☑️ One promise down already?

~ NOTL News Crew

If you buy a poppy in NOTL this week, you'll probably buy it from a trailer. The Legion on King Street hasn't reopened since the Aug. 2 storm put more than a foot of water through its ground floor, and with the drywall, flooring and bar all torn out, board member Chrystal Haverstock calls it "an empty shell." So the poppy campaign moved into the parking lot and started a week early.

The wreaths are upstairs, waiting for Wednesday. A few blocks away, 10,000 knitted poppies are still hanging off the Old Court House. NOTL shows up for this one, flood or not.

The patios are closed and the tour buses are thinning out, which means the restaurants are ours again. So we're curious.

And tell us your go-to. Drop your favourite NOTL restaurant in the comment box. Picked "something else"? Tell us what it is there too.

Last week we wrote down six things Vaughn Goettler promised during the campaign and said we'd check back when each one came due. We didn't expect to check one off this soon.

#6, a public record of how every councillor votes: in an interview with The Lake Report this week, Goettler said council has agreed to go back to using the Town's existing electronic voting system, so every vote is recorded. Weston Miller named the same thing as his first priority. It isn't done until the first recorded vote shows up somewhere you can find it, but it's moving. ✅ (pending)

Goettler also added a few things we hadn't heard before: phones and smartwatches away during council meetings, short summaries at the top of long agendas, and calls from residents returned within 24 hours. "It makes people feel they're not being ignored," he said. On infrastructure, the line hasn't changed: "I am really committed to no more flooding," with "a healthy pause on development" until the Town knows what its pipes can handle. He named the grinder pumps in St. Davids as one place to start.

Here's what the six councillors told Niagara Now they want to tackle first:

DAY ONE: What council says it will tackle first

Gary Burroughs (Deputy Lord Mayor): bring back resident advisory committees, speed up the former hospital site, finish short-term rental rules
Sandra O'Connor: a motion declaring casinos aren't welcome in NOTL
Weston Miller: electronic voting so you can see how everyone votes
Steve McGuinness: the 2027 budget; he says taxes have gone up too fast
Andrew Niven: a strategic plan early in the term, plus the Queen Street patio program and the tree bylaw
Tim Balasiuk: more time to protect heritage properties before the province's designation deadlines

Source: Niagara Now, Nov. 4.

And here's what you told us you'd put on their desk.

Taxes came up first. One reader who moved here four years ago says their property tax bill has gone from $5,900 to $7,800 a year in that time, a jump of almost a third. "We paid less in Mississauga for a house and property more than twice the size!" That lines up with McGuinness's priority, and with the $13 million a year the Town says it's short on roads and pipes. None of the six councillors wants that gap landing entirely on your tax bill. How they close it is the 2027 budget's job.

Then the old hospital site. One reader wants upscale low-rise apartments there, with an urgent care clinic on site, for people who want to leave the big house without leaving town. Burroughs has the same property on his list.

And one more reader summed up the mood: "We need to keep them accountable."

That's the plan. Council is sworn in Nov. 24. We'll keep the list, and we'll keep checking.

You voted, and it wasn't close: Old Town took the Halloween Showdown with 48% of 88 votes, ahead of Virgil (22%), St. Davids (13%), and Queenston and Glendale/Garrison Village tied at 9%. But the busiest porch in town was in Virgil, where about 300 kids lined up at the Pumariega Sabater house on Annmarie Drive. Miguel, who grew up in Cuba where Halloween decorations could get you in trouble, built a haunted house in a new carport this year, complete with a skeleton band called the Reapers. He's already planning to go bigger next year.

Legionnaires and uniformed members, joined by Polish First World War re-enactors, will march along Queen Street to the cenotaph for two minutes of silence at 11am, followed by the wreaths. The re-enactors honour the Polish soldiers who trained at Camp Kosciuszko here from 1917 to 1919. Because the Legion is still closed after the flood, everyone gathers at the Community Centre afterward. In Queenston, there's a second ceremony at the Niagara Township Cenotaph at 1pm. Get to Queen Street by 10:45.

The NOTL Museum's Poppy Brigade has more than 15,000 handmade poppies on display this year at four spots: the Museum, the Court House on Queen Street, the Legion cenotaph on King Street and, behind the Queenston cenotaph, RiverBrink Art Museum. The Court House curtain has become the most photographed spot on Queen. The displays stay up until Nov. 13, so there's still a week to see them.

Good news for holiday shopping: parking in the Heritage District is free again from Dec. 1 to 31. The meters will say so, and if you use Honk or ParkedIn, the app will tell you not to pay. If you've been putting off a Queen Street trip because of the parking, December is the month.

The new council hasn't sat yet, and the shop owners are already lobbying. The owners of It's All Fun & Games want no pedestrian-only Queen Street, no food trucks or pop-ups competing with storefronts in the heritage core, and a heritage property tax rebate (the province's program allows 10 to 40%). Great Things, open since 1996, says there are simply too many day-trippers in high season. Exchange Brewery's owner is open to more pedestrian space, as part of a bigger heritage plan. Tourism NOTL is asking for public Wi-Fi downtown, partly so visitors without Canadian data can actually pay for parking.

Speaking of Queen: the first public open house for the Queen Street Secondary Plan, the Town's study of what the downtown core looks like for the next couple of decades, is Tuesday, Nov. 17, 5 to 7:30pm, in the Simpson Room at the Community Centre (14 Anderson Lane). It's drop-in, no registration, with a quieter early-access half hour from 4:30 for anyone who'd like a calmer room. The Town has hired The Biglieri Group to lead it, and this is the first of several chances to weigh in. If you have opinions about the shop owners' list above, this is where they count.

A Year with Frog and Toad opened Thursday at the Court House Theatre, and Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella is next at the Festival Theatre. Both run to Dec. 23. One change if it's a family tradition: A Christmas Carol isn't playing in NOTL this year; the Shaw moved it to Toronto's Harbourfront.

The NOTL Residents Association holds its annual general meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 25, at the Community Centre (doors 5:30pm, meeting 6pm). It's electing new board members, and the deadline to apply was just extended to Nov. 17. Members register at notlra.com/2026-agm.

Concession 7 Road is still closed between York Road and just north of Queenston Road for the Modero subdivision work. The Town's estimate was about five weeks from Oct. 19, which puts reopening around Nov. 23.

We live in a town where the homes are a tourist attraction. Every December, more than 4,000 people come to walk through a handful of NOTL houses dressed for the holidays, and this year some of them are coming from Japan and Australia. A few of the addresses on this year's list are worth knowing whether you ever step inside or not.

🏛️ The Kirby House, Front Street. A Georgian built in 1818, heritage-designated, and old enough that the town around it was still rebuilding from the War of 1812. It was on the same holiday tour 25 years ago, which earns it one of two "Silver Medallion" spots this year.

🏰 The Lepp-Loforti Chateau, 2046 Four Mile Creek Road. Proof that some of the town's most striking houses are nowhere near the lake.

🎄 The McArthur Estate, John Street. Grand staircase, stables, grounds made for carollers. If any house in town was built for December, it's this one.

A Georgian on Front Street, a chateau on Four Mile Creek, an estate on John. Same town. That range is a big part of why people want to live here.

Are you a NOTL realtor? This section is open to one local agent as its exclusive partner. Just reply to this email.

The Shaw's holiday family show opened Thursday in the Court House Theatre on Queen Street. A Year with Frog and Toad follows Arnold Lobel's two friends through four seasons of songs, about 90 minutes with an intermission, recommended for ages 6 and up. If your kids are new to theatre, this is the one: short, funny and in a small room where every seat is close. Add the $10 family pre-show workshop with your ticket (book at 1-800-511-7429), then walk past the poppies on the way out.

The Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre opened two exhibitions last Sunday. Unintentional City is Leslie Parker's solo show (look for Nothing to see here, move along). Common Ground is a group show from the NOTL Arts Collective, local painters working in everything from soft pastel to mixed media. It's free, it's right on the river at 247 Ricardo St., and it's a good rainy-afternoon hour.

Grown-ups too: the Shaw's first CARE Summit runs Saturday, 9:30am to 3pm, at the Burton Centre (272 Wellington St.). It's free and drop-in: try a Confi-Dance or Improv for Nimble Minds session, or catch McMaster's Dr. Marla Beauchamp on staying mobile as you age at noon.

Alexa Spione Barbara grew up in NOTL wanting to be a pilot. She took flying lessons at the Niagara District Airport, studied aviation maintenance at Mohawk College after Holy Cross, and got a job in the field. It didn't stick. So she went to work for her dad, Marco, a master plumber with Performance Plumbing and Heating, and calls it the best decision she ever made.

She earned her plumber's licence in 2020, and got used to homeowners greeting her with "you must be Daddy's little helper." Two years ago, with her husband, Jake, pushing her (he came up with the name and drew the logo), she started her own company: Plumbing in Pink. Her dad still takes her calls on the tough jobs. Neither one sees the other as competition.

Her approach is the part we like most. "I like to show them how to do small repairs," she says. "Maybe that's not best for business, but I don't really care. If I can show someone how to fix something, I will."

Today she's at the Sheraton Fallsview as a finalist for the Women in Business Excellence in Trades award. She's one of several NOTLers on the program: Bricks & Barley chef Rachel Schalk (same category), Willowbank's Katie Houghton, Brunch Beverages founder Kimberly Legros, Brock professor Antonia Mantonakis, and Mandy Rennehan, the Freshco founder and HGTV host who moved here during COVID and is receiving the Ruth Unrau Legacy Award. Good luck to all of them.