From the Niagara Falls Review:
The rift between Niagara Parks Commission chairman Jim Williams and outspoken commissioner Bob Gale has escalated to the point there’s a lack of “trust” and they openly question each other’s integrity.
A Ministry of Tourism official reportedly suggested there’s a “personality conflict,” between Williams and Gale, but their own recent comments hint at something deeper.
It’s turning into an increasingly public controversy on the commission, where members traditionally conduct business privately, manage dissent internally and present a united front around the chairman.
This has been around for a while, but Orca Free has a form letter that you can fill out if you want to write a letter to John Holer / Marineland about keeping the Orcas in captivity:
We’ve made it easy for you to help by drafting a letter to John Holer of Marineland of Canada. The letter expresses concern about the orcas that remain captive at Marineland of Canada.
As best as I can tell, the page hasn’t changed since September 17, 2005 at 6:13 PM. I wonder how many people have used this template in the almost 3 years it has been up…
Many of you may remember a couple of years ago I performed a marriage in the Minolta Tower. I’m able to do this because of certain responsibilities with my church. I was recently speaking with an older man that had these same responsibilities years ago. We were talking about Dean Sullivan’s jump, and it made him think of the funeral he did years ago for a daredevil. He couldn’t remember who it was, but after some prompting, we figured out it was Karel Soucek.
Karel had survived going over the Falls, but ended up dying during a stunt in Houston. Anyway, he was from around Hamilton, and this friend of mine was asked to officiate at the funeral. These are his recollections:
That’s him… He was of Czech origin and was buried in the cemetery reserved for the Hill family, one of whose members went over the Falls in a barrel. It was bitterly cold when we buried him I remember… his mother came from Czechoslovakia for the funeral. His manager was a friend of [someone he knew]. He couldn’t do the funeral, so I was asked. As far as I can remember, the Catholic church would have nothing to do with it and so the family came to us through Ernie. The eulogy was short, as you can imagine, because I didn’t know him and it was hardly possible to say more than that he had a dream which he fulfilled. The ‘Red’ Hill family offered the grave site as a measure of respect for a fellow daredevil. The media were present but I disallowed cameras at the service itself.
What a small world!
Davis Day Trips is out of Pennsville, NJ. They have a main web site, but also have a Blogger blog where they post information. They recently posted about a recent trip to Niagara Falls:
We’re back from our first trip to Niagara Falls and it definitely won’t be our last! Niagara Falls actually consists of three falls: The American Falls, Canadian Falls (the largest), and the Bridal Veil Falls (the smallest). This first photo is of the Canadian (Horseshoe) Falls. I really didn’t have a good appreciation of the magnificance of this “Wonder of the World” until we went on the Maid of the Mist boat ride.
In case anyone is interested, I’m a big fan of Oatmeal Crisp Triple Berry cereal. I love it! Feel free to send me boxes 
Anyway, over the Spring, many of the General Mills cereal had information about a free admission (as you can see by the image above). For the longest time I just ignored it, and then for some reason I decided to check it out. I should have earlier! Each “Free Pass to Fun” gives you free entrance into dozens, if not hundreds, of attractions.
This is how it works… on the inside of the cereal box are two different pieces. One of them gets you one free admission into the attraction of your choice. The other one is a code. Once you have enough codes, you can get other free admissions or prizes. Here is what it looks like:
I went on the FreePassToFun.ca web site (the site didn’t load properly in Firefox 3 but it loaded fine in IE7) and pulled up all of the local attractions that are participating:
- Niagara Falls Aviary Birds of the Lost Kingdom - Buy One Get One Free
- Lundy’s Lane Historical Museum - Free Admission
- Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks - Free Admission
- Ripley’s Believe It Or Not - Free Admission For Adult or Child
- Ripley’s Moving Theater - Free Admission For Adult or Child
- Greg Frewin Theater - Free Admission to Show Within Price Ranges
I currently have two free passes (I would have had a dozen if I would have paid attention sooner!) and I plan on using them at Ripley’s Believe It or Not (I haven’t been there in ages) and at Ripley’s Moving Theater (I’ve never been).
Someone with a Blogger blog posted about a recent trip to Niagara Falls:
After visiting all the significant locations in Palmyra, we made our way to Niagara Falls. I don’t know how many of you have had the chance to visit, but if you didn’t ride the maid of the mist and get soaking wet, you’ve never experienced the falls! My goodness, we figured we’d get a little wet, but we had no idea what we were getting in to! It was amazing.
I will be out of town until late Tuesday night, so I won’t be able to post anything new Monday or Tuesday. However, I will setup a couple of my outstanding posts to post automatically, so there still will be a couple of things posted.
Have a great weekend!
As many of you noticed, Vince DiCosimo Jr left a comment on my last posting about the Hilton progress. I emailed him and asked about the height of the building and this is his response:
It is every difficult to explain floors as not all the floors in the hotel are the same height. You will notice when looking at the building the lower floors are almost three stories in height for each floor. The typical room floor height is 8 feet but we do have several room floors in the building which are closer to 12 ft for mechanical reasons. With all that being said, I would say the building will be 53 stories in height which includes some higher floors at the top for mechanical and roof.
It’s still confusing to me, but we’ll go with the 53 number from now on. Incidentally, Vince said after Labour Day he’d take me through the building…
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