Good morning, Greater Sudbury! Here are a few stories to start your day on this Thursday morning.
Incoming Laurentian pres plans to ‘get the ship steady again’
The incoming interim president of Laurentian University said it’s her goal to “get the ship steady again and get it back on course” after LU recently came out of 22 months of creditor protection. Dr. Sheila Embleton will start her role as Laurentian’s interim president Jan. 1, 2023. Working alongside Embleton will be Dr. Brenda Brouwer, who will serve as interim provost. Both are senior academics currently working at Southern Ontario universities. They are replacing the university’s most recent president Dr. Robert Haché, and provost, Dr. Marie-Josée Berger, who departed earlier this fall as part of the terms of Laurentian’s plan of arrangement. She said she will focus on rebuilding Laurentian University’s reputation, on bringing “openness and transparency and a kind of collegiality” to its governance, and just generally getting “everything ready for the search for the new permanent president.” Embleton said she hopes by the time a new permanent LU president is in place and she departs the university, Laurentian’s time under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (or CCAA) will be seen more as a “blip in the longer history” of the institution.
Woman charged after bag of drugs, gun tossed from balcony
A search for a missing person turned up drugs and a firearm for Greater Sudbury Police on Dec. 5. That morning at around 11 a.m., officers were dispatched to an apartment building on Bruce Avenue for a missing persons investigation. While they were there, GSPS said a resident of the area approached them and told the officers someone had thrown a bag from the balcony of a nearby apartment and nearly struck someone walking by. “Officers located the bag and when they opened it, they found a loaded handgun and a quantity of drugs,” GSPS said in a news release. Officers set up containment in the area and the Emergency Response Unit was dispatched. “Detectives from the Major Crime Section of our Criminal Investigation Division applied for a search warrant of the apartment unit where the bag had been thrown from,” police report.
‘Novel but not unique’, CAO says on city’s new Alberta-based CFO
A new lead administrator hired by the City of Greater Sudbury will continue residing in Alberta on a permanent basis, even after beginning her new role on Nov. 21. The city announced on Nov. 18 that they’d hired former City of Lethbridge senior team member Hailey Pinksen as their new director of Finance and Chief Financial Officer in a media release that made no mention of her remote work arrangement. A few days later, Sudbury.com received a tip from a former city staff member that Pinksen planned on working remotely from Alberta on a permanent basis. “I don’t know how the person can perform that job and not be in the office,” the former city staff member said. “I would think with what that job pays they could find someone who would want to live in Sudbury.” Another local media outlet broke the news of Pinksen’s remote work arrangement earlier this week, prompting a torrent of online criticism. Their key assertion has been that a local candidate or one willing to relocate to Greater Sudbury would have been preferred.
Memory Lane: Christmas shopping in the downtown of yesteryear
As Andy Williams reminds us in his 1963 classic, Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year”. The song is a celebration and description of activities associated with the Christmas season, focusing primarily on get-togethers between friends and families. But what’s missing from the song? Well, it’s the task that some of us most associate with Christmas, whether we love it or dread it … Christmas shopping. Now pull up a chair in front of that roaring Christmas fire and let’s go on a journey back in time to the downtown of our youth (or that of our parents and grandparents) and have a look at what Christmas shopping was like when downtown Sudbury was the retail centre of our city. Dashing through the … mud?! Not exactly the picture we have in our head when we begin to sing “Jingle Bells”, but if you were to go Christmas shopping in Sudbury circa 1914, that just might be what you were doing. In that first holiday season of the Great War years, Christmas shopping more or less involved a family navigating their way through the snow and mud in that one horse open sleigh of yore or trudging through the ruts and strolling along the wooden sidewalks that bordered all of the roads at that time.
Greater Sudbury’s unemployment rate sits at 4.6%
Greater Sudbury gained 1,000 more full-time jobs in November compared to the previous month, while losing 100 part-time positions for a net job increase of 900. The unemployment rate in November was 4.6 per cent, which is down 0.1 per cent from the previous month. Despite last month’s job growth, full-time employment remains down 4,400 jobs from its peak in April 2019, but is 5,300 greater than the dip in June 2020. According to the Canadian Real Estate Association’s rundown of local numbers, the number of full-time jobs in November was up from the previous month in natural resources, utilities, construction, manufacturing, trade services, the financial sector, business and building services, and public administration. Full-time job losses in November occurred in agriculture, transportation and warehousing, professional and scientific services, education, healthcare, information and cultural services, and accommodation and food services.
No One Eats Alone Dinner returns on Christmas after COVID hiatus
Like so many previously annual events, the No One Eats Alone Dinner is returning in 2022 after a COVID hiatus. If you find yourself without anyone to share Christmas dinner with, you can enjoy a turkey dinner with all the fixings at the Northbury Hotel Dec. 25 along with other community members. The sixth edition of the event is put on by Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini in conjunction with the hotel. Speaking to Sudbury.com at another festive community event, Vagnini said organizers are thinking they may have around 250 people attending the event this year. “It's for people that have no place to go on Christmas Day,” he said. “The greatest thing about it is people come in, they meet their friends from before, and they all get together and they sit together.”
Cloudy with a brisk wind chill all day
Expect a mainly cloudy day with skies clearing early in the afternoon. The wind will blow at 15 km/h, bringing a -19 wind chill in the morning and -11 in the afternoon. The UV index today is 1, or low. Tonight, the skies will clear and the temperature will dip to -13.
