Senator Mahovlich shoots wide at poverty hearing

from The Chronicle Herald

By MARY ELLEN MacINTYRE Truro Bureau

DEBERT — Former hockey great Senator Frank Mahovlich didn’t score any points with at least one presenter during a senate committee hearing on rural poverty here Friday.

Mr. Mahovlich asked a presenter from Antigonish Women’s Resource Centre if she’d ever read a book by Ron Joyce, a Nova Scotia-born multimillionaire who helped found the Tim Hortons chain.

"Back in 1964 or ’65, I was asked by a teammate to (go into business with him) and it was Tim Horton," he said.

When he toured the then-small business with the late Mr. Horton, he noticed someone working hard in the kitchen, he said.

"Ron Joyce was in the kitchen making doughnuts . . . he was working 12 hour days," he said enthusiastically.

Mr. Mahovlich reminded the assembled senators and presenters that Mr. Joyce returned to his roots in the Tatamagouche area, opened a children’s camp and built a golf course.

"And he pays minimum wages to single mothers living in poverty," snapped back Lucille Harper.

"His community (Fox Harb’r Golf and Resort in Fox Harbour) is a gated community," she said.

Mr. Mahovlich continued to suggest the book is well worth reading, saying Mr. Joyce is certainly an example of someone overcoming hardship through hard work.

"There are some success stories," he said.

Members of the standing committee on agriculture and forestry spent their second day in Nova Scotia on the last leg of their meetings in the Atlantic provinces. On Thursday they met in Annapolis Royal with similar groups.

Ms. Harper told the committee rural poverty is often generational.

"There are few opportunities for employment (and) outmigration is a way of life in rural communities," she said.

Fathers and husbands are heading out to Western Canada in search of jobs that just aren’t available in rural communities.

"It leads to changes in family structure," she said.

"We’re not only losing jobs but we’re losing a way of life."

Claudia Jahn of the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia said housing is a particular concern for rural folks.

"I became an active and passionate housing advocate in 2002 while working on a research study on the housing situation of single mothers in rural Nova Scotia," she told the committee.

The living conditions of some mothers and their children made her sad and angry.

"I have seen too many mothers living very isolated in unsafe trailers, without heat, frozen water pipes and at times without power," Ms. Jahn added.

The committee already published an interim report on rural poverty in 2006, called Understanding Freefall: The Challenge of the Rural Poor.