Skip to content

LOCAL EDITORIAL: It's crystal ball time again

Some pithy predictions for what might lie ahead in the new year

Again we've peered into a badly scratched old crystal ball the editor keeps in a bowling bag under his desk for just this time of the year.

Let’s start with an easy prediction for 2014.

• Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto will land in court for assault, defamation, drugs, drunk driving, public lewdness or all of the above. While charges against him are still in the court system, Ford will successfully defend the mayor’s position by getting ballots from enough Torontonians who would vote for Vlad the Impaler if he guaranteed he would lower their taxes.

• The shadowy good ol’ boys known as Comox Valley Common Sense will start to pound the lower-taxes drum weeks before municipal elections in November. Some candidates will benefit from a CVCS endorsement. However, the left side of the political spectrum won’t be taken by surprise this time and the Common Sense message will be blunted because enough voters are wary of faceless agitators pushing a single-issue platform.

• Jon Ambler, a good man whom people want to punish for speaking his mind, will a) not run for council again, weary of politics and his comments being taken out of context, b) cede his Courtenay council seat to run against Mayor Larry Jangula.

• The North American economy will recover to the point where the recession lifts, sparking owners of the long-dormant Kensington and Cayet developments to proceed with construction.

• Comox Valley Walk of Achievement 2013 inductee Brian Howes, a Los Angeles-based music producer, will buy the former Palace Theatre land and build a state-of-the-art recording studio in downtown Courtenay. The building, which will include a small movie theatre, will have the same rococo décor that graced the original building before fire destroyed it in 2007.

• Snow begins to fall on Mount Washington later this month and hardly stops for the better part of a month, allowing the resort to salvage its season to some extent.

Happy new year.

editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com