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Mark Dunn was an old-school newspaperman who went about his work with a smiling ferocity, a description he’d probably send to the rewrite desk.
A senior parliamentary reporter for Sun Media, he was a plain dealer, using a salty tongue and an acerbic wit to cut through political baloney, defend the little guy and make squirmy our pampered elites.
He was also a hell of a lot of fun. And when he died Oct. 25, 2014, only 54 years old, both the meek and mighty mourned at a funeral service where both bawdy stories and liquor broke out.
One afternoon this week, I found myself kicking the snow away from a granite foot-stone installed at the base of a memorial tree planted in Dunn’s honour in New Edinburgh Park, his old stomping ground.
His mother Eleanor, 79, helped, poking at the snow — maybe the world — with her cane. We finally found the letters set in black: Mark Andrew Dunn / 1960-2014 / Journalist / Friend of Truth.
Eleanore Dunn, 79, planted a tree as a memorial to her son Mark – a journalist who died in 2014 – in Stanley Park.
“I’ve been around this town long enough to know,” she said, herself a retired newspaper hand, “that a healthy distrust of what you’re being told is probably not a bad idea.”
Dunn is worried a massive construction project on adjacent Stanley Park, plus a major overhaul of the playground about 25 metres away, will harm or even destroy the little red oak, which cost $400 and is now about four metres tall. It is one of a half-dozen planted on the first and third-base sides of the ball diamond.
“I don’t think they gave much thought to the people who had planted the memorial trees,” done as part of a city program, said Eleanor.
The family, for the most part, grew up in New Edinburgh and Mark and his siblings spent a good part of their childhood around these playing fields.
Eleanor, in fact, has been around long enough to remember train tracks through the historic burgh and an old ice house that stored frozen blocks from the Rideau River. She too would like a tree planted nearby in her name, instructions she has left in her will.
A staffer from Coun. Tobi Nussbaum’s office told her tree won’t be affected by construction, but she’s dubious. “That’s what they keep saying. I just know there are a lot of things that can go wrong with these big projects.” (Who, she asks, anticipated a sinkhole in the middle of Rideau Street?)
And “big” is the right word. In late 2016, the community began to fully grasp that Stanley Park would be the main staging area for the city’s Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel, a key part of keeping the Ottawa River clean.
For $232 million, the city is laying a cross-shaped network of pipes so long (six kilometres) and so big (three meters wide) that it can hold millions of litres of overflow sewage water in the event of a large rainfall. (It holds the water back, then releases floodgates when treatment capacity improves.)
The pipe is being laid behind a tunnel boring machine that is to begin its westward journey down a deep, wide shaft on the edge of Stanley Park. An estimated 30,000 trucks will exit the park carrying fill, some of it contaminated, over a three-year period.
One of the main truck routes, too, is right by the ball diamond. Not only that, but the city is redoing the playground near the tree, so earth will be churned, swings and playhouses rejigged, fences and boulders moved about. Trucks, dozers, shovels: they will be aplenty.
It is conceivable, surely, that little trees might be knocked about.
Nussbaum has been trying to explore other options for the dig, mitigate the harm and keep open the lines of communication with residents, who feel left in the dark.
Just days ago, in fact, residents were told that having the boring machine start at LeBreton and end at Stanley Park (reversing the current, preferred plan) would cost as much as $30 million more. So it may be a non-starter.
Still to be worked out are the truck routes out of the community, which is hardly built for such a volume of heavy loads. And noise: it is possible construction will take place until 10 p.m. during the most intense months.
“You can tell people everything will be fine and dandy, but something unforeseen can happen,” said Dunn.
Absolutely. Who would have thought putting a big pipe in the ground, after all, would rattle the living and the dead?
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
A senior parliamentary reporter for Sun Media, he was a plain dealer, using a salty tongue and an acerbic wit to cut through political baloney, defend the little guy and make squirmy our pampered elites.
He was also a hell of a lot of fun. And when he died Oct. 25, 2014, only 54 years old, both the meek and mighty mourned at a funeral service where both bawdy stories and liquor broke out.
One afternoon this week, I found myself kicking the snow away from a granite foot-stone installed at the base of a memorial tree planted in Dunn’s honour in New Edinburgh Park, his old stomping ground.
His mother Eleanor, 79, helped, poking at the snow — maybe the world — with her cane. We finally found the letters set in black: Mark Andrew Dunn / 1960-2014 / Journalist / Friend of Truth.
Eleanore Dunn, 79, planted a tree as a memorial to her son Mark – a journalist who died in 2014 – in Stanley Park.
“I’ve been around this town long enough to know,” she said, herself a retired newspaper hand, “that a healthy distrust of what you’re being told is probably not a bad idea.”
Dunn is worried a massive construction project on adjacent Stanley Park, plus a major overhaul of the playground about 25 metres away, will harm or even destroy the little red oak, which cost $400 and is now about four metres tall. It is one of a half-dozen planted on the first and third-base sides of the ball diamond.
“I don’t think they gave much thought to the people who had planted the memorial trees,” done as part of a city program, said Eleanor.
The family, for the most part, grew up in New Edinburgh and Mark and his siblings spent a good part of their childhood around these playing fields.
Eleanor, in fact, has been around long enough to remember train tracks through the historic burgh and an old ice house that stored frozen blocks from the Rideau River. She too would like a tree planted nearby in her name, instructions she has left in her will.
A staffer from Coun. Tobi Nussbaum’s office told her tree won’t be affected by construction, but she’s dubious. “That’s what they keep saying. I just know there are a lot of things that can go wrong with these big projects.” (Who, she asks, anticipated a sinkhole in the middle of Rideau Street?)
And “big” is the right word. In late 2016, the community began to fully grasp that Stanley Park would be the main staging area for the city’s Combined Sewage Storage Tunnel, a key part of keeping the Ottawa River clean.
For $232 million, the city is laying a cross-shaped network of pipes so long (six kilometres) and so big (three meters wide) that it can hold millions of litres of overflow sewage water in the event of a large rainfall. (It holds the water back, then releases floodgates when treatment capacity improves.)
The pipe is being laid behind a tunnel boring machine that is to begin its westward journey down a deep, wide shaft on the edge of Stanley Park. An estimated 30,000 trucks will exit the park carrying fill, some of it contaminated, over a three-year period.
One of the main truck routes, too, is right by the ball diamond. Not only that, but the city is redoing the playground near the tree, so earth will be churned, swings and playhouses rejigged, fences and boulders moved about. Trucks, dozers, shovels: they will be aplenty.
It is conceivable, surely, that little trees might be knocked about.
Nussbaum has been trying to explore other options for the dig, mitigate the harm and keep open the lines of communication with residents, who feel left in the dark.
Just days ago, in fact, residents were told that having the boring machine start at LeBreton and end at Stanley Park (reversing the current, preferred plan) would cost as much as $30 million more. So it may be a non-starter.
Still to be worked out are the truck routes out of the community, which is hardly built for such a volume of heavy loads. And noise: it is possible construction will take place until 10 p.m. during the most intense months.
“You can tell people everything will be fine and dandy, but something unforeseen can happen,” said Dunn.
Absolutely. Who would have thought putting a big pipe in the ground, after all, would rattle the living and the dead?
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
