Art Gallery donation would not be the first
Re: “Big development on waterfront’s edge could bring new home for Art Gallery,” April 6.
The proposal by developers to create an arts and innovation district includes a proposed donation to the City of Victoria of sufficient property to accommodate a new Greater Victoria Art Gallery.
This brings to mind a similar offer from almost 75 years ago. In 1950 Sara Ellen Spencer — the last resident in her family’s home on Moss Street — offered to donate Gyppeswyk (Spencer Mansion) to the city as a suitable location for an art gallery. It was refused.
Council of the day felt the taxes, upkeep and annual operating grants excessive. In 1951 council reconsidered and voted to accept the offer, but with reduced support.
The province offered grants and amended legislation that allowed the city to hold the property in trust. The arts centre board opened an art gallery at that location in 1952 but not without further problems requiring the Spencer family to hold ownership and responsibility for property taxes until 1956.
Robert Ratcliffe Taylor’s book The Spencer Mansion provides details.
Sara Spencer was an amazing community leader and philanthropist. Her perseverance to see the family home become an art gallery was merely one of her many contributions to her community.
Arnie Campbell
Saanich
Former board member, Sara Spencer Foundation
Making our hospitals a less safe place
Re: “Task force to set one policy for drug use, weapons in B.C. hospitals, Dix says,” April 9.
A new Northern Health memo states that patients are now allowed to bring weapons into the hospital with blades less than four inches long and their visitors can bring whatever drugs the patients want into the hospitals.
Who made the decision that a four-inch or less knife blade and unlimited drugs for personal use is not a safety concern in a hospital environment? Why are any knives and drugs allowed?
Any length of knife blade is capable of causing death or serious injury. Sharing the emergency room or a hospital room with a drug-addicted knife-carrying patient will make no one feel safer.
This ill-thought-out decision will definitely not make hospital staff, vulnerable patients or the public rest easier.
What is next on the list of items that are allowed in the hospital? Small guns?
Are the addicts running the hospitals now?
It is to weep!
Yvonne Andre
Campbell River
Insane rules and the people who made them
I was shocked to read that drug users are allowed to bring into the hospitals their supply of “illicit” drugs, and that “guests” are allowed to bring in “substances” to supply their friends. And if that is not insane enough, they are allowed to bring with them weapons, provided “the knife is less than four inches long”!
Don’t those in charge of our health services have any common sense?
The main arteries and veins in the neck are often less than two inches from the surface. Shall we wait until another patient or a nurse is fatally wounded before changing the rules? Where is the nurses’ union?
Surely it is time to get rid of those making the rules, as well as the rules themselves.
Theodore Kass, MD
Oak Bay
When staff, sick and injured are not priorities
Re: “Illicit-drug use by patients at Victoria General Hospital is common, says nurse,” April 5.
Hospital staff, whether it be nurses, doctors, or support staff work hard every day to help members of our community. They are our heroes and should be treated as such.
Why do we care more about drug users than hospital staff? They have a duty to treat people who are sick or injured but should not be forced to endure ongoing violence and exposure to harmful chemicals.
Premier David Eby, are you OK with your child being exposed to violence while in hospital?
Are you OK with your wife sharing a hospital room with someone smoking drugs?
As a member of the community who may access hospital services, what about me? What about my safety? What about my health and the health and well-being of my family?
Premier David Eby, why don’t you care about me?
Jennifer Davison
Sooke
We deserve a voice in the place we call home
Re: “Victoria’s planning survey misses design opportunities,” commentary, April 9.
Gene Miller appears to take great delight in exposing a previous letter-writer as a “NIMBY”. This term has of course been used to great effect locally in recent years to vilify those who dare stand in the way of the development industry.
“The reason you people can’t afford a home is the fault of those nasty, selfish NIMBYs! We in the development community are simply trying to help you,” etc. etc. However, those of us who are not either developers or their mouthpieces realize that a home, whether rented or bought, is a huge investment.
And given that we all (renters or owners) also pay substantial property taxes to the city, do we not deserve a voice in the place we call home — a place that is carefully chosen and special to us?
Caring about our rapidly changing city and the place we call home is not a crime and doesn’t warrant accusations of NIMBY-ism.
I realize this approach is effective for developers, just as it has been for those seeking to build oil and gas pipelines, etc. I don’t expect it to stop, but felt the point was worth making.
Lee Walters
Victoria
Make building decisions and stick with them
Re: “Victoria’s planning survey misses design opportunities,” commentary, April 9.
Once again the likes and depth of Gene Miller, one of your own community builders, offers up some excellent advice to the City of Victoria about how to simplify the design process.
Lead by example. And examples you have aplenty, as he so aptly points out.
And yes, the greed he points out is on everyone’s hands these days. It’s called making a living. Granted there are those with dirtier hands than others but a well-crafted design process illustrating successful and enduring projects as examples surely can be created without a fuss.
Make a real decision and stick to it. This part of the world is too important to us to ruin over some ill-fated and rushed projects catering to any developer with any idea and a bunch of backers.
I will never forget the community design series we sponsored in Cowichan about 20 some years back with Gene, Martin Segger, Steve Barber and a few of Victoria’s other visionaries of planning at the time. It sure opened the eyes of our councillors in Duncan who were 100 per cent in attendance. It inspired a downtown revitalization strategy that still is being unrolled to this day.
Thank you Gene for your generous time then, and thank you again for speaking aloud now.
David Coulson
David Coulson Design Ltd.
Duncan
Dignity, beauty and the official community plan
The public engagement process the City of Victoria is undertaking to revise the Official Community Plan is indeed farcical. Current and proposed provincial legislation will allow, if not compel, the city to permit the construction of any building that meets some aspects of the OCP.
The structure can be too high, ugly, or cause mental depression but, because it meets some perceived need for increased density, it must be allowed and, if the current OCP presents some obstacle, create a new OCP.
To anyone passing through the core areas of downtown, it would appear the city planners and architects have but one vision: vertical and grey. It is time the city council exercised its right to dignity and beauty in architecture. Do not accept the limitations being imposed by the public engagement process for the OCP. Demand something truly public.
Ken Johnson
Victoria
Government pushes housing prices higher
Re: “Transit-oriented development with ‘hundreds’ of new homes planned for Uptown area,” April 9.
The NDP government is driving up the price of land. We, the people, have purchased two parcels of land for housing for a combined cost of $9.3 million.
The B.C. Assessment Authority bases its assessments on “market value.” Their market value for the two parcels is $5.1 million. Neighbouring properties can expect their 2024 assessments to increase by 82 per cent, putting such properties further out of the reach for B.C. residents.
Premier David Eby is correct when he says: “when that land goes up (in value) the housing that’s ultimately built on that site also ends up being more expensive.”
How is this making housing more affordable?
William Burns
Victoria
After defence update, we will still be behind
While some will welcome Canada’s long-awaited Defence Policy Update, informed readers will realize that it is rather a hollow document, replete with lofty goals but with no real spending commitments to come on line until 20 years out.
There are immediate needs, such as affordable (or any) housing for military members, desperately needed. And plans for the protection of the Arctic have been on the agenda for years with little progress to date.
And as for the much touted two per cent of GDP spending goal, we may reach 1.76 per cent at the end of this current update, but let’s not hold our breath.
Our NATO allies will be left unimpressed by this latest announcement, but then they have been disappointed with Canada for years.
What amazes me is that with this smoke and mirrors announcement, the government believes that somehow we are back in the game when in reality we are actually again going to be well astern of station as world events unfold.
Sad indeed.
David Collins
Victoria
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