(Today’s Northumberland file photo)
At the New Year’s Levee held at Victoria Hall in Cobourg on Saturday, January 4, 2025, Cobourg Mayor Lucas Cleveland reflected on 2024 and it’s accomplishments, while the new year is about changing times and unchanging principles.
“Fellow Councillors, Distinguished Guests, and all those who could join us today, I would like to welcome you to the Mayor and Council’s 2025 Cobourg Levee.
As 2024 has just drawn to a close, we reflect on the year that has passed and the new one yet to begin. 2025 starts off with every possibility and every opportunity, and certainly with every hope…
Cobourg, as a community, had a past year with a host of positive accomplishments, both big and small. I would like to take a moment to highlight some of those achievements. 2024 saw, quite possibly, the largest amount of combined federal and provincial funding ever received in the town’s history in a one-year period. This was capped off by a single grant of $25 million alone, to upgrade our water infrastructure, presented by the Premier himself. We also received $5 million from our Federal government for harbour infrastructure repairs.
This was part of approximately $40 million in funding from the senior levels of government given to Cobourg. I attribute these successes to the tireless advocacy by Council and our Senior Town staff who, at every opportunity, bring the needs of Cobourg to the forefront…
We saw our EEC bylaw not only successfully enacted…it is also being looked at by many municipalities across our Province as something they too may want to establish. It is something to be proud of when a locally created municipal bylaw has the chance to gain traction and become part of the larger public discourse, and even eventually become wider public policy…
At the County level as Mayor, 2024 was certainly a year of both trial and tribulations…we saw disagreements, particularly in the area of social services, but I am heartened to say a tremendous amount of progress has been made.
The County is now looking at ways to share their social service advocacy systems around the County, so that Cobourg will no longer be the epi-centre…the “ground zero”… if you will, for issues it is not equipped by financial design or personal resources to handle. I have vocally advocated for a “re-imagining” of our current County system…a system, I hope, in the future that will be based on stronger economic ties, more streamlined services, and a more mutually beneficial interconnectedness to our local communities that makes sense for all… a modern County structure… beyond a fealty to tenuous geographic connections.
2025 has all the hallmarks of being a very bright year for Cobourg. We have many key infrastructure projects in the pipeline, such as Transit Stop Improvements, our Bi-Annual Sidewalk Program, to larger scale projects such as the reconstruction of Anne Street, as well as the William Street Bridge Rehabilitation.
All of this is made possible by the dedication of your Councillors, our CAO Tracey Vaughn, and her senior Team. We also cannot thank enough… all our Town staff who every day do all they can to make Cobourg better…our Police and Fire departments, whose dedicated staff are willing to put their own lives on the line…for ours. For me, it is very humbling…
I mentioned in my Christmas holiday message that Cobourg is a town of supreme generosity…I have had a privileged first-hand seat to experience the generosity, the kindness, and the goodwill that are the hallmarks — I would say the very foundation — of what makes Cobourg the truly amazing community that we are. Since moving to Cobourg, I knew this was a very special place, a place where friends and neighbours were there for each other in good times and in bad. Despite any differences, it did not matter, when our town was in need. We were always there together as one community.
In the frenetic haze that zooms by, in what we call our daily lives, we’re often bombarded by a ceaseless call of constant negativity…. From whispers to a blaring din of white noise telling us we live in a world fraught with miseries, corrupted by chaos, tinged by evil itself.? We turn on the news, we read the paper, we scroll through the maze of social media that at times can seem to swallow us up in a gaping hole of darkness.
It can seem that hope itself at times… has truly been abandoned; it can seem that our problems, the world’s problems, are insurmountable…
But I would argue we live in enlightened times; that our collective humanity may seem tarnished, but it is never corroded. That every day… acts of simple human kindness are performed in every corner of this world… and certainly in this town….? That there are acts of grace that change lives; touch us so deeply that we are simply awed by their purity…
No acts of darkness, no acts of tyranny, no acts of anger or prejudice, will ever truly extinguish our collective capacity to forgive, or our collective capacity… for basic decency.
In closing, I am reminded of the perfect simplicity in the quote from Former U.S. President and Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter, who we lost so recently, when he said…
“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”
Thank you”
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
