Mayor responds to SooToday.com cartoon

It's Monday night and Mayor John Rowswell is returning a phone call to SooToday.com.

He's calling from Parry Sound, driving back from Toronto, where he spent an afternoon talking to a group of Seneca College students.

"I've seen the cartoon," he volunteers, referring to Ron Moffat's latest offering on SooToday.com's editorial page.

"You're going to have to ship me a lot further than that to get me to stop talking about transpolar," he quips.

Indeed, talking about transpolar is exactly what the mayor was doing for most of the day at Seneca College.

He says his presentation to Professor John Bottomley's Global Logistics and Supply Chain Management Graduate Program went well.

Rowswell was initially scheduled to speak for two 45-minute periods, but a third session was added for additional questions.

And his transpolar ideas were met by an appreciative audience of students from around the world, he says,

The Seneca College program is truly international.

Only three of the 33 students Rowswell spoke to were from Toronto.

The rest were from places like China and Russia and Sri Lanka and India and Byelorussia, some of whom might eventually find themselves in a position to make the mayor's transpolar air cargo dream a reality.

In the meantime, some students are being assigned to prepare research papers on the Sault's prospects as a transpolar hub.

Although the Mayor was invited to talk about transpolar, Rowswell says there was also considerable discussion about the Sault's advantages as a multi-modal cargo centre for truck, train and marine traffic.

To see what SooToday.com readers have been saying about Moffat's cartoon, please click here.