Veterans in long-term care on November 11
As another Remembrance Day approaches, I reflect on how families and loved ones are being kept away from their veterans in long-term care during this very important time of remembrance.
Veterans fought and sacrificed to preserve the freedoms we enjoy today, and now when they need us the most they are being locked away and kept isolated from their families during Remembrance Day services.
Surely the Ministry of Health has an obligation to relax the restrictions that keep the families and loved ones from attending activities and services with them.
Otherwise we are ignoring the freedoms that they fought for and certainly deserve. This isolation has gone on for way too long. We as a society need to stand up for those that can’t speak for themselves.
Judith Moss
Cobble Hill
Is the new fee schedule an election winner?
While the new fee schedule is a step in the right direction to recruit and retain GPs, (and yes, I am thrilled the GPs are finally getting the recognition they deserve), I cannot agree that this is necessarily a shoo-in for the next election.
There is so much more that needs to be done to fix the shambles that is our health-care system.
Every discipline working in the health-care system is short of personnel. There is a shortage of thousands of registered nurses, and all health-care disciplines are burned out by working short-staffed and being asked to constantly work overtime.
I groaned listening to the Global report that the surgical backlog from the COVID pandemic is now caught up, and proudly stating that there are even more surgeries done now on a weekly basis than pre-pandemic. This is all done on the backs of workers who are currently exhausted and ready to quit. Training more staff for the system will take years.
We knew the baby-boom generation were going to create an aging mass. We knew the baby-boom generation was going to retire and leave a huge gap in the workforce that needed to be filled. Our governments did nothing to prepare for this global issue.
So we need to keep the pressure on the government — both federal and provincial — to keep working to address the issues. A start has been made, but it is far from over.
Joanne Wiggins
Victoria
Shakespeare relevant in high school curriculum
If you want to make relevant both the language and substance of one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known plays to today’s high school students, try presenting them with director Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 postmodernist MTV-style film version of Romeo and Juliet.
Teenagers will get it and I’m sure discussion in English lit classes will be a bit more lively.
Carolyn M. Brady
Brentwood Bay
After Halloween riot, action must be taken
What is wrong with people today? Specifically people like the ones involved in the disaster at UVic. Someone explain to me why anyone would deliberately destroy property for “fun.”
Maybe what we should consider is suspending these students from university for a year. Not a week or a month or a term. A year.
I can hear people screaming “they are just kids” and having fun, letting off steam. Too harsh a punishment for the little ones.
Maybe if they are forced to actually get jobs for a year or worse, yet have to start paying off their student loans for courses they can no longer take, they might think twice before they engage in such stupidity.
I don’t care if they were in their last year and were about to start a job. I would hesitate to hire someone who was so immature as to take part in such an event. And I imagine the idiots involved in this are laughing their heads off at the sight of the adults wringing their hands over it.
Catherine Sarginson
Victoria
Chew on this, as long as it is not meat
Re: “Want good health and a healthy planet? Go vegan,” letter, Nov. 2.
I appreciated the warning about the environmental impact of meat eating, and the connection between our eating habits and our planet’s future.
Statistics abound on how going vegetarian has a profoundly positive environmental impact. For example, as the HuffPost has reported, if every American went vegetarian for one day a week, the U.S. would save 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined.
Or, as the organization World Animal Protection found: “Canada can cheaply and effectively reach 2030 climate targets if meat and dairy consumption is reduced by 30 per cent.”
As you plan your meals for the week, statistics like these certainly provide food for thought.
Ira Shorr
Victoria
Allergies, intolerances can limit choices
Re: “Good health and a happy planet? Go vegan,” letter, Nov. 2.
Perhaps the good professor would endeavour to encourage colleagues to find a cure for food allergies and intolerances, particularly those to soy and legumes that can be anaphylaxis-level severe, which prevents some people from going vegan because the only absorbable relevant nutrients they can tolerate are in meat, eggs, and dairy.
Just a thought.
April J. Gibson
Duncan
Don’t forget child safety when using bicycles
Last week, my wife was commuting to work at UVIc, along Foul Bay Road, when an errant stick somehow flipped up and into the spokes of her front wheel.
This resulted in her being tossed to the pavement and a trip to the Royal Jubilee Emergency room and her dentist. Fortunately, her injuries were relatively minor, and she seems to be healing nicely.
I took her bike to our local cycle shop for a safety check, and in discussion with a staffer was told that this kind of freak accident is not uncommon, bike lanes or not. He also shared my long-standing concern about some of contraptions parents are placing their toddlers in, in the front of, or on the rear of their bicycles.
What, if instead of my fit and resilient wife being the victim of that roadside debris, it was someone with a toddler perched in one of those flimsy plastic buckets, on the back of bikes, that I regularly see children placed in?
The outcome could have been more tragic. The Motor Vehicle Act specifically requires that toddlers be securely seated in an approved restraint seat in the back seat of a car. For good reason.
The AAA bike promotion has given licence for people to think cycling is safe, with or without bike lanes, and that it is OK to transport children in such an exposed manner. That stick could just as easily have been in a protected bike lane.
Maybe the province needs to review the sale of these transport devices, and those parents engaged in this practice should seriously consider the potential exposure and jeopardy they are placing their children in.
Brian Kendrick
Fairfield
Buildings and parking next to Quamichan Lake
We write to correct statements by promoters of the Oaklands by the Lake project proposed on Quamichan Lake near Duncan.
They claim this project is “based on … North Cowichan’s Official Community Plan,” but that plan forbids this project.
Its Urban Containment Boundary protects fragile Quamichan Lake and surrounding rural lands from leapfrog urban sprawl like this. Cramming 46 units onto 5.89 acres, the project’s density is 15.9 times greater than allowed by the site’s A-3 zoning and would destroy the established rural character of surrounding neighbourhoods.
They claim this project is “green,” but it cuts down dozens of endangered Garry oaks, displaces associated native species including camas, ignores perching bald eagles, and diverts a stream into culverts and ditches for a four-storey, 22-unit apartment building.
Buildings and parking lots would replace habitat-rich vegetation, and new residents, squeezed into the site, would spew pollution from hundreds of daily car trips causing back-ups on rural roads.
The developer claims the project “could help change” a “critical housing shortage,” but nothing suggests units would be affordable to those with low incomes. Instead, spiking home prices along the lake would guarantee windfall profits for flipping a rural parcel into a high-density development. This should not be the future of agricultural land in North Cowichan.
The Official Community Plan identifies superior sites near transportation and services where infrastructure already exists, along with lower development costs, greater affordability and minimal environmental impacts.
Francine Bedard and Michael Porter, Diana Carwithen and Robert Gill, Margaret and Malcolm Graham, Christine and Stephan Volker, Mary-Lynn and Dick Zandee
North Cowichan
Rutting bucks a danger for entire community
The Times Colonist published a story about a woman’s encounter with a rutting buck, which unexpectedly bounded toward her and jumped clear over her car. The article spoke of “the dangers and unpredictability of those muscular and heavy bucks.”
Is anyone else as alarmed as I am about this situation?
What if … it was not a woman in a car, but on a bicycle?
What if … it was a senior driving his scooter?
What if … it was a mother pushing her baby carriage?
Our neighbourhoods are not safe while these unpredictable 150-pound animals own our streets. They have to go.
Our elected representatives, from whatever level of government responsible, need to recognize the problem, stop “passing the buck,” step up and show some leadership.
What are they waiting for?
K.P. Nicholl
Victoria
SEND US YOUR LETTERS
• Email: [email protected]
• Mail: Letters to the editor, Times Colonist, 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.
