Don’t compare parade to the Ottawa honking
I was disturbed to see some of the negative comments regarding the trucks horns the night of the truck light parade, with people comparing it to Ottawa truck blockage last year.
This event raises thousands of dollars’ worth of food for the less fortunate people in our community and has done so for many years. These individuals spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of their own time and money to decorate these trucks to participate in this event.
The only thanks they get is knowing the have helped put food on the table for the less fortunate. Thousands of people line the parade route every year and the children love hearing the horns honking of these amazingly decorated trucks.
I watched the parade on Saturday evening and you would have heard honking for at the most 10 minutes, not 24/7 as in Ottawa.
Comparing 10 minutes of honking versus around-the-clock noise is ludicrous. Get into the Christmas spirit of giving, you complainers.
Rob Grant
Langford
Patios should enhance the downtown streets
Regarding the City of Victoria’s proposed new patio bylaw, Solomon Siegel, the owner of Pagliacci’s, says that the patio in front of his restaurant was meant to beautify the city and that they “bring a lot of life and energy to the city.”
During the summers of 2020 and 2021, Pagliacci’s did indeed have a great outdoor patio, with tables and chairs right out on Broad Street. It created a great atmosphere, that truly did bring more life and energy to the street.
Unfortunately, this has since been replaced with a new “patio” that is more like an enclosed box — essentially just an extension of the indoor space — that provides very little vibrancy or connection to the street.
Patios like this are the ones that the new bylaw should address. If a business is going to be allowed to use public space, they should do so in a way that enhances the public realm, not just build an isolated box.
Steven Murray
Victoria
Government acts like it knows best for all
All the stratas that passed “no rental” bylaws did so by a three-quarters majority vote, so who supports an end to prohibiting rentals?
To paraphrase Preston Manning: We elect people to represent us in the capital, but they end up representing the capital (or the party) to us.
Only MLAs got to vote on this. They took away our right to choose an important aspect of our strata community life. Who gave them the authority to do that?
I do not mean the legal authority, but the moral basis. Show us they have the votes among those whose lives are affected.
Their action does not create housing units. However, it will allow an investor to outbid a potential owner-occupant for the next unit that comes up for sale in our strata.
I have often voted NDP. The previous Liberal government committed us all to Site C without first getting a true consensus that it was needed; now we have its massive debt. This rental issue may be smaller, but the NDP reminds me of Christy Clark.
What is the new government model? That the NDP MLAs know best?
I give former premier John Horgan high marks for acknowledging that he misread the issue of the museum project and for changing course.
This will be either the government’s museum moment or its Site C-like legacy.
Which will it be?
Richard Neary
Victoria
Riverview Hospital is desperately needed
Can you imagine a place where sick people are left to sleep in doorways on the street?
Where illnesses are “looked after by the community”?
Sadly, that place is British Columbia. Mental illness is a treatable illness, like diabetes or cancer.
My late husband was a psychiatrist who worked with some of the most seriously mentally ill people in our community. As Riverview Hospital shrivelled, accepting fewer and fewer patients until it was heartbreakingly closed, he struggled to find appropriate in-patient long term care for the most desperate.
The result of the Riverview Hospital closing has been disastrous. Human beings deserve better than this in 21st-century British Columbia.
Premier David Eby, please reopen Riverview Hospital.
Catherine Ford
Saanich
Strong action needed, not tough approach
Re: “Tough approach needed in downtown Victoria,” letter, Dec. 5.
The idea about rounding up junkies and forcing them into some military garrison is shameful and does not represent the majority of 91原创s, or even Victorians.
“We are paying for their existence, so why not?”
Why not? Because I’m certain that Canada played a role in the abolishing of slavery, and in creating the generational trauma that led many to the streets.
Every street person pays for their own life, consciously or not, with the cost of lower life expectancy, lower quality of life conditions, higher instances of mental health and addictive behaviour, never mind the loss of dignity and personhood experienced by being spat upon literally and metaphorically.
You don’t own someone just because you pay into a broken health-care and social safety-net system that damages people more than helping them. Drill sergeants and disciplinarians are why we hear people say they’d rather be homeless than (insert substandard dehumanizing treatment at home and in the workplace here).
We need strong action to handle this issue. The first step must not include shovelling our brothers and sisters around like manure dumped in the wrong garden (city).
Krysty McIntyre
Victoria
Love the environment? Then learn from history
Re: “We are losing our history — and with it, ourselves,” commentary, Dec. 7.
Thanks so much for the excellent editorial opinion piece by professors John Lutz and Jason Colby on the importance of history. I could not agree more with their commentary. Without history, we have no collective memory of ourselves, and without memory we lose so much.
As a geographer, I was trained to examine the relationships that humans have with the environment, but I was always struck by how that relationship was so heavily influenced by the narratives that people tell about themselves, their communities and their nation states.
History and geography, then, inform each other.
British Columbia is an excellent example of these relationships, and our museums have played such an important role in furthering our understandings.
I worked for over 30 years in natural resource and environmental management for the provincial government, and after retirement taught as a sessional lecturer in the UVic geography department for 10 years.
I taught a fourth-year capstone course in decision making — how we as a society make decisions around the use of our environment.
One of my constant irritations was the lack of understanding that so many students had of their own history, and the history of the communities they lived in. In short, I couldn’t teach geography and environmental studies without teaching history.
If we want to better manage our environment, we need to learn our history.
Jamie Alley
Saanich
Learn from the past, don’t let it slip away
Re: “We are losing our history — and with it, ourselves,” commentary, Dec. 8.
Hurrah for the very clear and thoughtful commentary by John Lutz and Jason Colby. I have been horrified to see our history totally erased from museums and street corners.
Certainly, the stories told in exhibits have not been true to all of Canada’s heritage but, rather than eliminating them altogether, they should be enhanced and curated with honest dialogues and inclusive stories.
Instead of removing a statue from the street, why not add an honest plaque that explains both the positive and negative of this historical figure? Don’t hide it away: Use it to be honest about our past, highlighting both sides of the figure’s contributions to our country.
In this way our children and grandchildren will learn from the mistakes of the past, not be oblivious to them.
Judy Love-Eastham
Nanoose Bay
Eulogy for a plum tree on Menzies Street
How did I love thee? Let me count the ways:
In the spring for your fulfilled promise of annual rejuvenation, and your pretty petals blowing in the wind, then covering the ground like delicate pink snow flakes;
In the summer for the shade you provide on hot, humid days, and the way your leaves soften the view of the buildings behind;
In the fall, for the rustling of your leaves in the wind that muffles the constant urban hum, and the deep purple colour of your leaves; and
In the winter for your dark bare branches that even then are beautiful, and give testament to your resilience over many decades.
But to Lisa, Marianne and their “green” comrades on council, you and dozens of other tree-bylaw “protected” trees were summarily sentenced to death, to be cut into firewood or mulched and replaced by concrete.
You will soon be gone but not forgotten, at least not by everyone else.
Stephen Hayward
James Bay
Go after the ones who cause the problems
Seems to me that the only students that would or should be “uncomfortable” about there being liaison officers in schools would be the ones who cause the problems.
It’s got nothing to do with them being white, Black or Indigenous, it’s about who the problem ones are.
Same as the convicts in jail — the ones that are in courts or jail are the ones that did the crimes — that’s the way it should be.
Sam Alexander
Saanich
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