We need a different strategy to help homeless
Re: “Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog: Send mentally ill to institutions in ‘extreme cases,’ ” Dec. 14.
Hats off to Nanaimo’s mayor for saying what needed to be said about dealing with the homeless.
Here in Victoria, the Our Place block is an appalling sight. Downtown, along Government and Douglas Streets, at certain times of the day and night, are not far behind. Then there’s the festering failure of good intentions (and one unfortunate court decision to allow unrestricted visitor access) at 844 Johnson St.
Civic desperation already has led several Interior cities to enact bylaws to control begging on city streets. There is, for example, Salmon Arm’s ambiguously named Street Solicitation Bylaw. Prince George, in a spasm of futility, has, after much public anguish, managed to squeeze out a new committee to — wait for it — examine the matter. And on it goes.
It all makes me long for the days of anti-vagrancy laws and asylums for the mentally ill.
Community-based services, including policing, have proven unable to manage the extremes of human dysfunction. Advocates would have us believe a bit more money and a few more supportive housing units would get us there. But there is no “getting there,” as it were, and unlike the rabbinical exhortation never to abandon the good fight, withdrawing from a disastrous strategy has its merits.
What broader society actually needs and deserves (although the B.C. Civil Liberties Association might argue otherwise) is a buffer from these populations, and vice versa. Their presence on Pandora Avenue tests the limits, as well as patience, of our tolerant and reform-minded liberal democracy.
Brian Mason
Victoria
Polio eradication top priority for Rotary
Re: “Canada needs to help fight to eradicate polio,” letter, Dec. 14.
Polio eradication has been Rotary International’s top priority since 1985 and has engaged the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle polio.
In 1986, Canada became the first government to formally fund global polio immunization.
Since 1988, Rotary has contributed more than $2.5 billion and countless volunteer hours in the fight to end polio with Rotary clubs in Canada donating more than $70 million towards polio eradication.
In June 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the third Canadian prime minister to be presented Rotary’s Polio Eradication Champion Award for Canada’s participation in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. Canada has provided over $800 million in support of a polio-free world, including a $100 million grant directed at Afghanistan and $1.2 million in each of the past five years to the Rotary Foundation (Canada) Global Grants program.
To learn more, you are invited to search the internet for “Rotary, polio, Canada, Gates” and then support the “Polio Plus” campaign of your local Rotary Club.
Gerald W. Pash
President
Rotary Club of Victoria
A Victoria councillor who also sought federal office
It seems like there is an article or a letter to the editor almost every day criticizing former Victoria councillor Laurel Collins for her decision to run federally, and thus trigger a byelection.
There's an interesting parallel here with current Victoria councillor Geoff Young, who seems to be the darling of fiscal conservatives in Victoria. Young was re-elected to Victoria council in the November 1987 municipal election. Less than a year later, he ran for the Conservatives in the 1988 federal election.
The one big difference from the current situation is that Young lost the federal seat to the NDP and went back to Victoria city council, so no byelection was triggered.
Regardless, if he'd won, Young was certainly prepared to trigger a byelection and “waste” taxpayer money. It would be interesting to look back and see if he was treated as harshly by the media as Collins has been, for his decision to run federally so soon after being elected to council.
Rob Maxwell
Victoria
Older house better than a parking entrance
It looks like James Bay is set to lose another of its old houses, one of those structures that befit a street of some truly memorable heritage dwellings, lined with cherry trees, and a special favourite of residents and tourists alike, in springtime particularly.
Anchoring the corner of Simcoe and South Turner, 160 South Turner is emblematic of the single-family dwellings that once covered most of Victoria’s oldest residential area, many of which have been sacrificed to four-storey apartments, condos, high-rises and acres of parking lots.
I suspect that fitting more people and cars into a highly circumscribed geography appeals to both developers and city officials for different and defendable reasons, even as the community is already swamped for a large part of the year by cruise-ship passengers and Victoria-wide events using the streets and roads of James Bay.
To add to this congestion and consequent assaults on the quality of the environment with insensitive development threatens the very special nature of this neighbourhood and the balance between old and new. Thoughtful, responsive, and creative development would be more than welcomed. Tearing down a well-built older house is not environmentally sustainable, and replacing it with the entrance to an underground parking lot is not adding to the look of a period residential street.
Adaptive re-use, by retaining the house on-site and triplexing it, is an option that could be pursued and one hopes the developer is flexible enough and supportive of community concerns to consider this alternative. The community would be thankful and the goodwill engendered would show recognition and acknowledgment of community input.
Tom Palfrey
Victoria
Building tall at Harris Green
Re: “Makeover pitched for Victoria’s Harris Green neighbourhood,” Dec. 5.
I love it, I love it! However, surely a Toronto developer can do better than buildings up to just 25 storeys. That would not even set a new record for the tallest downtown building and could not possibly contribute enough to the prized anonymity of downtown living that excels in truly large cities.
Gary Suter
Victoria
Past wrongs were condemned at the time
Re: “The wrongs of history remain, regardless of their name,” Lawrie McFarlane column, Nov. 24.
Columnist Lawrie McFarlane argues “everything they did was legal when and where they did it.” That’s the argument of the Nuremberg defendants and they were convicted.
He goes further, arguing, in effect, that no one knew any better back then. He says critics of past wrongdoing “bury historical context.”
Is it true that no one protested the deadly treatment of Indigenous children in residential schools?
In Ottawa doctor Peter Bryce’s 1907 report on health conditions in the schools, he reported on the high death rate of the students.
In her 2017 statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Cindy Blackstock wrote of Dr. Bryce’s 1907 report: “It puts a red-hot poker stick into this myth that people in the period didn’t know any better back then. And we really need to lift up people like Dr. Bryce.”
Yes, lift up and honour people like Dr. Bryce, not people like John A. Macdonald, who refused to acknowledge the truth in order to spread colonialism and force assimilation on Indigenous Peoples.
It is ever thus. Even during the Nazi genocides, there was the courageous conscience of the White Rose Movement. They denounced the government’s genocide and prevailing support for it.
Who will we stand with? Those who go along with evil or those who bravely condemn it?
Paul Glassen
Nanaimo
Cyclists need to take rules of road seriously
As I drove north on Cook Street to an early-morning physical appointment on a damp, dimly lit street, I encountered two cyclists running red lights, forcing me to take action to avoid them.
In the headlong rush to expand bicycling infrastructure, where is the push to instill the fundamentals that will really keep cyclists safe? I am referring to Behaviour, Awareness, Skills and Education (BASE).
Demonstrated proficiency in these areas needs to be required of all cyclists over the age of 16. I cycle-commuted in Victoria for 25 years, without an accident (or anything close) by applying BASE.
As cycling seeks out legitimacy as a respected mode of transportation, this must be addressed. I am disappointed that the vocal members of the Greater Victoria Cycling Coalition haven’t been as outspoken on this as they have for bike lanes.
For the cycling community to be taken seriously, it has to first take itself seriously.
Brian Kendrick
Victoria
A grandson dies from an overdose
Today, my good friends are attending the memorial of their 20-year-old grandson. Another fatal overdose. The week before, he was the father of their great grandchild. Such a sorry state is our country, our press and our judicial system.
Phil Harrison
Comox
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