To Market To Market To Buy A Fat Pig

Last Wednesday I went to the park to enjoy the concert. The 48th Highlanders were playing. The park was packed. M&M Meat Shop was there, barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers, popping corn and selling ice cream bars. It was a beautiful evening - the kind that makes for happy memories.

The special events co-ordinator of the town has organized these evenings for years. They plan the programs and find the sponsors. Home Hardware was the sponsor last week. People are able to enjoy quality entertainment and it doesn't cost them a cent.

Staff salaries of course are paid out of taxes, but year round there are fun things going on for the entertainment of people of all generations. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves of the good things happening and the people who work for us with energy and enthusiasm.

This year we did not have a July 1st Parade. On the other hand, the celebration at Lambert Wilson Park gets better every year. The parents and children who flock to the park leave no doubt the events are well received.

Still, the lament for the Parade was loud and bitter. Considering the glory days of the July 1st Parade were due entirely to community volunteers and an entire year of hard work, commitment and ingenious planning by literally dozens if not hundreds of people, I find it hard to understand the sharpness and the target of the criticism.

If the volunteers are not there to throw heart and soul into the enormous undertaking of a successful parade, just who is it who has the right to stand on the sidelines and shout recriminations?

I do not consider The Farmers' Market in the class of a July 1st Celebration or a summer concert in the park. But If some people are charmed by the opportunity to shop for fresh produce from a stall on a Saturday morning, that's fine with me.

If entrepreneurs want the opportunity to ply their wares at a stall on a Saturday morning, I find nothing objectionable about that either.

What I do not understand is why I should be expected to jump at the chance to put my hand in someone else's pocket for money so others can enjoy shopping at a market?


Neither do I understand why all the checks and balances in place to ensure accountability in public spending should be set aside, so that some or any politician can set himself up as a heroic figure of famers market enterprise. Any day now ,I expect to see a statue in the Temperance Street parking lot of a man in a toga wearing a laurel wreath on his head.

If I wanted to indulge myself as a rip-roaring critic of any person thus far involved with The Aurora Market, the only thing stopping me is my own discipline. Thus far, I have confined myself to simple disagreement that the town's taxpayers should be required to contribute anything at all towards the success of what I perceive to be a commercial endeavour.

The Market has been in place four years. Every year, vendors return. That has to be taken as a sign of success. Why else would a farmer from Uxbridge drive to Aurora every Saturday to peddle his wares? Why would he imagine he has a right to demand taxpayers of Aurora should dig into their pockets to help finance his endeavour?

I do not agree with colleagues who apparently fancy they are presiding over the burgeoning treasury of a Charitable Foundation, a Service Club or a Philanthropic Organization. They scatter money about like flower petals on a Path of Righteousness. I don't do that with my own resources. I am not about to do it with money belonging to people who trusted me not to.