I recently attended a council meeting in the municipality of Danford/Alleyne-Cawood in the village of Danford Lake on Monday night 6.30pm, 9 March 2026, a postponed meeting as the usual time on the first Monday of the month fell into spring break. Councillor Mona who also volunteers in the community store open every Saturday morning from 10 AM till 12 or 13 PM invited me the Saturday before when I saw her in the store. She was very nice to me and happy to reiterate the time of the council meeting in person with me in our well loved community store; and to give credit where credit is due: the community store came about on the big initiative and tireless effort of councillor Guy and his wonderful wife (please correct me if I’m wrong). It features a large collection of clothing for all sizes, shoes and jackets and many household items. It is situated in the basement of Bethany Hall, on Harrison Road, just opposite of the graveyard.
Seeing that the Director General Isabelle Cardinal has two children herself, it is noteworthy to acknowledge the efforts to accommodate parents and especially single parents who might wish to attend council meetings.
The new building addition on the municipal hill accommodated all approximately 25 individuals present very well.
I was able to arrive to the meeting about 15 minutes late and on DG’s prompt, municipal staff Cody jumped up and added two extra chairs as all chairs were taken. That was very courteous and I thanked him. He paid no attention to me, he never looked at me once.
Throughout the meeting I understood that there was another representative of the media, who is editing a newsletter appearing in Kazabazua and that can be received per email. That editor showed no interest in exchanging coordinates at the time and also never said hello to me, let alone introduce himself. When I joined an after-session conversation between Sydney Squitty and that reporter to at least to the mayor apologize for my late arrival, and possibly ask a few questions, nobody introduced me to anybody, nobody mentioned my publication nor my activity, and therefore I did not catch his name nor the name of his publication. Without saying anything, the reporter ran off toward the southern entrance of the building, and Sydney went into one of the office rooms and told me “I’m just gonna have to finish this” or something of the like, to right afterwards catch up to the other reporter and finish the conversation with him. That was after the session when everybody was standing. Mind you, during session, soon after all budget decisions were confirmed, council answered all his questions. Following that, nobody prompted me to ask any more questions, even so I had my hand up for a while.
I don’t quite understand why people treat me rude and with such contempt every time I try to do my job, and this attitude has been projected since I started frequenting council sessions when property taxes were projected to go up dramatically because somebody in some council had their eyes on somebody else’s properties and no chance to get in any other way. In fact one of our business partners mentioned that in the municipality of Kazabazua, a few properties increased their property values through roads around the entire property significantly without incurring any tax increases. What function do these property owners have in the representation of municipal matters, that they are exempt from those humungous increases, even so they would actually deserve them because the improvements that they undertook on the property increased the value accordingly!
Why would greed dynamics be differently in the Pontiac, when we are seeing the elite using direct energy weapons to destroy entire neighbourhoods to get previous owners out and take that land for themselves? The criminals at the top applied this terror method and sold it to us for climate change and wildfires – while all the firefighters in the room are laughing their heads off looking at all the trees that are still standing unscathed around those burnt down houses! That happened in many different places in North America for example Paradise, California, or Asheville, North Carolina, the expensive suburb of Los Angeles that burned last summer and then of course Lahaina, Hawai – if you don’t know these places, look up what happened there!
Back to Danford Lake,
I can’t say that I find council proceedings any more transparent than they were, as meetings have been public in Danford Lake since before I started reporting on them.
With regards to producing recordings from the sessions, it’s just been one big gong show illustrating that council knows nothing about how strict regulations are to get anything published at all. My judgement, years later: Proceedings remain totally not up to legal requirements / industry standards and not any different from my horribly media hostile experience in Campbell’s Bay at the MRC.
In Danford Lake‘s new building addition, the audio was good in the back room of the new building addition, the meeting did not receive any amplification; no microphones nor speakers were used except for there was a recording device in the middle of the room on a tripod with a microphone pointed at the counselors panel. This might have been audio only, as I was never able to verify if also video was being recorded.
When I inquired about my urgent requirement to be able to make audio and video recordings of these meetings, both Director General and Mayor Sydney Squitty fed me the same answer I have heard from them, since I first addressed these problems years ago:
“We will have a recording on YouTube, just not right now – later.”
I replied “It is nine months later, all of this time I wasn’t able to make any recordings – why exactly can’t I make my own recordings?”
And then Sydney Squitty answered “because we don’t want the MRC to know!”
That level of absurdity was unexpected even for me, and I filed that nonsensical remark for a later treatment – just keep reading, we’re getting there! I added “You’ve been telling me this for way too long. You might have good intentions yet de facto, you are monopolizing the information, and you have been since I tried years ago to make my own recordings from DL council meetings.”
Mayor Sydney Squitty denied that again.
I insisted “You are not allowing anybody else audio nor video recordings! That is precisely what I just called it ! The municipality is monopolizing the information coming out of those meetings – that is an obscene conflict of interest and nine months is eight months too long to find a solution to this problem!”
Squitty just smiled and said “thank you” and walked off.
I incurred enormous damages and loss of income out of this unprofessional dilettantism and incompetence when it comes to dealing with journalists and especially the local, independent press.
It stands to reiterate that it is a federal crime to get in the way of reporting or create an atmosphere of fear or inconvenience around reporters, section 423 of the criminal code of Canada, please see the reference here attached.
Criminal Code of Canada, section-423.1.
“note:
Intimidation of a justice system participant or a journalist
• 423.1 (1) No person shall, without lawful authority, engage in any conduct with the intent to provoke a state of fear in
• (a) a group of persons or the general public in order to impede the administration of criminal justice;
• (b) a justice system participant or military justice system participant in order to impede him or her in the performance of his or her duties; or
• (c) a journalist in order to impede him or her in the transmission to the public of information in relation to a criminal organization.
• (2) [Repealed, 2015, c. 13, s. 12]
• Marginal note:
Punishment
(3) Every person who contravenes this section is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than fourteen years.”
This is not the first time I mentioned and pointed the circumstance out to council and municipalities.
If I am not going to be able to make my own audio and video recordings from the next council meeting that I attend, I will commence proceedings to sue the municipality for damages and loss of income in a private claim, commercial lien shows very powerful; and criminal charges also apply because this media censorship clearly makes it impossible to pursue my video/audio reporting.
In an additional, very weak attempt to justify this control overreach, Sydney mentioned the fact that people are asking questions at the meeting – It was a short exchange what looked like she presented that as a reason that I do not make recordings – also that left me flabbergasted at the absurdity of that argument.
In fact, that reaction reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the circumstance: in a public meeting, attending people cannot reasonably have any expectation of privacy; any exchange be it verbal or in writing with council becomes public automatically, and there is many ways to insist on anonymity which is a matter between individuals seen in the frames and the individual producing those frames. To remove identifiability is the producer’s ongoing (nothing ever changed since the 70 or 80 years we have been enjoying these regulations) responsibility, commercial use of the appearance of identifiable people on video in recordings requires extensive licensing and first and foremost, a waiver of rights. All of that applies at all times.
What is really more important because fundamentally defining the relationship between reporters and representation in council and municipalities is the fact that:
A municipality is overstepping their responsibilities concerning themselves with recordings third parties make from public meetings.
In fact journalists attend for all the public who can’t at the time, so they are just a concentrated part of the public ! They are multiplicators; if they are really independent, then to call them a third-party is a compliment – still one could argue though, that they are just part of that second party, the public, as I just laid out.
It needs to be explained to council, it seems, that publications following such recordings are subjected to very strict regulations, and that is the reporter’s and publication’s responsibility!
Council must not attempt to police the press! The police polices the press!
Dear municipal staff! fyi:
The printed/spoken word is governed by multiple and complex regulations, which are not overseen by any municipal council.
So far the municipality is guilty of suppressing the free press from reporting in video and audio from public meetings. The only concern is the press do not interrupt or get in the way of the meeting. Therefore it is frequent habit in many councils to set aside time for the press after session. Why does Danford Lake make it so hard for the local, independent press to report on their activities – are they trying to hide something?
I had some other inquiries, basically follow ups to the questions, I have asked when candidates presented themselves last fall before the election. Just to illustrate the general ignorance and media unsavvyness at the presentation in October, one candidate did not stoop too low to explain to everybody in the room, how they wouldn’t need any journalists if they just addressed the public the right way! One really has to search high and low to find something that ignorant and hostile to media in general and local (!) free press in particular. That same candidate thankfully did not get elected and also assaulted me! I had to call the police twice in order to explain to them what their rights are and what mine are, and they never apologized to me ! When it comes to their two dogs being unleashed at all times, trespassing my property, there is no change at all, even so I had Sureté there twice because not only did the lady assault me, when I tried to book the Bethany Hall, her husband assaulted me, too, even before she assaulted me. When the very knowledgable and courteous officer asked me what I wanted, I told him I preferred not to press charges but to get these fools to respect my property rights. And even so my neighbours signalled to the officer to introduce a change into their behaviour, nothing has changed at all till this day! Their two dogs regularly trespass on my property. If anybody is wondering, why I stopped holding live music events at the Bethany Hall: Project staff at DL municipality told me, the venue was booked solid till fall 2025 or even into the spring, and also, that same neighbour sabotaged my last event with her incompetent voiding of documents twice, harrassing me with her opinion on my personality, not without ripping the documents angrily out of my hands. She is like 30 years younger than I am! I mean talk about elder abuse! Understandably, I do not feel much inclination this time around. I tried, it’s just way too bureaucratic, and all the people who are jealous of our performance or have other objections have way too much power to sabotage. So that is done for me! Spent $500 all together, only to be overlooked for the 150th anniversary – noted, my dearies, noted.
I voiced my concerns that representatives seem to make themselves available just fine in person during council meetings and meetings where events are organized and prepared, however there is no unified way of contacting new representatives via the internet, which then makes it super easy to evade that transparency and accountability that we were promised in November.
From councillors Angela and Amanda I heard that they use their private email addresses to facilitate their public service communications, which is not recommended, because that whole email account is going to become public record.
The literature I studied very well cites the invitation to conceal communication relationships in favour of circumventing transparency requirements with a private email account for their public service communications (Hillary Clinton sure introduced that masterfully projecting zero concern of the unsecured nature of her email account), but nobody voices concerns about the much higher risk of online third parties accessing the information – even so any communication with council is considered public record please correct me if I’m wrong – I am interested in the level of municipal encryption etc. !
In the very concrete case of this article I’d like to send both Amanda and Angela a link to my article and a link to the related post in the Pontiac Independent Facebook page and I’m unable to do that because I cannot synthesize the email addresses out of a general public email address, and I don’t know their private email addresses. Both Amanda and Angela offered me to give me their private email addresses yet in the hurry of the moment I ended up leaving without that information. Neither one offered me any business card, they did not seem to have any.
That is a really untenable, very undemocratic, very un-transparent situation! Councillors cannot depend on other councillors to receive their communications!
If Isabelle and Sidney don’t like my communications, Amanda and Angela might never see this text!
My mother who dedicated her professional life to teaching kids in my home community in Germany English and biology, always told me, ‘if you don’t want any thieves, don’t create any opportunity’ – and we are doing just that. Plenty of opportunity for cutting corners and clouding principle.
Angela also told me that councillors received a laptop for their public service activities, that they take home. Amanda confirmed that, claiming she was also provided with a municipal laptop.
That provokes questions whether or not chain of command and privacy can be assured during the times the computers are not in the municipality compound –
Even so this might’ve been discussed in earlier meetings, follow up should not need legitimization.
In the MRC Pontiac meetings in Campbell’s Bay, at least there is some time set aside for members of the media after council meetings to ask questions and make recordings of that without any regular member of the public present in that room or part of the exchanges!
Had there been such a time set aside for media representatives, I would’ve asked the following questions, focussing on these communication issues:
1. where is the budget coming from for those laptops? how much was it?
2. Who is maintaining and administering these laptops and their operating systems?
3. where and when was this service tended?
4. Did councillors receive training with regards to data safety and confidentiality?
5. Did professionals oversee or at least monitor the laptop set up?
6. Who is overseeing safety, security and operating architecture for the existing computers?
7. when and where was that tended ?
8. If any of this was on the homepage of the municipality’s website, please send me the link.
9. when will new councillors be able to use their own municipal email-address?
10. are they entitled to this kind of address? Who is working on that?
11. What is the reason for the enormous delay of almost 6 months of not commanding such an official email address for the new council members?
12. What training do council members receive to incorporate in their administration of daily tasks applicable regulations on confidentiality, privacy and data safety, as well as accountability of service?
I am not briefed enough to comment on any budget decisions yet council confirmed to procure a new backhoe to replace the worn out existing one. Also: there’s going to be a drone procurement, around $1,000 explained Director General Isabelle Cardinal:
That drone will be small enough to not require an official operating license; council anticipates to use this drone in order to camera access and make recordings of areas where roads have been washed off or there are no roads, to eventually arrive @ a property evaluation and allow to remedy weather damages before they become a liability. Nobody stated any training was anticipated or any info session was planned for drone operators to avoid violating the privacy of locals, especially in the centre of the village where many municipal employees show zero respect for the resident’s privacy and march right into backyards without the slightest warning nor hesitation.
I did voice these concerns and very questionable dilettante bordering dangerous encounters trespassing my property, violating my right to privacy, and this is, in reliable regularity met with 100% disregard therefore,
I’m just gonna put it on the record:
Inspectors are not above the law ! The highest law of the land is reflected in what the Bill of Rights says – so don’t kid yourself about that! There’s also plenty of caselaw available and it’s not been cheap to cover damages for the trespassing crown.
In this context it should also not be ignored that the whole plot just went back to the “Indians” ! That’s why PM Legault resigned – you don’t have a country – you don’t even have a province here ! It’s all on unceeded Algonquin territory and they just took that power back ! In fact, there needs to be a concerted effort in Pontiac communities to come to an agreement / constitution with the new/old owners! That the leadership is also corrupt, is not a reason to not recognize the power structure and age-old title! We would otherwise also be well advised to minimize budgets and source services in more harmony with community and environment! Grants will default soon enough! Machinery can also run on natural gas – the way it’s going, we’re going to need that or we’re going to have to buy some horses!
So while we’re at that, maybe the Danford Lake council should consider booking an info session with me to train their employees to actually respect in their daily operations the Canadian bill of rights before council has to come up with the damages for the resulting lawsuits off of that kind of dilettantism and/or bordering intimidation.
A few more facts to put on the record:
Fundamentally everybody who was born here is indigenous and
THEY OWN THE LAND AND EVERYTHING – that is properly documented with allodial title.
To pay taxes on property is therefore optional. The practice to coerce residents by putting properties back on the market after two years of outstanding taxes is criminal and violates the law of the land. Lots of caselaw on that as well!
Speaking of intimidation: If residents cannot document proof of proper septic tank maintenance in form of proof of inspection, council may move to ordering an inspection by private third parties and invoicing the resident for the cost – a long-standing practice to assure healthy soil and water in the Pontiac and rural communities beyond. Council showed concern about the cost of such an inspection being substantial for most residents.
None of these practises are actually lawful, as outlined above, even so to have soil absorb residential waste water is really not that big of a deal If done the right way without surface contact, especially if there is trees or shrubs around to absorb the extra nitrogen – it’s actually fertilizer!
Director-General Isabelle Cardinal also mentioned the effort to accommodate a few tiny house properties which nonetheless are subjected to building codes like any other property with a fixed dwelling, as well as offering to local overnight tourists a site where campers can be parked for one night, directing travellers to a location where their needs are well accommodated and service is already provided.
I jumped on that occasion and asked about experimental dwellings such as earthships which don’t require a septic system because it’s designed into the house that wastewater is basically recycled and turned over by plants; and I also mentioned the very low-key technology to ferment residential waste water into gas that can be used for heating and cooking, as well as produce odourless fertilizer and water. The reason why that is a great solution for residential wastewater treatment in somewhat seasonal communities is the fact that such an installation will provide waste water treatment, cooking gas, heat and fertilizer when people are on the property. Very little maintenance is required. Fermenting containers are usually contained in another sealed container, meaning any potential spill will be contained by the second container.
DG replied that building codes are a provincial competence and council would not be mandated to even make such a decision.
I find earthships interesting, because they do not need heating nor cooling and maintain an average temperature of 17°C year-round, be it in Alberta or in Arizona. The question really is why not any province has made this the building standard, and when you go down that rabbit hole, you’ll understand soon enough that the industrialization of residential building standards is something that is useful for the producers of building materials, nobody else. Suffer from allergies? I recommend removing all man-made materials from your house interior.
Finally, in absence of any recognizable, official procurement process, DL council hired a private band from Kazabazua (?; who made that decision? the sister, the aunt, the uncle of that band’s front person?) from what I understand, to entertain Danford visitors for the 150th anniversary of the village, that will be celebrated on June 13th 2026. Even so I inquired with a few different staff, I never received any information of what the budget was.
During my in-person exchange after the official session of council meeting, councillor Amanda told me that she oversees any submissions for vendors @ $30 for the day via the municipality’s Facebook page, and she would already have many vendors registered.
This practice represents also a violation of code for public submissions because Facebook is a private network and not public and even more questionable, Danford Lake operates a website where these processes could be easily integrated without anybody requiring to be creating an account in a private network such as Facebook to gain access to PUBLIC information. I pointed this out to DG and project staff many times, NO CHANGE by municipal code for public service, this is an ongoing breach of contract (which we have because we are paying property taxes). Thus council is coercing interested community members into creating a digital ID via that private network in order to access community session info.
Coercion is not consent if there was any take away from the last six years! Fundamentally, and funny that I need to mention it, the Bill of Rights protects us from these kinds of practises!
All of these processes are very nebulous to say the least looking at the operation of this council since 2021 when I moved here.
Since then, probably much longer, information is not channeled and available properly as required in public service.
When I pointed these inaccurate practices out to other residents, many told me, that they find it hard to hear about jobs and positions in the municipality, as if Danford Lake shields this kind of information from the public in order to hire their preferred entourage without an official tending process.
Even so these practices are within lawful thresholds (see attached 2 tables from this website), and they may provide short term gains, it appears a reflection of arrogance of council, not to even see the dire need to integrate all talent and skill available in their own municipality, but rather perceiving outsiders as a threat to the status quo than another option in the mix. Definitely a loss to the community, I would allege about 90% of all contracts for events on the municipal level or less than $10,000, giving council total control on whom to hire and what to buy.
Is there any ethics regulations in place to avoid nepotism? That’s not always easy in a rural community made up of a few families!
So that means zero transparency about the decision making. Nine months later, looking at the election where new councillors got in on that exact promise of transparency.
And these are a few of the reasons why many really good workers/musicians sit at home, because they don’t even get a chance to submit anything! Instead the municipalities depend on federal grants to complete the budget resulting in the nonsensical trucking around of organic waste materials which really completely obliterates the original intention to recycle organic matter where it occurs, to save CO2 or some other nonsense. It is really an expression of the absolute one-sided-ness and outright ignorance when it comes to better solutions for rural communities in this council when there was plenty of people who could’ve built compost boxes from wood for all residents who were unable to do that themselves. Builders could’ve used the cash, residents could’ve used the boxes! Instead we’re doing toxic plastic that will eventually micro pollute the landfill and surface waters, killing aquatic life trying to eat the little pieces. And before that we are trucking it around town to the landfill. Brilliant.
Gas prices are skyrocketing as we speak. That war is not going to be over anytime soon because it’s going to make the 1% enormous amounts of money – that is how these two jurisdictions are geared, for the 1% – not for us!
Can everybody in council please stop acting like they’re operating in a vacuum?
Or is this village representation already that perverted that budgets and taxation became a self interest over the years?
See that’s why I don’t have friends I say the quiet part out loud.
If you think you would have a problem with wildlife, then fermenters are your solution – I don’t understand why council is so in-active on this topic!
Compost however wants to be airing out! Otherwise it’s not compost, it’s gonna be stink soup!
Meanwhile popular communal practices enshrine nepotist dependencies and price gouging in the industry. When we don’t have tending because we want to be less bureaucratic, then we are just more corrupt. It’s just sad because all the really great solutions are there, and all of those solutions do not cost a dime of tax!
I need a council who runs on lowering taxes or abandoning them altogether, seeing that some other people going to make the decisions about a few things here soon enough!
I need neighbours and municipal staff to respect our right to privacy and council to communicate in a professional way in respect of the public not trespassing the public in their every move.
I’ve taken my sweet time with this very significant circumstance because I’m just a guest here and I wanted to do it justice, and the meeting was just the opportunity to finally put it all in words.
I am here to live my best life and I am sick of getting handed down arrangements benefitting the 1%, but not me nor my long retired partner, a monster accomplished musical super star. Please stop walking in on us!
And in your projections and planning, you must work towards decreasing budgets and incorporate solutions that do not require any budgets, instead focus on sourcing local! When applying for a grant, use it to create jobs to pay local contractors!
It’s a total mystery to me, why this is not already the current standard!
I want to conclude this description of these deplorable, substandard conditions by encouraging everybody to attend sessions as much as possible – it is our own affairs that are being decided there, and it appears many a times without any of our own interest actually being represented in those decisions.
Thank you very much for reading all of this. If you have any comments, please knock yourself out here below. If you’d like any more information on any of the topics here mentioned, please contact me at abroadcom@protonmail.com.
If you like to support my work, you can also send me an email transfer to that address or give me cash next time we see eye to eye.






























































