What tremendous news for many of our residents! AbitibiBowater, the company behind our local paper manufacturing plant has just announced their intention to re-open one of the two plants that have sadly been shut down due to a number of conniving factors last August. This automatically makes the holidays for about 170 employees and their families a whole lot brighter indeed.

The restart for plant No. 5 is set to be on the New Year and the announcement came after successful negotiation efforts with our local labour front and the commitments of the Ontario government to supply wood, said Jean-Philippe Cote, the company’s spokesperson.

Although this is naturally a great news from all angles, the company did say that they will have to be very careful with their financial position regardless of the shutdown. One of the factors the company has noted when they say is contributing to the challenges in operating such a plant is the cost of power. The company has already been trying to get a hold of a more viable source of power to run the plant above ground.

Regardless of the challenges up ahead, everyone in and around Thunder Bay has nothing but praise for such news and so will everyone who will be back to work by then.

For the past 15 years or so, when the holidays are just around the corner, Santa Claus comes to Thunder Bay and touches our lives (especially of those who are in need) in a bus. This way, he can gather as many presents as he otherwise can in his old school reindeer and sleigh ride. This is courtesy of a retired Thunder Bay Transit driver, Ron Wolframe Sr., who has started the “Santa Bus” tradition to collect donations for the food bank.

This time around, the Santa Bus needs even more donations as the demand for the food bank rises yet again. Fortunately for Santa, he now has a couple of extra pair of hands to help him do the job right with Rose Boucher stepping in to take the place of Mrs. Calus and Wolframe’s granddaughter, Ashlie, joined in to be an elf.

The Santa Bus kicked off last Wednesday with their familiar cheerfully decorated bus. The bus started off with a visit of the Pioneer Ridge home for the seniors where they were warmly welcomed by the children, seniors and staffs alike. Everyone happily donated food items and in return, they got for themselves a candy cane from the group.

When you get the chance to see the Santa Bus in your neighborhood, why not try and drop in something to share for our less fortunate?

Our men in uniform are at it again, going beyond the line of duty to help the community. This time around, the recipient of their efforts are the students of Dennis Franklin Cromarty’s high school and the special occasion in question is the year-end feast of the school itself – an annual tradition before the students leave the school in favor of their First Nation communities to celebrate the holidays themselves.

The Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School, known to others as the DFC High School, is Thunder Bay’s high school especially for our aboriginal students. The school itself has been administered by none other than the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (NNEC) and it has been established since the year 2000. It has been service around 20 aboriginal communities in the area of Northwestern Ontario, including Thunder Bay, since then.

During the school’s yearly climax feast, some of the representatives of the Thunder Bay Police helped in serving the dinner turkey for everyone who attended the event – including the school’s staff and family together with the students. In the past, the police department’s aboriginal officer for liaison was responsible in helping serve the luncheon and the presence of even more police officers in Wednesday’s feast is a welcome gesture for the school.

No matter how small the effort may be, giving is caring regardless of age or status in life. For the youth and everyone else that has helped in the non-profit group, Our Kids Count, every Christmas is an opportunity to give back to the Thunder Bay community – specifically the kids – by gift giving.

For this year, the group is now ready and waiting for them to hand out 200 presents to the children of Thunder Bay who have taken advantage of the generosity of everyone who is behind the group. The members of Our Kids Count started gathering these presents last 29^th of October and they are more than happy to know that they are now ready for the best part of the campaign, the handing out of the presents.

How did this group successfully gather this much gifts with more than enough time to talk about it? Ingenuity will have to be cited for sure because the group, with the help of St. Anthony’s Church and a group that call themselves “support moms”, made use of a Christmas tree where tags were placed for the children to put what they wanted for Christmas. And thankfully, more than enough residents of Thunder Bay supported by being able to give 200 gifts for this year’s campaign.

Thunder Bay’s public dietician, Kim McGibbon has a few words for the locals to cut not just the costs of spending in the coming holidays, but even the pounds that normally comes along the break.

Stats show that a family composed of a 3 members living in our city needs around $700 a month to be able to eat well. However, with the holidays closing in on us, this budget might get its share of strain since families have to spend on presents for their love ones as well.

With this in mind, McGibbon stresses out that one of the things to keep things under control is to plan ahead and literally make lists – although staying on the lists when at the grocery is another issue altogether. Keeping away from the habit of last minute shopping can also help in keeping costs at bay as well since it makes it easier to stay on your list and prices might not be as expensive as they are when the last few days before Christmas comes due.

Before closing out, we should also keep in mind that going healthy with vegetables and cooking them at home is the key ingredient in stretching your budget and keeping yourself fit while doing so.

Everyone was all smiles when the provincial and federal government gave the funding – nearly $10 million – for the construction of 132 new housing units for the seniors of Thunder Bay that fall under low income living. The highly anticipated announcement was made last Friday at the Hogarth Riverview Manor.

Besides being able to take in more than enough of the aging population of Thunder Bay, the project is said to create 110 jobs in the city and most of it would be long term and permanent further propelling the local economy as well. Another benefit of the combined facilities would be the distressing the tension in our local hospital units.

These low cost rental housing units would allow seniors to stay as independent as they can be and is perfect for our dearly beloved seniors, many of which are already in the waiting list to be accommodated in Thunder Bay’s other housing units. When these new project gets done, those who are on the waiting list will greatly be reduced if not eliminated for sure.

The units are expected to be completed by the year 2012.

What could be better than receiving a house for your Christmas? Probably receiving an even bigger house right? Well, if you ask the Eh’s of Thunder Bay, nothing will ever top the brand new house they have received from Habitat for Humanity as a gift for Christmas.

Their new 1,100 square feet home will be the new dwelling place to run up and about with for their 3 year old son, Alex, by the time they get to move in to the said house that is known to others as “the house that radio built”. Why the monicker, you might ask? It’s mainly because the major sponsors behind the Habitat for Humanity movement in Thunder Bay are two businesses coming from the media sector namely; Dougall Media and Newcap Radio.

Although the family can’t move in until the following year, their celebration have been started last Thursday as a simply turn-over ceremony was held to signify the giving of the keys of the house to the lucky family. It was even serenaded rightfully with the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by a choir from McKellar Park Central School making the celebration a tearful moment for the Eh’s and their love ones.

Thunder Bay’s very own Justin Loesser, the PartSource delivery personnel happily won for himself $5,000 worth of shopping after spending almost $700 shopping on every single one of the shops that participated in the “Shop Local Thunder Bay” contest last Wednesday.

The very much welcomed surprised came to Loesser while he was at work. His attention was brought to his workplace’s frontline and little did he know he was up for the perfect surprise to complement his plans of getting married on January next year. He was then welcomed with balloons complete with greetings of congratulations for winning the shopping local contest.

Loesser never thought it would be possible for him to win the contest and he even kept telling himself that somebody has one it by now. Luckily, the stars have aligned for him and his fiance’, Natasha Chafe because out of 200 entries vying for the price, Loesser’s got picked.

This is the second year the contest has been run by Laura Alexander, the coordinator of the now yearly event that aims to bring in more locals to shop locally instead of having to cross the border or shop online.

With this contest, we all should follow Loesser’s good example of supporting our local businesses because it makes our city what it is today. Congratulations again and we know Loesser’s going to enjoy his shopping spree more than ever!

Ever noticed how most, for sure not all, of our drivers act like they have all the time in the world to be able to stop for an officer of the police department or an ambulance? That’s probably one of the things many of us just ignore while on the road but for an insurance company like Allstate Insurance, this tells them a lot about our drivers who by the way had to drive on snow at least four months in any given year. In fact, according to the same insurance company, our drivers have placed 8^th out of 49 communities around Ontario.

How did the insurance company decide this ranking you might ask? Well, simply put, it means that Thunder Bay’s collision claims in any given year is only around 3.7 out of 100 vehicles. I know others might find it a little too good to be true that only 3.7% of us actually call our insurance companies to avail of our collision claims but keep in mind that this data is from an insurance company and if we follow logic, it should not be too hard to conclude that these companies have no plans of fooling themselves unless they want to get a shocking figure of claims right?

Either way, we should all be proud of our drivers for such an achievement especially given our weather condition.

If everything goes according to the Superior Renewable Energy Cooperative’s plan, then Thunder Bay will have for itself a man made forest made up of solar panels that are literally structured in a way to look like spruce trees. Naturally, these trees would do more than just offer shade, it will offer an inexhaustible source of power to our homes and businesses.

According to the open house conducted by SREC, the solar forest is planned to be planted on the corner lot on Algoma and Bay Streets during the meeting which was held on the Saturday afternoon at the Finlandia Club. The solar trees are said to be low maintenance and they can easily move to follow the direction of the sun the way the sunflower naturally does. On winter, these solar trees will lay flat to maximize its energy harnessing capacity.

When the estimated $175,000 solar farm project operates, most of its output will be sold to the grid and is estimated to garner around $160,000 in revenues well within the project’s lifespan which is set at 20 years.

On the long run, the think tanks of the project projects more of these solar forest within Thunder Bay which should be a welcome move for a greener future.