Wes Cline
Wes Cline of Spring Bay is eager to throw his hat into the ring for the position of Ward 1 councillor in Central Manitoulin in the upcoming elections. Mr. Cline was in a close race in the last election and he believes that if one is going to complain about the conditions in one’s township, one should also be willing to stand for election. “And the same goes for voters,” Mr. Cline emphasized. “If you are going to complain, then make sure you vote.”
When asked about the election, Mr. Cline said that he would like to see one ward instead of three in the municipality. “We should be voting at large,” he explained. “We are one township so let’s act like it. Everyone should be at large and council chosen at large.”
Mr. Cline would also like to see if council can get any geared-to-income or co-op housing as he knows it is becoming very expensive for people who are starting out and who want to start a family. “I think it is something we could look into. It is hard to buy a house if you have a minimum wage job or even if both people have a minimum wage job.”
“I would also like to see council try and figure out how to control costs. To try to spend less so the taxpayers don’t have a burden placed on them. Everything is going up—gas, groceries and so on. How do you come to Mindemoya to retire with water and sewer bills, taxes and so on? I am not saying that council overspent, I don’t know the ins and outs and why what was spent was spent, but I just think we can control things a little better. We have to do something to curb the costs. We want everything, but the reality is we can’t have everything.”
Another project Mr. Cline would like to see council take on is the beautification of Mindemoya’s downtown. “When we see other small towns, they have flower planters, banners and so on and we could do the same thing,” he said.
Mr. Cline was born and raised in Cochrane and after graduation did computer work, mostly in Northern Ontario from the Quebec border to Manitoba. He was working in Sudbury when he was laid off and then answered an ad for a job in Libya. “I worked for the Petroleum Research Centre, which is part of Libya’s National Oil Company from 1994 to 2009. We could live anywhere in the world and I chose to live on Manitoulin. We worked two months in and one month out and the company would fly you anywhere. Some people lived in Thailand or Hong Kong or Bulgaria and others lived in Calgary. They would have preferred that I live in Calgary where they had an office, but no, I wanted to live on Manitoulin. I moved to the Island in 1996 and I met Claire, now my wife, on the dock in Providence Bay. I just went for a drive and that’s what happened.”
Mr. Cline is still involved with computers and teaches classes for seniors at both Little Current and Mindemoya and will soon start in Manitowaning.
