COVID – Paterson Recovery Team

Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson has announced he will lead a Kingston Economic Recovery Team to plan and coordinate the city’s recovery from the economic impact of COVID-19.  Paterson says Individuals from a range of sectors will make up the recovery team. Further details will be released in the coming days.  Paterson says the team will report to Kingston City Council on a regular basis.

 

COVID – Kingston Numbers

The number of COVID-19 cases in Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington remains at 59.  There has only been one new case reported in this region in the past seven days and 56 of the cases have been cleared…meaning those people have recovered.  16 of the people diagnosed with COVID-19 have been health care workers.

Just 1.5 per cent of 3,484 test that have been done have been positive.

Nobody from this region is currently in hospital due to COVID-19 and nobody in this region has died from the coronavirus according to statistics from KFL&A Public Health.

 

COVID – Ontario Schools

Premier Doug Ford says Ontario will not follow Quebec’s lead and re-open schools in May.

Ford says his government is taking advice from health experts in ordering Ontario schools to remain closed until May 30th.  The premier says a decision will be made then on whether to resume classes for a few weeks or cancel the rest of the school year.

 

Napanee – Newspapers Closing

Postmedia has announced it is permanently shutting down 15 community newspapers in Ontario and Manitoba — resulting in about 80 layoffs.  The papers include the Napanee Guide. However, an online version of the Napanee Guide will continue to exist.  Postmedia CEO Andrew McLeod says in a letter to employees the company has seen significant losses in ad revenues due to the economic impact of COVID-19 and the newspapers are not financially viable.

 

COVID – South Frontenac

South Frontenac Council is hoping to relieve some stress surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic by answering questions from its residents.  The Township has set an online form for submitting questions to council.  It will try to answer those questions at its council meeting and will add the questions and answers to its COVID-19 information page.  Details are available on the South Frontenac Township website.

 

Commuter Challenge

The 2020 Commuter Challenge in Kingston has been cancelled due to COVID-19.

The event is meant to inspire health conscious ways of commuting and last year Kingston had the highest percentage of participants in the country and the second highest number of people who took part…second only to Winnipeg.

 

Starter Company

The Starter Company Plus program has awarded $5,000 grants to 14 companies in the Kingston area. The 14 companies were chosen from a group of 24 participants in a weeklong training session hosted by the Kingston Economic Development Corporation.

It is now accepting new applications for the program.

 

Good Deeds

The community continues to come together to support each other during the pandemic and here are just a few more examples.

The Pizza Pizza location on Bath Road near Portsmouth has donated 150 packages of non-perishable food items for the Partners in Mission Food Bank.

And..the owner of the McDonalds in Kingston and Gananoque has donated 3.000 meals to health care providers, hospital, police and Frontenac Paramedics.  The paramedics gave Todd Shea a shoutout for the donations last week.

 

History File

From Tony’s Today in History File – the Dominion of Canada is born and the 1st Canadian to be chosen in the first round of the NFL draft.

It was on this day in 1867 that Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the British North America Act. Canada became the first Dominion of the British Empire on July 1st.

And on this day in 1986, Queen’s University offensive tackle Mike Schad became the first Canadian selected in the first round of the NFL draft. He was taken by the Los Angeles Rams.