Thursday, 7 November 2013

    My Neighborhood: Ajax, Ontario
    By Justin Behan


LOCATION

The town of Ajax is located in the Durham Region of Ontario, Canada on the eastern part of the Greater Toronto Area. There are approximately around 110,000 people living in Ajax today and the town is bordered by Pickering and Whitby and is on the shore of Lake Ontario. 

HISTORY


The town was named after a Royal Navy cruiser that served in World War II, called the HMS Ajax. The town of Ajax was first established back in 1941 as a military town that offered jobs to thousands of people. The Defence Industries Limited (DIL) owned a bombshell and people from all over Canada would come to work there to assist the war. Ajax had schools, a sewage plant and homes and became over time, a very large community and is still growing today.

LOCAL ATTRACTIONS

Ajax has a few attractions for the public such as conversations like Rotary Park, Duffin’s Creek and the Greenwood Conservation Area. These places offer public playgrounds, trails, fishing and dog parks and also host big and small events and even picnics. The three community centers are The Mclean Community Centre (MCC), located in the North end of Ajax, and in the South end of Ajax there is the Ajax Community Centre. The newest community center in the town is the Audley Recreation Centre (ARC) which is located just at the border of Ajax and Whitby on Audley road. There are skate parks at each community center as well as libraries, indoor swimming pools, outdoor splash pads, hockey/skating areas, gyms and offer dance lessons and other activities for people of all ages.

LOCAL PROBLEMS/ISSUES

There aren’t many issues in Ajax, unlike cities closer to Toronto. It’s a small suburb area so the only real problems we have are small petty crimes like theft and small robberies. There are a lot of drugs in Ajax, but no matter where you go there’s going to be drug related crimes and issues. Majority of the crimes that happen in Ajax are related to marijuana and young adults. Aside from that, it’s pretty rare for anything bad to happen in the community. Ajax is one of the safest towns in the GTA, for sure. One problem is facing right now is the amount of algae and stench coming from Lake Ontario. The smell gets worse every year and the public is starting to question the town on how to get rid of this problem.

CURRENT NEWS STORY


People living near the shoreline of Lake Ontario aren’t happy about the amount of algae that has built up over the years. It’s smelt terrible for a long time already but the public is finally acting upon this and demanding it be dealt with. There has been open house council meetings to discuss how they are going to act upon this. The plan is to extend the outfall pipe out farther into the Lake Ontariio by at least 3 kilometres rather than the one kilometer. The only problem with this is that it will cost between $200 - $250 million. Another problem is that this would make the lake even more polluted than it is now. What could happen in the ne next 30 years once the 3 kilometre extension is no longer enough? This is an issue they are going to need to look further into and make wise decisions.

LOCAL PROFILE



Erick Valentic has been one of my really good friends for a long time now and he has accomplished quite a lot since I’ve known him. Erick is a skateboarder who was born and raised in Ajax. Erick is a 19 year old film maker who owns his own company that I also help out with, called Minor Media which started back in 2006. A lot of attention was first brought to Erick after he and his crew of friends entered a contest on a very popular skateboarding website called The Berrics (www.theberrics.com). Erick and his crew ended up winning out of over 1200 videos entered across the entire world and won a trip to go skate the privately owned skatepark and film their own video there. Since then, Minor Media has attracted fans from all over the world and to this day continues to put out videos to showcase everybody in the crew’s skateboarding. Erick remains living in Ajax but has hopes to move out to California and continue film making out where the industry for skateboarding is bigger and full of opportunity.

Here is Erick’s contest entry as well as the final outcome of the award.