Beautiful commentary about health-care workers
It takes two things to officially start my day — coffee and the Times Colonist. For most of my 90-plus years the TC has been a necessary part of my routine. I begin with reading the obituaries and save, until last, the Comment page.
The other day the very last item I read has left me with meaningful thoughts — it was headed “Best of the season to all those who help so much.”
A beautiful commentary by Victoria resident Elizabeth Kellam about a visit to her 97-year-old mother in long-term care. Kellam’s moving words about the tender, kind and thoughtful manner in which her mother’s health-care aide assisted the elderly resident, who has dementia, brought her daughter to tears.
A heartfelt message of gratitude for all the people who contribute to the safety, care and dignity of our elderly citizens from a caring daughter also moved me to tears.
I would like to extend my personal words of gratitude to Dave Obee and the Times Colonist for all that they do to make Christmas a happier time for those who may be less fortunate.
Dianne Pearce
Victoria
Let’s correct the Riverview mistake
As a retired psychiatrist, I would like to add my voice in support of reopening Riverview Hospital, as well as the use of the Cowichan District Hospital, for the humanitarian care of the severely mentally ill, and thereby support these suffering and kind folk from the harshness of homelessness and having to resort to drug abuse and petty crime.
As a colleague of the late Dr. Ezra Ford, who tirelessly advocated and worked for all of his career with the severely mentally ill, I support his advocacy for these poor people.
In retrospect, it was a great error to close Riverview Hospital with no replacement — primarily to save money, I believe.
I too would like to advise Premier David Eby to reopen or replace Riverview Hospital on the mainland, as well as a hospital on the Island, such as the Cowichan Distirct Hospital when it is replaced as a general hospital.
Dr. David P. Smith, MD, FRCP(C)
Victoria
Phones and bones make a good mix
Due to the failure of our Canadian health-care system, a major telecommunications company many of us have a love-hate relationship with has filled a void.
Through telemedicine using their app I was able to speak to a doctor who then booked me an appointment with another doctor face to face at the phone company’s shiny new medical office.
I was suspect throughout the process, and kept asking myself why a phone company was now in charge of my health care. But in the end I met with a wonderful doctor and got the treatment I needed, for free, which means paid for by our tax dollars, in a nice office, avoiding disgusting overcrowded drop-in clinics or hours of waiting in an understaffed, overworked emergency ward.
It felt like private health care without the bill. I’m rarely satisfied with how they handle my cellphone plan, but I must say I was impressed by the way they do medicine.
C. Scott Stofer
Victoria
North Cowichan could sell its forests
As the public ponders the various manipulated options for managing the North Cowichan forests, the silliness and eco-nonsense from the anti-forestry, anti-logging crowd has intensified in our local media.
This campaign is well-funded and has never disclosed where its money is coming from to try to stop logging in this municipal jewel. Is this where some of the $2-million Fairy Creek fundraising ended up?
For more than 40 years these forests have produced millions in revenue for local businesses, property owners, taxpayers and their dependent families that spend these dollars locally. The local economic benefit of the proposed 30-year carbon contract is — at best — much smaller and unproven.
It takes years of bureaucratic wrangling to ever see any of these revenues, if at all. North Cowichan’s forests and their management were once admired by other local governments. Now our politicians have been duped into stopping logging and creating a quagmire of fake concern about sustainable forestry.
North Cowichan is the only municipal forest owner in B.C. that is considering killing its successful forestry business egged on by people with little understanding of forest ecology and long on environmental shrillness. It hired a bunch of unqualified university professors with little or no real-world experience to present faulty options that poorly reflect on the real value of wood and exaggerated the potential economic benefits of carbon credits.
So-called carbon credits are a way of allowing industrial polluters to pollute even more by paying someone else to plant or preserve trees and store carbon.
The data used in the analysis is also highly suspect, suggesting that these forests can only produce annual growth of under 20,000 cubic metres per year. Most coastal Douglas fir forests have annual yields per hectare far in excess of that. Using faulty data produces useless options, and that’s what North Cowichan has achieved in this boondoggle.
The UBC options are also missing an important public choice: Option 5 would be for the municipality to sell its 5,000 hectares of second growth forests to an entity that would actually manage them sustainably and produce all the employment and ecological benefits, including carbon storage, that come from a well-managed forest.
W.E. (Bill) Dumont
Cobble Hill
Affordable tower is the wrong approach
Re: “20-storey affordable rental tower eyed for heart of Pandora Avenue,” Dec. 10.
If there is one tendency that many homeless people share, it is to bond socially and in propinquity to a small number of kindred souls, and arrange their belongings near each other, leaving comfortable personal space between themselves.
Packing 200 people with varying degrees of trauma and emotional capability into a 200-foot vertical cattle car is insane.
Warehousing the entire population of vulnerable human beings subsisting on Victoria’s streets in one giant Tower of Doom, rather than to house homeless people in the tiny settlements into which they customarily organize themselves, illustrates the cruel malevolence of the abomination known as “the market.” According to those machinations, speculators have driven the price of land so ridiculously high that not one inch of ground can be spared for a dispersed, dignified set of tiny villages to accommodate people thrown out on the street because the owners of our society have not devised a racket according to which to extract money from them.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
Peter Pollen Park has lost its attraction
When we first moved to James Bay more than 30 years ago, my husband and I so enjoyed the park at Laurel Point.
Before going to work most mornings, I would jog around the perimeter, a great, brief start to the day.
In 1991 our daughter was married in the Japanese Gazebo, then at the south end of the park beside the ocean. Her father walked her down the paved path to where guests and the groom waited, whilst a harpist played under some nearby trees. Idyllic.
We used to sit on the oceanside benches that were surrounded by rose gardens, or further up there was a clump of flowering trees shading five benches where one could sit and watch the dragon-boat races or watch the world go by.
About six years ago, the park began to be neglected and paths became overgrown with weeds, and the rose gardens disappeared. Then came the bulldozers and for the next year the park was emptied of everything, and inaccessible to the public.
For the past four years it has been an eyesore and unwelcoming.
When my husband came out of the hospital a couple of years ago, I couldn’t even take him for a walk around the point as all the paths had been covered in small aggregate and dust prohibiting the use of walkers or wheelchairs.
COVID cannot be used as an excuse for the long delay, as most parks and gardens in Victoria have been beautifully maintained during this difficult period.
By the way, if you do go to Peter Pollen Park for a walk, don’t wear open-toe shoes as the grit and dust will fill them.
Wendy R. Garner
Victoria
Be more prudent with our tax dollars
The B.C. government recently announced a $5.7-billion (yes, billion) surplus, representing just over eight per cent of the total budget. An eight per cent surprise is quite surprising. This is not a “reasonable” error for accounting professionals.
The federal government makes it clear that any more health-care money transfers must come with accountability for the use of the money.
Our provincial governments play a game in the media called “fun with words and numbers,” ignoring the tax credit system to claim only 22 per cent coverage for health care (among other things) because more money means more resources to get re-elected, provincially.
I pay municipal, provincial and federal tax from my one and only pocket so I say … yes to accountability for the use of the money, and more accountability please.
I’m concerned, given this surprise surplus announcement, that our provincial government doesn’t have the skills to be prudent with our scarce resources.
Stephen Ison
Victoria
ICBC insurance same as no insurance
Wasn’t it great when ICBC gave most of us a mere few dollars back as justification for foisting no-fault insurance upon us?
In essence ICBC, being a monopoly, has removed universal compensation for physical and emotional injuries with few exceptions, and along with that we can’t have a lawyer lobby on our behalf.
In 1970 I was injured in an accident that wasn’t my fault, and due to other complications I received compensation for lost income only. In the past 50 years since the accident I have had continuous physical discomfort, and have spent more money on treatment than I was awarded in 1970.
My experience unfortunately is now commonplace with no-fault insurance. I would rather pay a few hundred dollars more every year than have ICBC extort an annual premium with no recourse and little coverage.
Mike Wilkinson
Duncan
Why is it so hard to communicate?
“Why are you sorry?” or “Why is talking to the homeless and less fortunate so difficult?”
I live in a condo overlooking a large park in Vic West. Over the past five months, I have had countless opportunities to offer assistance to those dwelling in tents and campers in the area.
But apart from the guilt that I feel in response to those in obvious need of tangible help, I don’t know how to offer something that I personally have in perpetual abundance — words, conversation, safety in language and expression.
Beyond stigma, beyond guilt, there is an opportunity for conversation and connection that I don’t seem to have the courage, the audacity, the good sense to offer. Why is that?
Human connection is built upon something that is shared — something common. While I have had my own experiences with a kind of poverty, how can I be so insulting as to use this history as the basis for a conversation today?
Poverty is not something that one is; it is something that one is subjected to. And yet, within our society, people from all walks of life more readily form connections with those from their own strata or class in society who share some common experience of it.
At the same time, we call upon the members of our legal, medical, and media communities to elevate the voices and concerns of the less fortunate. But what if this responsibility became more distributed?
What if we all played a role? What if the common thread between two people of little discernible similarity were the desire to communicate a story?
Jennifer Murdoch
Victoria
Remember the role of a good monarch
Of all places, Victoria should be most grateful for the services of Queen Victoria. It is because of her influence that Vancouver Island is part of the Dominion of Canada.
I believe in a monarchy that allows all political factions the freedom to operate and run for office. The monarch should be a symbol of greater unity based on the flag and the land it represents.
We get a symbol of focus and stability from the concept of monarchy as well as the ability to enable long-range planning. The monarch should ensure that politicians play by the rules, are ethical and hold them accountable for their actions.
Sean Murray
Victoria
Aggressive action to reduce emissions
As someone who is working with my municipality to avoid gas in new buildings, I wholeheartedly agree that there should be no gas used in new buildings.
We need a strong provincial standard to make a sane world for developers, and it must be to ban the expansion of gas infrastructure in favour of electric.
Renewable “natural gas” is a myth and will not stop our pollution. This will mean our Hydro will have to keep bringing on more renewable energy onto the grid.
I hope Fortis will redefine its business into renewable wind and solar. We have a sound basis for water hydro in B.C. but badly need more investment in other renewables in our province.
Frances Deverell
Nanaimo
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