I'm spending the day marking my ten-year blogging anniversary by looking at some old posts that I've written over the past ten years.
And one of those old posts is rather timely.
If you've been in northwest Ontario lately, you've noticed that the construction of the area Walmart is nearly complete. I'm not certain of the opening date, but it's pretty clear that the store will be open in time for the shopping season.
Which, in a sense, is a miracle. If some people had had their way, that Walmart would never have been built. As it was, the project was delayed.
Why was the project delayed? Well, an organization called the "Ontario Mountain Village Association" mounted a fight against the Walmart, and the OMVA's website (which no longer exists) listed a number of arguments against the Walmart. Here are some of them:
Development of the Wal-Mart Supercenter must be stopped because:
It will draw additional traffic, noise and trash into our neighborhood.
The City does not need the revenue.
The Mom and Pop businesses do not need the "made in China" competition.
A 24-hour Super Center will act as a magnet to attract a dangerous criminal element into our neighborhood, especially from midnight until daybreak, seven days a week.
We, the voters and property owners, don't need 1,400 additional cars and trucks clogging the streets of our community every hour.
Back when the OMVA's website still existed and these arguments were still prominently displayed, I wrote a rebuttal to all of them (especially "The City does not need the revenue") in a blog post.
That blog post appeared in my Ontario Empoblog, an old blog that I used to write.
And just to show you how long this fight has been going on, that post was written on October 23, 2005.
I'm glad that Mr. and Mrs. Dave Taylor are still around to finally see the Walmart. I'm not sure what Anita Logue will do. Maybe she's helping the chairman of the Inland Oversight Committee.
