Mother Nature gives us wonderful weather
Hooray for the nice warm weather. Thank you Mother Nature!
As a 61-year-old person who is a distance runner, cyclist, gardener, I love the heat.
And before anybody gets all up in arms about climate change, according to Environment Canada it was 27 degrees on this day in 1973.
Neil Gelinas
Victoria
Don’t complain about heat, it’s worse elsewhere
In Western Australia some years ago, when a well-site geologist, the temperatures were above 40 degrees for more than 40 days and 40 nights.
To help cool down we would dip into a water barrel, got out and let evaporation do the rest.
Let us not complain about temperatures of 28 or less. It is trivial.
Michael Bell
Victoria
Wakey wakey, Esquimalt! Some buccaneers work shifts
What beautiful weather we had for Buccaneer Days. I am certain plenty of people enjoyed the parade, fair, and concert.
However, I expect that shift workers who live in Esquimalt – who were trying to sleep on Saturday morning – had a different view of things.
Without interruption, from about 7:15 a.m. until 8:30 a.m., a fire engine made the rounds from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, blaring its siren and exclaiming “wakey wakey!,” again and again over its loudspeaker.
I’m all-in for community-wide events like Buccaneer Days. And while I appreciate that the community “wakey wakey” extends back to 1966, not everyone values this particular tradition over a peaceful Saturday morning.
We can celebrate Buccaneer Days together without being conspicuously inconsiderate toward our neighbours.
Doug Stacey
Esquimalt
Difference between drinking beer and doing drugs
Regarding two North Cowichan councillors drinking beer in a public place, with thoughts of addicts being able to do various types of deadly drugs in public, why not being also able to drink a beer in public?
I have heard many people criticizing the councillors’ charade as not showing some compassion for these addicts, of who are very plentiful. The councillors reply, as I see it, is what’s the difference?
My immediate thought was that there is a huge difference.
The two councillors sat on lawn chairs, drank their beers, didn’t keel over, pass out, require medical assistance, and when done, there was nothing left behind. You wouldn’t even know they were there.
Rob McKenzie
Duncan
Names might be difficult, but we can learn
Dear me! So you can’t say or spell the Indigenous names being used around “your” city?
Haven’t you ever travelled to Europe, Africa, Asia? Did you expect all those names to be in English as well?
We are living on stolen land. The names are as they were before white settlers pushed out the original inhabitants, or they are names that are meaningful to the original inhabitants.
I find them a bit difficult too, but I can learn to say and spell them.
And so can you.
Rosemary Garnet
Victoria
Next, bring back the First Peoples Gallery
Congratulations are due to Sports and Culture Minister Lana Popham on achieving real success in reopening a key part of the third floor exhibits in the Royal B.C. Museum.]
One hopes that she will not stop with the Old Town and now move to reopen the wonderful First Peoples Gallery exhibits for public viewing.
The 91原创 Northwest is unique for Indigenous artifacts and carvings, and these should be proudly displayed and not locked behind closed doors.
Richard McCandless
Saanich
Confine money addicts to solve our problems
Involuntary confinement of money addicts is the most humane and correctly targeted way to address the root cause of Canada’s dismaying descent into homelessness, drug addiction, crumbling healthcare, and many other tragic failures the remedy for which is proper funding.
Did you know that as of May 2023, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in China is $619 91原创 per month?
This is because China has a mixed economy, and critical economic infrastructure, like banking, is managed as a public utility.
Credit is available to individuals and organizations planning to make and do things but kept out of the hands of money addicts who use credit to drive asset prices, most notably house prices and rents, into the stratosphere.
Entrepreneurs and money addicts who are able to function without preying on their fellow human beings are free to engage in commerce to their hearts’ content in China, and the results are stupendous.
China is a technological and manufacturing behemoth. China’s public infrastructure, including its transportation, cultural, educational, and health care infrastructure are miles ahead of Western economies crumbling under the outsized weight of money addicts.
China’s economy, measured by purchasing power parity, is No. 1 in the world.
So yes, by all means, involuntary confinement of money addicts must begin forthwith so 91原创s are able to begin today reclaiming our country from free-ranging financial predators.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
Longing for Victoria as it used to be
At one time, in the recent past, say 10 years ago, my wife and I enjoyed many activities in Victoria.
We used to walk the Inner Harbour in the evening, we used to frequent the many nice restaurants downtown, we used to enjoy Beacon Hill Park.
Now our favourite activities include avoiding downtown and Beacon Hill Park as we don’t feel safe there at all.
We enjoy idling our car on the Cook Street parking lot that extends from Southgate to Bay Street.
We enjoy finding different residential streets to drive on to avoid the messes of 91原创, Haultain and Richardson Streets.
We used to enjoy the City of Gardens, now we look sorrowfully at the wild/indigenous grasses growing everywhere.
We mostly use our time to remember when.
I’m so happy for the newcomers to our city, improving it their way.
We old timers are not that happy.
We only helped build this city into a global gem.
The newcomers have turned it into a mess.
Dewane Ollech
Victoria
Try building a fence between kids and campers
We can see there’s little hope for dealing with the bylaw office when it comes to enforcing camping restrictions in city parks, specifically next to play areas for both children and adults.
Adults have to muster enough courage to play tennis at Stadacona or children to skateboard at Topaz.
Would there be a short-term solution by erecting a temporary solid fence between the two groups? That way both might feel somewhat protected from the other. Police patrols would add the necessary layer for us tax payers.
Gloria Sheldon
Saanich
Toronto-Ottawa by rail gives an idea to the Island
I’m in Ontario on the train from Toronto to Ottawa. It’s a four-hour wonderful trip; it’s comfortable, clean, the staff are all competent and friendly as well.
What is wrong with us on 91原创 Island? Here is a solution just waiting to be utilized.
Anne Christensen
Victoria
Come From Away did not need to be rushed
Re: “Come From Away a celebration of resilience and big-heartedness,” review, May 12.
It was good to read Adrian Chamberlain’s review of Come From Away. I saw the Thursday matinee and agree the pacing was quite rushed — more than a bit!
That might have been the reason for the sound of the performers voices being a problem too — not just the spoken dialogue but the song lyrics — I felt that I missed 50 per cent of the words being spoken/sung, and I was among the youngest people there!
I imagine it must have been even more difficult for those older with poor hearing.
Visually it was a fine show, with great choreography, lighting and set design, but I would need to see a more unhurried production to fully appreciate the dialogue and lyrics.
Krista Kaptein
Courtenay
Police accountability needs a champion
Re: “B.C. police should be ordered to use body cams,” May 12.
Province-wide implementation is just one of several badly needed policing reforms on which Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has been stalling, or even evading.
Other overdue reforms include real transparency and accountability in police oversight, and civilian investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against police.
The latter problem has been strongly demonstrated by a recently revealed RCMP report showing Mounties mishandled or dropped investigations into their fellow officers in Prince George.
Farnworth’s inaction, however, isn’t a partisan problem. All three provincial parties support the police status quo. That’s apparent in the legislature and on the all-party legislative committees that supposedly address police issues.
The most recent committee released a report in April 2022 that evades reform by hiding behind trendy but vague jargon. MLAs from three parties referred to transparency and accountability only in nebulous terms.
They flatly rejected suggestions for body cameras and civilian investigation of sexual misconduct.
The report’s recommendations are very confused, possibly as a tactic to allow wide interpretation. But the overall tenor calls for separate police accountability procedures for separate identity groups.
That sounds like a fashionable idea. But it can be easily manipulated to block police accountability.
Greg Klein
Nanaimo
Blame the stallers and deniers for the climate mess we face
Re: “End of world talk a cause of mental health crisis,” letter, May 4.
The writer asks “Since the end of the last “mini-ice age” in the mid 1850s, global temperatures have risen about one degree Celsius. Is this really an existential crisis?”
Yes, it really is.
The “mini-ice age” (sic) the writer references, presumably the Little Ice Age (LIA), lasted from around 1400 to 1850. It is considered a regional period of cooling and, though often used erroneously by climate change deniers to confuse the issue.
It’s not related to the climate crisis we face today, which is a very big deal.
It’s easy to discover why by referring to science.
As the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains: “The roughly … 1 degrees Celsius increase in global average surface temperature that has occurred since the pre-industrial era (1880-1900) might seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat.”
Depending where you live, that increase can be many times more than the average, such as in Canada’s north.
Notwithstanding the writer’s anecdotal contention that oil executives he has met are “intelligent, honest, hard-working and pragmatic,” it is well-documented that for decades the industry has funded a coordinated program of disinformation designed to stall public policy to address anthropogenic global warming.
And, yes, it followed exactly the tobacco industry playbook that stalled control of its damaging products by questioning science.
Not surprising, since both campaigns used the same techniques, often employed by the same antagonists, people like Fred Singer who worked for both Big Tobacco and Big Oil.
We are paying the price, in lives, infrastructure and, ergo, real dollars. Any blame for what has been called “eco-anxiety” should borne by those who have stalled and denied us into this existential crisis.
Raymond Parker
Sooke
SEND US YOUR LETTERS
• Email letters to: [email protected]
• Mail: Letters to the editor, Times 91原创, 201-655 Tyee Rd., Victoria, B.C. V9A 6X5
• Submissions should be no more than 250 words; subject to editing for length and clarity. Provide your contact information; it will not be published. Avoid sending your letter as an email attachment.
