When are government officials acting in the public interest and when are they just trying to justify their own positions? It’s difficult to tell sometimes. Case in point: a Minden Hills small business owner getting…

Smart phones have changed our lives in myriad ways. The way we communicate the way we use the Internet the way we shop and date and get directions. They’ve also made our roads more dangerous.…

By Chad Ingram It’s difficult impossible really for those of us living here in the comfortable 21st century with our automobiles and propane heating and pocket-sized devices capable of holding the sum total of human…

By Chad Ingram Imagine for March which is maple-tapping time in Haliburton County Minden’s downtown decked out with sap buckets and spring kites. It’s a vision that will come to fruition very shortly as Minden’s…

By Chad Ingram O ntario’s municipalities are in trouble. They are camels whose backs can’t handle much more baggage. Years of the province downloading costs from infrastructure to social services to security has left many…

By Chad Ingram Think of critical infrastructure and one may picture roads bridges and culverts. Think of essential services and ambulances and fire trucks may come to mind. In 2016 the Internet also belongs on…

By Chad Ingram Just what to do about the Minden Hills Cultural Centre – how to make it more economically viable and how to bring more people through its doors which are of course linked…

By Chad Ingram Haliburton County council has decided the county will close its tourist information centre along Highway 35 in Minden at the end of the year and that’s OK. Actually it’s a good progressive…

By Chad Ingram I lost a friend to suicide last year. I didn’t find out until months after it happened. My friend was also a co-worker of mine when I lived and worked in the…

By Chad Ingram As I write this it's minus 11 degrees outside but it wasn't so a couple of days ago. A couple of days ago it was plus eight. This winter if you can…

By Chad Ingram 2016 will be a year of changes for the Haliburton County Fair as organizers alter its format. The fair will be held earlier than usual this year on a single day in…

By Chad Ingram As has become an end-of-year tradition around here these are the top 10 news stories of 2015 for the western half of Haliburton County. With an intake window for the province's feed-in-tariff …

T hey say the only constants in life are change and beer. Well they say something like that. The Beer Store recently announced it will be moving its Minden location from Water Street where it’s…

By Chad Ingram The province has the ability to terminate its contract with Carillion. This is not earth-shattering but is something I can write with stone-cold certainty now that I have a copy of the…

By Chad Ingram D uring the weekend I attended not one but two Santa Claus parades because well my life is just really exciting like that. The annual parades in the villages of Minden and…

During the weekend someone set fire to Peterborough’s sole mosque. Police are investigating the arson as a hate crime and while there is no proof it was some kind of  response to the horror that…

By Chad Ingram It’s far too early to make any judgment about how newly minted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doing although that of course isn’t stopping detractors. There have been a few Minden murmurings…

By Chad Ingram The phrase "water levels management" will likely cause many pairs of eyeballs to immediately glaze over. And that’s OK. That’s a perfectly normal reaction. However it’s a subject of great importance in…

By Chad Ingram Minden Hills Councillor Jeanne Anthon has suggested on more than one occasion the upper tier of Haliburton County should institute some kind of standardized approval framework for lower tier councils to use…

By Chad Ingram T he incredibly long 2015 federal election campaign is (thankfully) near its end and has turned into a shallow competition of which party’s propaganda is most captivating. Well perhaps it was always…