Hard across the province on CBC Radio, Tuesday afternoon, a woman in Plum Point reminding the host of CBC radio’s On the Go that many parts of the province still live in what host Ted Blades had referred to as the Dark Ages of the Internet or some such.
Dial-up.
Not broadband.
There is no modern, high-speed access in said community because of the costs of bringing such tools to sparsely populated areas of the province. The woman interviewed talked of a federal government initiative to help expand coverage of the information superhighway to places like Plum Point.
The lovely town of Plum Point is interesting because it is in the same neck of the woods once represented in the House of Assembly by Trevor Taylor. Trev represent the Straits and White Bay North and across the highway, his buddy Wally young still represents the district of St. Barbe in which Plum Point is located. The boys were touted back in January 2001 as the start of a Tory wave sweeping the province.
Odd the number of people scurrying to claim that the opposite is not true now, but that’s another issue.
The only thing Trevor listed as an accomplishment as he hastily ran from cabinet and local politics a month ago was a provincial government plan to give a bunch of private sector companies a wad of public cash so they could stretch broadband access across the island to places that sounded suspiciously like Plum Point.
Now Plum Point is also no ordinary town as these things go for many more reasons than the fact that it is near where Trevor used to rule.
Plum Point is also home to the local member of the House of Assembly, one Wallace Young. He owns the local motel. His official biography also reminds us that his wife is a teacher who “has seen first-hand the effects of teacher cuts and larger classrooms”. Old news or foreshadowing?
Anyway, perhaps Wally’s good lady wife knows, as well, the value of Internet access for local schools.
Maybe someone should ask Wally and his wife about that.
And while they’re at it wonder how it is that this glorious fibreoptic deal Trevor was so proud of could benefit Greenland but not the lovely community of Plum Point.
-srbp-
