By Staff

January 22nd, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Sara Palmieri is an award-winning senior arts professional whose wealth of experience and vision will help usher in the next exciting chapter of The Burlington Performing Arts Centre. Along with her commitment to community building through the arts, Palmieri brings with her more than 20 years of arts management experience that she will leverage in her new role with the BPAC.

Sara Palmieri will join BPAC on Tuesday, February 18.

A native of St. Catharines, Palmieri has spent more than two decades working in performing arts centre environments. While still enrolled in her post-secondary studies, she started her career in the box office at Brock University’s Centre for the Arts where she quickly advanced into roles in sales, marketing, programming and community outreach. Palmieri’s talents in strategic development earned her the privilege of working with the City of St. Catharines and Brock University leadership on the feasibility study to build a new performing arts centre and arts campus in downtown St. Catharines.

In 2015, Palmieri was named the inaugural Director of Programming and Marketing at the newly established FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre (FOPAC) in downtown St. Catharines where she has led much of the FOPAC’s success in its first ten seasons.

Palmieri has earned a reputation as a highly respected member of the local arts and national presenting communities. Throughout her career so far, she has had a positive impact on the arts ecology as a sought-after board and advisory committee member, panelist, and facilitator. Palmieri currently serves as Chair of the Ontario Presents Board of Directors, the province-wide network for performing arts touring and presenting organizations, and has been a part of numerous grassroots and nationally scoped initiatives that aim to improve opportunities for artists.

“I am invigorated by this opportunity to collaborate with the dedicated staff, volunteers and Board of The Burlington Performing Arts Centre to spearhead the next chapter of this cherished community asset,” says Palmieri.

Sara Palmieri will join BPAC on Tuesday, February 18, replacing Interim Executive Director Lucy White, whose strategic guidance and leadership has been invaluable to the organization and staff while the Board searched for its permanent Executive Director.

BPAC Board Chair Peter Van Dyk says: “After a rigorous search process, we are very happy that Sara Palmieri will be joining us as the new Executive Director of BPAC. She is an experienced and well-respected leader in the arts sector and is the right person to lead BPAC forward. I also want to thank Interim Executive Director Lucy White for the stability she provided during the changes of the past year. BPAC is well positioned for 2025 and beyond, and with Sara’s leadership we are excited to see what the future holds.”

The Burlington Performing Arts Centre Board, staff and volunteers look forward to welcoming its cherished patrons to the second half of the 2024-2025 season. BPAC’s 2025-2026 season will be announced in late May.

By Staff

January 22, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

UPDATE: The Performing Arts Board of Directors just announced that Sara Palmieri is the new Executive Director.

Tammy Fox, former Executive Director of the Burlington Performing Arts Centre has a new gig.

HHoTface, an organization with a mission to inspire people of all ages, ethnicities, genders and orientations to celebrate their individual beauty and to look and feel their very best by offering professional-quality, cruelty-free skincare and cosmetics from around the globe, made for all skin tones and types.

At 10:00 am, January 22nd the new gig had been operational for 9 days +.

Fox left Performing Arts on very very short notice in May of last year. The Performing Arts Board has yet to to announce a new Executive Director.

Tammy Fox

Fox had excellent contacts within the performing arts community, had served as the agent for many of the very talented people that take to the stage; when there was a problem she knew who to call.

The public has yet to learn what brought about the exit stage left for Fox at BPAC.

By Pepper Parr

January 21^st, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Pollara, a public opinion polling firm,  surveyed 1,506 people across Canada from Dec. 4 until Dec. 13 — after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Trump at the president-elect’s Mara-a-Lago resort in Florida.

They found that 65 per cent believe a trade war could affect their day-to-day lives in a negative way while five per cent held a positive view and 12 per cent didn’t know.

Again? Sooner than you think.

While online panel samples cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

A staggering 84 per cent of those surveyed have a “negative” view of what the incoming U.S. president’s measures could do to Canada with only three per cent being “positive” about them and eight per cent unsure.

Continue reading Threats from the President of the US being used as reason to call an election in Ontario

By Staff

January 21st, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Karina Gould’s campaign says she’s raised $50,000 from supporters in the 24 hours since she launched her bid for the Liberal leadership on Saturday.

Karina made no bones about it – at her launch on Sunday she asked people to donate and they did.

Gould’s team says the funding came from “grassroots Liberals,” with the average donation totalling $200.

All leadership candidates are required to pay a $350,000 entry fee. The first $50,000 installment — which is refundable — is due on Jan. 23, which is also the deadline to register as a candidate.

For those who scoff at the idea of Karina Gould becoming the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada – take another look.

By Pepper Parr

January 21^st, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

A reliable Queen’s Park source said the provincial election could be as early as February 5^th.

Before Donald Trump took office, Ford said he would require a new mandate for a multi-billion-dollar stimulus package to fight the tariffs.

Now, he says Trump’s more “aggressive” administration itself is reason enough to pull the trigger on a snap vote.

Continue reading Doug Ford said he’d go to Mar-a-Lago — he never got an invitation.

By Pepper Parr

January 20^th, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

Karina Gould during an election campaign.

Burlington has 27 days to have its Member of Parliament, Karina Gould,  in position to take a shot at becoming the Prime Minister of Canada.

Any citizen in the city who can meet the following criteria can become a member of the Liberal Party of Canada:

a) be at least fourteen (14) years of age;
b) support the purposes of the Party;
c) ordinarily live in Canada or, for Canadians living abroad, be qualified as an elector who may vote in accordance with part 11 of the Canada Elections Act;
d) not be a member of any other federal political party in Canada; and
e) while Registered as a Liberal, not have publicly declared an intention to be a
candidate for election to the House of Commons other than as a candidate of the Party.

Item e means Gould cannot vote for herself

The vote will be done on a ranked ballot. Rank Karina Gould as the only person you want to vote for. Make her your first choice, your second choice and your third choice – and as your fourth choice if the voting goes that far

She will need thousands of Burlingtonians to sign up and vote for her.

First step is to click on the link and sign up – registration is free.

Gould held her campaign kick-off at a retail location in Burlington on Sunday. We will report on what she said later in the week.