosure: I’m the president of the Fairwinds Community Association.)
| Ward | 2014 Population | 2015 Population | Change | % Change |
| Orleans | 49,291 | 48,915 | -376 | -0.76 |
| Innes | 40,350 | 41,011 | 661 | 1.64 |
| Barrhaven | 56,139 | 57,698 | 1,559 | 2.78 |
| Kanata North | 35,561 | 36,258 | 697 | 1.96 |
| West Carleton-March | 25,583 | 25,599 | 16 | 0.06 |
| Stittsville | 30,984 | 31,841 | 857 | 2.77 |
| Bay | 45,451 | 45,512 | 61 | 0.13 |
| College | 52,586 | 52,271 | -315 | -0.60 |
| Knoxdale-Merivale | 39,664 | 39,632 | -32 | -0.08 |
| Gloucester-Southgate | 47,480 | 47,281 | -199 | -0.42 |
| Beacon Hill-Cyrville | 33,912 | 33,437 | -475 | -1.40 |
| Rideau-Vanier | 47,897 | 48,569 | 672 | 1.40 |
| Rideau-Rockcliffe | 38,605 | 38,294 | -311 | -0.81 |
| Somerset | 39,269 | 40,915 | 1,646 | 4.19 |
| Kitchissippi | 42,305 | 43,143 | 838 | 1.98 |
| River | 48,669 | 48,561 | -108 | -0.22 |
| Capital | 37,306 | 37,526 | 220 | 0.59 |
| Alta Vista | 45,180 | 44,993 | -187 | -0.41 |
| Cumberland | 45,849 | 46,554 | 705 | 1.54 |
| Osgoode | 27,487 | 27,682 | 195 | 0.71 |
| Rideau-Goulbourn | 27,409 | 27,443 | 34 | 0.12 |
| Gloucester-South Nepean | 47,248 | 48,914 | 1,666 | 3.53 |
| Kanata South | 47,502 | 48,706 | 1,204 | 2.53 |
| TOTALS | 951,727 | 960,756 | 9,029 | 0.95 |
Source: 2015 population data via City of Ottawa
PETITIONS: Two petitions came across the StittsvilleCentral.ca newsdesk last week. First, Councillor George Darouze (Osgoode) launched a petition calling for “hydro harmonization”, asking the provincial government to close the 30% gap between Hydro One rates and Hydro Ottawa rates in rural Ottawa. That’s an issue affecting many residents in the northern part of Stittsville too. More info…
“This is a wonderful initiative which requires the support of all Ottawa residents to correct Hydro price disparity. A copy of the petition will be available in my Ward office at the Goulbourn Recreation Complex,” wrote Qadri in his weekly newsletter on Friday.
The other petition was from a group called Safe Streets Ottawa, in support of a motion from Councillor Riley Brockington (River Ward) to ask the provincial government for the ability to implement photo radar as a tool to enforce speed limits. The petition recommends that residents tell their councillors that “Photo radar is an effective tool for speed limit enforcement and we should have the option of using it where chronic, dangerous speeding is putting people at risk of death and injury.” You can read more about that one here…
Councillor Qadri also weighed in on this issue in his newsletter:
“There are many instances of well-intentioned traffic mechanisms not always operating as intended. Stop signs, for example, may effectively work to bring vehicles to lower speeds; however, reckless drivers may run through the sign, endangering the lives of pedestrians who thought it was safe to cross the street.
Likewise, photo radar’s effects may prove unpredictable. Though a speeding deterrent, it will need to be demonstrated that the immediate effects will work to actively slow down drivers rather than simply punish them long after the risk has already been incurred.”
I agree with Qadri that it’s important to see studies on how effective photo radar could be at reducing speeds. But I must admit I don’t understand the logic in his stop sign example.
MORE SIGNS OF SPRING: Earlier this week the Kevin Haime golf school opened for the season. We also saw announcements from two food trucks about their opening dates: Thailicious comes out of hibernation on March 28, and Wiches Cauldron re-opens on April 19.
POTTER’S KEY: As of Thursday there’s a temporary building installed on Minto’s Potter’s Key property next to the Jackson Trails mall. It looks to me like a future sales office for the development.
CANADA DAY: The Stittsville Village Association is looking for volunteers to help organize and run this year’s Canada Day festivities. There’s a planning meeting on March 22 at 7:00pm at Thresher Avenue. For more info contact Tanya Hein at tanya.hein76@gmail.com
I highly doubt that “all” of Ottawa’s residents would ok the subsidizing of the profits of a company (Hydro One) they’re not buying services from.
The only *fair* way to “harmonize” them, is that the province maintains a grid, and that private companies can feed electricity into it, and where customers can choose from which company to buy electricity from.
A built in pricing could include the length of distance to the electricity provider you’re buying from (paying the grid).
Such a construct would create a competitive market.
But right now, it’s just really wrong, and you can’t ask people to cough up money to subsidize the victims of mismanagement elsewhere.
As for photo radar, that’s just a cash grab. Yes, some people drive too fast, but generally, people are *NOT* the crazy reckless mindless drivers you see for instance in Toronto. It’s all pretty seasoned and laid back, how people drive in the west end at least. It gets worse further into the city and the east end is rougher, probably because it’s more crowded and congested there.
But installing a photo radar that sits there nailing people doing 70 in a 60, is just purely a cash grab. This whole position of “you should just drive the speed limit” doesn’t work. The speed limits don’t work this way. Yes, on paper is says so, but in practice, everyone knows that people go a little over. It’s always been that way.
If photo radar is going to grab cash from people doing like 10 over, then you have to raise the speed limits by 10 in many places, and then advertise that doing a single km over might get you a ticket.
But simply doing nothing but installing photo radars, is only going to aggravate people. And that is going to cause people to pass and change lanes aggressively, because people will be annoyed at people’s decision making on the road.
And that works against safety. And that’s the point, is it not? Safety? The status quo works much better, because people drive according to perceived standards and accepted tolerated behaviors. If traffic needs calming and tapering, make more cruisers visible!
And again, simply going “oh but you should drive the speed limit” is totally ignorant.
And lastly, with all this growth, it is time, yet again, to bring up the Catholic high school situation in Stittsville. Or rather, the lack of a public one. The Catholics managed to “own” the area by installing a French Catholic one right next to the existing Catholic one. All nice and lush, shiny tall ceilings, tinted windows, park settings, right next to the community center, plenty of fields, all nicely done up an all. And what about people that don’t want to see their kids indoctrinated and sucked up into religion? They have to go an outdated sorry looking public high school out in Richmond, that was slated to be demolished in the 80s.
The argument that a Catholic school is merely the same as a public high school plus just a religion class that you can opt out of, is not fair argument. It just doesn’t work that way. The community expects you to be on board with the whole doctrine thing. There is a chapel, messages throughout, and a shared sentiments for invisible divine beings watching your every move. Like prayers before the picnic, begging for nice weather, or trying to influence other things through begging.
Religion should be kept out of schools. Schools is where all kids should be able to go to together. Later in life, they all have to work together. This segregation and classifying is very wrong and very out of tough with the world.
Catholics are happy with their more luxurious lush status, and they’ll defend it using all sorts of excuses. They’re simply not being fair or honest. So all of this has to change. We do that by removing the religious aspects from all publicly funded schools, and make it so that all kinds can pick a school simply based on location and don’t have to feel they have to avoid certain schools because them not feeling that they’re part of a given religious mindset.
We’d also save upwards to $1,000,000,000 every single year by not having a school system duplicated like we have now.
The majority on Ontarians have shows, through petitions, that people want to see this happen, but the government is refusing to touch the subject. They simply pretend the issue isn’t there.