[img_assist|nid=172|title=Brockville remembers the Montreal Massacre|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=361]I was an English Lit undergrad at McGill 24 years ago, on December 6, 1989, still living at my parents' home and busily working on an essay in the basement when news broke of what would come to be known as the Montreal Massacre.

[img_assist|nid=170|title=These are the comments I saved...|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=500|height=319]I learned a long time ago that, to enjoy the benefits of good journalism online, it is best to ignore 90 per cent of the comments posted under a story.

[img_assist|nid=169|title=City police Cst. Steve Rogers checks my plate information|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=500|height=355]If you want to be a reporter, a copy editing teacher once told me decades ago, you have to have your mind in the gutter.

What he meant was copy editing requires an acute sense of the perverse, in order to avoid the kind of double-entendre mistake that happened some time ago when one editor headlined one of my stories: “NDP candidate makes history by coming second.”

[img_assist|nid=166|title=Jim Perkins as Henry Potter|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=409]If you haven't seen it yet, do try to catch the Brockville Theatre Guild's production of It's a Wonderful Life.

[img_assist|nid=164|title=That time of year again|desc=|link=none|align=middle|width=1000|height=666]

Civic politics has its share of rituals, and one of them happens every year when the province releases Brockville's municipal performance measurements.

[img_assist|nid=162|title=City council tablets|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=589]I suffer from tablet envy every time I walk into the city council chamber.

Had I but one cast-off iPad from a city councillor upgraded to newer gear, my council meeting Twitter stream might keep up with that of my JRfm counterparts, Jenn Ferguson and Taylor Renkema.

There are possible implications and undercurrents to this story of Brockville Police Chief John Gardiner's looming retirement, things I cannot discover without NSA tactics not accessible to me.

[img_assist|nid=156|title=Police services board chairman King Yee Jr.|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=500|height=489]In my last post, I referred to the surprisingly low 2014 police budget increase as a head-scratcher, and to be sure, it remains quite surprising.

[img_assist|nid=154|title=|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=500|height=333]Each year at the start of budget time, city councillors and officials scratch their heads at the enormous challenges driving up the levy.