Banjoist, classical pianist featuring in upcoming festival shows

Return performances by two favourites highlight the upcoming third week of the Elora Festival.
Banjo player Jayme Stone and classical pianist Andre Laplante return to the festival following great performances in 2009 - it's Laplante's third appearance in three years.
Following a special night of Tudor-era choral music on Thursday, Tenor Richard Margison heads up soloists, the Elora Festival Singers, Toronto Mendelssohn Singers and the Elora Festival Orchestra in a night of opera highlights, Friday evening in the Gambrel Barn.

Tower South to get turning lane

Tower Street South between Belsyde Avenue and McQueen Blvd. in south Fergus is getting a new look.
Tower street is going to be rebuilt so it will have two through lanes in each direction, and a central left turn lane all the way between the two main intersections.
The work will realign northbound lanes and fix a design that now has traffic dodging between lanes as it moves north.
Northbound traffic in the left lane is often held up by cars pausing to turn left into businesses on the west side of the street. Further north, through traffic goes from two lanes to one as the right lane branches off to turn onto Belsyde eastbound.
Whether the Belsyde-Tower intersection will be drastically changed isn't clear.

Building department looking for cost review

The township's building department's costs of doing business need to be reviewed, chief building official Bob Foster says.
Foster presented his annual report on department finances to councillors at last week's committee of the whole meeting.
Despite taking in $551,899 in revenue in 2009 - building permits and other fees - the department ended up with a $118,301 deficit on the year.
It's the fourth year in a row the department has lost money overall, racking up almost $700,000 in deficits from 2006 to 2009.

Wade biking for cancer research

Most 20-year-old university students would be happy to have a summer job that wasn't too taxing. Sam Wade doesn't fall into that category.
Wade, a psychology student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, has spent the last few weeks riding east from BC to Newfoundland. He stopped in Fergus on Tuesday, July 6, to let the News Express know what he was doing.
"There are four of us in the group, and we're riding from Victoria, BC, to St. John's, Newfoundland, to raise both money and awareness for prostate cancer," he said. "We left Victoria on May 22, and we're averaging about 120 kilometres a day."