More trees to be lost in the name of progress
I was sickened to see the notices on Cook Street regarding the removal of five large, healthy trees due to “impacts associated with the development and utility installation” of the condo behind them.
This is absolutely unacceptable and should not be allowed. Any sensible and progressive city would be asking developers to work around issues such as this. It doesn’t matter that they will plant some after the development is finished, we need these old beautiful trees now, not 30 years later. A certified arborist should be consulted at the onset of the planning stages to be an advocate for the trees.
It’s very concerning and sad.
Joanne Richard
Victoria
City’s stance on trees is all too clear
With Centennial Plaza’s redesign, Victoria city staff and councillors could have set an example of a city that values and keeps mature trees.
The B.C. Coroners Service report on the 2021 heat dome noted large trees can be life-saving in protecting citizens from extreme heat. They also filter pollutants and wildfire smoke from the air. Centennial Square’s giant sequoia alone provides ecosystem services that could not be replaced by a few hundred saplings, let alone by the 17 that are planned.
Councillors could have shown their deep understanding of how vitally important large, mature trees are in this worsening climate emergency. But they didn’t. If we now hear them express regret or sadness, as they permit developments that remove mature trees (including on neighbouring public property) we know these are empty, greenwashing words.
We heard of no solutions explored, before they condemned the giant sequoia (a species that can live 3,000 years) and sweetgum trees, all in good health, or the Shirofugen Japanese flowering cherry, which was gifted to Victoria by Morioka, Japan, to celebrate the cities’ twinning.
As more and more people stand up for the value of trees, we seem to more frequently hear reports that claim tree retention is not possible. But tree experts know many ways to mitigate problems, in order to retain trees . ..where the will exists.
Removing these trees is beyond short-sighted. Mature trees provide exponentially more shade, cooling and air filtering. We may miss them badly.
Grace Golightly
Community Trees Matter Network
Duncan
Many thanks for care at Victoria General
I just spent a week in Victoria General Hospital recovering from a stroke.
I would like to thank all the classy people who cared for me during that time and congratulate the hospital on the quality of care the professionals there provided to me.
Gordon S. Shrimpton
Saanich
Let natural wildfires burn until they are out
While fighting wildfires caused by humans should continue, those caused by lightning strikes and natural dry-out conditions should allowed to burn freely.
Nature has its own ways of eliminating potential long-term problems such as pine beetles and dead forests.
Man should simply pack a bag and move along rather than being a further cause to planetary resource destruction.
James Cooper
Victoria
Do not forget those who were in B.C. first
Re: “B.C. Day turns 50 and is now one of the most popular holidays of the year,” Aug. 4.
The article centred on the history of this holiday from a privileged settler perspective and provided no consideration or acknowledgement of the impact that colonization had on the Indigenous Peoples who lived on these territories for thousands of years before the arrival of the colonizers.
I wondered what it might have felt like to be an Indigenous Person reading the reprinted quote from a British Columbia Telephones employee stating they felt like a “second class citizen” for not being given the day off in 1974.
At that time almost no consideration was being given to the First Nations. Many people were confined by law to reservations where they often suffered atrocious living conditions and were feeling the intergenerational impacts of residential schools and Indian Hospitals as well as the “Sixties scoop.”
Those to tried to make a life for themselves off-reserve faced a harsh world where discrimination and racism relegated them to positions far worse off than any “second class” citizen might be experiencing from being denied a day off from work.
We continue to see the long-term and entrenched impacts of colonization on Indigenous people, and efforts are being made toward reconciliation between settler and Indigenous peoples.
The Times Colonist could better do its part in reconciliation by making sure that articles like this acknowledge the experiences of both colonizers and those negatively impacted by colonization.
Maybe it’s time for our provincial government to reconsider the focus of this holiday, to make it a day that is more focused on inclusion of the whole history of how this province came to be, who the real winners and losers were in its making, and how we all might be better off by working together to create a more equitable and respectful society today and into the future.
John Reilly
Victoria
More must be done for women and children
Why don’t our laws do enough to protect our most vulnerable — women and children?
In Canada almost 50% of homicides (solved, 2009-2022) involving women were attributed to intimate partner perpetrators; in 2022 over six million women reported abuse by an intimate partner.
Factor in unreported abuse and the enormity of the issue is staggering. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon either to hear news about a mother and children being victimized by a partner.
And on a given night in Canada how many women and children will be sleeping in a safe shelter — if in fact there are spaces — trying to escape, at least temporarily, abuse and violence in their homes?
The layered scars of violence are never superficial — children, and women, are burdened, perhaps for the rest of their lives. However, pitying the victims who have to endure such violence in the home, often for months, years, does nothing at all to change their harrowing circumstances.
Empathy does not make the victims safe. And it is inexcusable that at a Status of Women committee meeting where witnesses were describing the personal terror they had endured that a Liberal MP — Anita Vandenbeld, blatantly diverted the meeting-on violence against women-to focus instead on abortion rights!
Despite the Liberal MP’s despicable partisan antics, intimate partner/domestic violence is a critical issue in dire need of action to mitigate its devastation on the lives of its victims. Action such as urgent bail reform. For starters. And, if the PM is serious about violence against women, when will he remove Vandenbeld from the Liberal caucus?
The issue is dire and needs to be elevated in the consciousness of one and all — in particular our elected officials, judiciary, and law enforcement to effect the urgency of the changes required. Empathy alone is not enough.
Don’t our most vulnerable deserve as much?
Gordon Zawaski
Parksville
Don’t delay, give them their jobs back
Re: “Give the health workers their back pay,” letter, August 3.
Like the letter writer, I too was relieved when provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry finally called an end to B.C.’s health emergency edict.
What was surprising was that it took her more than a year longer than the World Health Organization to arrive at the same decision.
But Henry’s directive requires those fired health workers, numbering in the thousands, to “re-apply” for their positions.
Why? Aren’t they the same professionals who were experienced and qualified to work in our medical system just a few short years ago?
Have they somehow lost their skills? Weren’t they among those lauded by this government and with the nightly pots-and-pans celebration? Aren’t they needed right now to provide essential medical support to British Columbians?
Henry’s belated change-of-heart seems to be in reaction to the fact that the B.C. Conservatives had already made reinstating these needed professionals an important plank of their election platform. Does this government’s health-care response come down to politics and power — and not people?
Of course they should be rehired, immediately, and well-compensated for the shoddy treatment they’ve received. Furthermore, this insult to them and to our citizens’ well-being should never be allowed to occur again.
Dolores Bell
Victoria
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