I heard about this originally this morning on the Buffalo NPR station.
From WKBW Channel 7 in Buffalo (includes a video):
In Niagara Falls, the term “Cataract City’ takes on new meaning after two sea lions become the first in the area to receive a unique eye surgery.
Thousands of guests come to the Aquarium of Niagara every year to see the sea lions. The problem was, the sea lions couldn’t see them.
Although not mentioned in either story, this got me thinking about the news a couple of weeks ago about the Aquarium being in the running for a Pepsi grant. Someone emailed me a link to a Niagara Gazette article:
The Aquarium of Niagara is hoping a boost in public support will help it win a competitive $50,000 grant to create a living coral reef.
The grant being administered through the Pepsi Refresh project allocates funding to different organizations, individuals or ideas based on the number of votes the project receives in a one-month period.
Aquarium Director of Development Gay B. Molnar said the aquarium hosts 235,000 visitors annually and is in dire need of votes from residents across Niagara and Eric counties.
If awarded, the grant would aid in educating visitors about environmental and economic importance of reefs, establish a coral research and propagation/reproduction program and educate visitors about how recent climate changes are a severe threat to the existence of coral reefs — all in an 800-gallon living reef exhibit.
The person who emailed me this went on to say:
I wanted to make you aware of an issue/store happening on the USA side of the Falls. I think it would be worthwhile to post it to your blog…in an effort to get as many people aware of it as possible.
I just thought it would be very beneficial for readers to be made aware of this. As you can see from the story, 10 attractions will be getting $50,000 grant based on the number of votes. To have readers in Buffalo/Niagara be made aware of this and try to push the NF aquarium up to get one of the grants would be a good idea.
Any funding/money that comes into our area for attractions can be nothing but a good thing.
Graham, totally off-topic but I never know where to post something new.
When the heck did this happen??? http://fallsconventions.com/index.html
It is no longer the Niagara Civic and Convention Centre!!!
It is now the Scotiabank Convention Centre.
It was bad enough that the name was only Niagara and not Niagara Falls before, now the city/region name has been eliminated completely. Unbelievable!!
I hadn’t heard. If you look on the bottom ride of the page, you’ll see that the press release is dated today. I guess everything has a name these days. I’m sure that most people are still going to refer to it as the Niagara Falls Convention Centre as that is more descriptive. If you are located hundreds of km away, and are planning a convention, you are still going to talk about “that convention centre in Niagara Falls”, regardless of the name.
A lot of that going on around here in Pittsburgh, too! Anyone willing to pay a price can change the name of just about anything!!! They had to shell quite a chunk of change to get that advertising!!!