Maritime museum could be a centrepiece
On Dec. 10, 2010, the Times Colonist published my letter in support of placing the Maritime Museum of B.C. in the Steamship Terminal.
I thought at the time I was a voice crying in the wilderness. Recent letters show me there are now at least three or four of us crying there.
It’s not rocket science to conclude that the Steamship Terminal building is the natural home of the maritime museum. There’s enough documentation and photos to show how to restore the terminal’s layout to its glory days when the steamships came in to the harbour.
Visitors would then be able to enter the building through the ticket office in a “living history” style setting before moving farther in to see the contents of the maritime museum itself.
If the powers that be are serious about respecting “the building’s heritage” this would surely be the way,
Victoria might well take a look at Washington, D.C.’s and London’s approach to their museums. They learnt long ago that grouping museums together in a locality paid dividends in many ways.
Imagine then the maritime museum, Royal B.C. Museum, and potentially the Greater Victoria Art Gallery (rescued from the boondocks) along a stretch of the harbour.
Being right there in the centre of tourist activity surely would be to the advantage and mutual benefit of each of them.
Fraser Pakes
Victoria
Give museum changes a chance, please
When will the gnashing of teeth and rending of hair end, regarding the changes to the Royal B.C. Museum?
Yes, I understand that much-beloved exhibits are ending and will only exist in the memories of the gnashers and renders.
Change is difficult and even more so during stressful times. I know too, that as a senior, change can be especially unsettling.
However, it is not as if a bunch of chimps are being let loose in the museum to ransack the third floor. The news that a change is coming is no doubt the culmination of a professional process by people trained and hired to run the museum.
My grandfather used to say that there were three sides to every story. One is their side, a second is your side and lastly there is the truth.
Go and have one last look at the third floor. Take a photo.
Then, return when the changes have been made and revel in the new exhibits. Create new memories for yourself.
Mark R. Fetterly
Victoria
In defence of our Jack Knox
Re: “Well, Jack, maybe you’re not a complete idiot,” letter, Dec. 16
Anyone who can write like Jack Knox is most certainly not an idiot, but the person who made these comments about him may just be.
Norm Slater
Sooke
Rapid antigen tests can make gatherings safer
Last October, after an outbreak of COVID at our grandchildren’s school, I bought 25 rapid antigen tests, repackaged each kit and shared them with family members.
The tests were easy to use and diagnosed COVID in our daughter, son-in-law and one grandchild days before a PCR test confirmed it.
We will use the tests again as needed over the holidays to ensure that our family gatherings are as safe as possible.
However, in B.C., freely accessible rapid tests are still being withheld from the public based on misinformation and an over-reliance on a revolving door of inconsistent and confusing restrictions.
Given that COVID is likely here to stay, it is time for hard questions to be asked about leadership and about how decisions are being made that so profoundly affect our continued health and safety.
Elizabeth Causton
Victoria
We need to stand up for basic human rights
I am sure the Chinese Communist Party is quaking in the very boots they are pressing on the neck of their people due to the diplomatic boycotts.
Are genocide, forced labour camps and killing dissidents for organs not enough human rights violations to warrant a stronger stance by the rest of the world?
We are virtually standing by silent, while the CCP commits atrocities and exports its totalitarian ideology to other parts of the world.
History is filled of examples of what can happen when apathy rules.
If we cannot stand up for basic human rights, our way of life is doomed.
Lorenzo G. Oss-Cech
Victoria
Horrible to cut down a living thing
As a letter-writer suggested, we need to care more about our beautiful trees.
I will never forget: I think I was about seven years old and my parents decided to go with other families outside the city where back then you could cut down your own Christmas tree.
I really didn’t understand the concept, but loved to go to the country and a fun car ride, until we were in the forest picking our tree.
Wait what? As my dad was cutting down the tree we picked I was frozen in disbelief!
Needless to say I cried to myself. I thought this was horrible; we were cutting down a living thing.
Don’t remember much about what happened, but I do know we then had an artificial tree thereafter!
I loved putting that fake tree together. Funny, to this little kid it seemed way more fun and nobody died!
Greek Proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.”
This is the direction we need to start expecting of each other.
Maybe the Christmas-tree farms could grow their trees in pots and after they are used, instead of the wood chipper, go and plant a tree?
Maybe?
Dorothy Pearson
Cordova Bay
Try a different way to reduce drug use
If the liberalizing of our drug laws, which has taken place over the past five years, really worked, one would expect to see a significant reduction in the numbers of people using and dying as a result of drug use.
The problem seems to be that rather than making the situation better, it has got steadily worse. As it becomes worse, advocates keep saying the problem is that we need to further liberalize our drug laws.
It seems like a fairly simple equation. The more our drug laws are liberalized, the greater the number of people in society decide it is OK to experiment with very dangerous drugs.
The greater the number of drug users we have in society, the greater the number of people who become addicts and the greater the number of people who die from drug use.
Rather than continuing with the status quo, maybe it is time to try alternate approaches.
If more of our resources were directed to preventing people from experimenting with dangerous illegal drugs and more drug-addiction programs were developed for people seeking help with addictions, we would get a far better bang for our buck than we currently receive.
Addiction is not a glamorous lifestyle and dying alone is final, a message that needs to be communicated in ways which will be meaningful to all age groups across our society.
Greater emphasis must also be placed on stopping the criminals around the world who produce, transport and market their illegal and dangerous products.
Clearly continuing to do the same thing hoping for a different result doesn’t work.
Bruce Cline
Victoria
E&N Railway is a solution for the Malahat
The E&N rail line is staring us in the face as a solution to the ongoing Malahat disasters.
The rail line could be a vital advancement to the Malahat solution and economic future of Vancouver Island as a transit corridor for commuters, freight and tourism.
The line could be upgraded to a modern electrified LRT. Ideally the line should be twinned to Langford. However, a single-line track could be adapted to operate efficiently by installing double-track platform stations for passing, one inbound and one outbound.
This has been done in many other parts of the world, including in Queensland, carrying more than 100,000 passengers daily from northern communities into Brisbane, partly on a single-track line.
The carbon tax has done little for the environment except make life more expensive for everyone. The tax should be mandated by law to be dedicated to invest in transit and new green-technology development.
Sooner or later, we are going to be forced into resurrecting a modern rail link up-Island for the sake of the economic future of the Island, and the sooner we do this the better.
We have got to stop dithering, and hopefully the continuing Malahat disasters will give us the visionary leadership to implement common-sense decisions on behalf of suffering Islanders and taxpayers.
Certainly an operational rail line on the Island makes common sense and would relieve a lot of pressure from the Malahat, and be of special benefit to commuters and those who have to travel from up Island for medical appointments.
LRT and tram systems are being built all over the world as commuters embrace a more stress-free green environmentally friendly way of commuting and travel.
Vancouver Island cannot continue with this unsustainable reliance on road transport, especially over the Malahat.
Robin Chown
North Saanich
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