There’s nothing to draw a community together quite so quickly as a perceived common enemy to hate.

In Stratford, Ontario, there’s much kvetching about outrages, large and small, that are flies in the ointment of happy local living. (Just check out 35,000+ strong Stratford facebook groups such as Stratford.life and Stratford Connects, if you don’t believe me.)

Over my couple decades of living in this community, here are five loathings that regularly see the light of local social media day.

Kevin Larson

This fella must be glad he lives in a society with a robust system of justice that includes courts to determine if your actions are criminal, or not. In another time or place, he’d be chased out of town by an angry mob waving pitchforks.

Larson was arrested Jan. 9, 2025 at Stratford Police Headquarters; he was 37 at the time. He was charged with 10 counts of fraud over $5,000 and 21 counts of fraud under $5,000.

Larson has been a wannabe developer and restaurant operator. Lots of promises, things opening, things closing, building started, building stopped. Lots of bills not paid with lawsuits to follow. This set of 30 criminal fraud charges is merely the latest. As reported in the local newspaper, the Beacon Herald, in February 2022, Ontario’s highest court upheld a Superior Court of Justice decision requiring Larson to pay a local builder more than $530,000 after being found in breach of contract and in breach of trust in a civil matter. Someone who talks big and stiffs others? Comparisons have been made to a certain orange-haired felon currently holding elected office in the U.S.

Clueless/selfish tourists

I can forgive those who bliss out in this bucolic little place, and perhaps slip on the common decencies they wouldn’t dream of violating at home. But there are also some Grade A asshole visitors who treat Stratford like their private theme park and forget people actually live here. The most common offences:

• Parking: dumping their vehicle so it blocks someone’s driveway or a sidewalk. Hey, I need a space and I’m more important than you are!
• Assuming they can arrive at a restaurant 45 minutes before a theatre show starts and get a complete meal service, and then being rude when told that’s just not possible.
• Feeding the swans food that makes them ill (especially bread), or chasing them for selfies, which freaks out the big white birdies.
• Picking bouquets from private or public flower gardens. (Some locals do this too, grrr.)

High property taxes and where they go

Residents here perceive that Stratford’s property tax rates are excessively high. Many tax-supported items in the city’s budget are routine targets of “why should we pay for this??!!??” anger. Those include support for things such as:

• Lights On Stratford, light installations in the downtown and along the Avon River that’s supposed to attract primarily locals to visit the core from mid-December to mid-January.
• Garden plantings and maintenance.
• Support for tourism marketing via Destination Stratford (although some of that work is funded by a municipal accommodation tax paid by visitors.)
• The Grand Trunk development plans: this massive hulking relic from the former Grand Trunk / CNR steam locomotive repair shops within downtown Stratford is in city ownership and there are fears attempts to rehabilitate and develop the site will inevitably lead to wild cost overruns and bankrupt everyone and everything.
• Anything and everything perceived to coddle and subsidize the Stratford Festival.
• Even the police aren’t bullet-proof: citizens often suggest Stratford should not run its own force, which covers this city and the nearby Town of St. Marys, turning to contracted Ontario Provincial Police coverage as some other smaller Ontario communities do.

Snow removal rage

Stratford is on the edge of the lake-effect snowbelt in Southern Ontario. Some winters, there’s a lot of snow. The city is committed to plowing both roads and sidewalks but how quickly these get done, and how well, is a matter of great civic debate and howling.

The 2025 recycling bin debacle

Once upon a time, a municipality near here came up with the idea of “blue box” recycling. Those iconic rectangular blue boxes have been used in this province for more than 40 years. But recently, there have been big changes. Each municipality in the past was responsible for its own recycling program and what was accepted as recyclable varied. Ontario is now moving to a province-wide system, with a standardized list of what can be recycled, and the province has taken over organizing the recycling collection under a company called Circular Materials.

In some communities, this has meant little change if their system set-up was already similar. But in Stratford, late in fall 2025, each household received delivery of a new blue bin that is a huge, lidded wheelie cart. Seriously huge. It has a 360-litre capacity – more than six times that of an old blue bin box. The wheelie can’t fit in the same storage area as the old boxes. Those with mobility issues can’t manage it.

Also in winter, we have snowbanks along the road and, with the rectangular boxes, you could place them on top of the snowbank for pickup. That’s not possible with these huge carts: they need to sit at the end of the cleared driveway, which means putting the cart out and then doing a do-si-do of cart-away / car-moved-to-park-on-street / cart-out-again if pickup hasn’t happened by the time someone needs to drive to work or other appointments.

The new system is great for the workers doing the collecting in that the wheelie carts lock into an automated dumping system attached to the trucks. But what makes it easy for the recycling workers makes it hard for most residents. Finally there was an offer to provide a somewhat smaller cart in exchange, but that’s mollified few people. Stay tuned…

Cover illustration: a meme adapted by Greg Morrison on the Stratford Connects Facebook group