Time to reimagine the July 1 celebration
I am 73 years old. I have a childish love of fireworks. This year, although my fireworks appetite was sated with displays after the HarbourCats game on June 30 and in downtown Victoria on July 1, something had shifted in the way I was feeling about these celebratory events.
Canada Day, I think, must be reimagined.
Yes, Canada is a country to be celebrated, in terms of its beauty, its multicultural character, and the rights and freedoms we share.
It is also a country that has done great wrong to too many of its people. This is what was on my mind over the past weekend. Not everyone in Canada might feel much like celebrating, and that must change.
So, how to go forward? Of course, we must go together, but what is the best path to walk? This is a task for many minds.
My hope is that we can together acknowledge historical and persistent wrongs, that our country is not perfect and is worthy of neither mindless fireworks nor endless victimhood.
We Canadians, all of us, are incredibly fortunate to live where we do on this good Earth and that firm fact is worth celebrating.
I do know, faulty as our human specie is, we have immense capacity to right wrongs creatively. Fireworks are fun for me but not for all, so how about something new. May I suggest drones?
Joy Robinson
Victoria
Let’s end fireworks, and bring on the drones
Isn’t it high time to abandon the ‘Snap, crackle, pop and boom!‘ of the traditional July 1 fireworks and transition over to the artistic, creative, colourful and beautiful drone light shows that are possible.
We live with enough daily and nightly noise. Canada’s birthday could be celebrated in awe with a drone light show. Then folks watching could let out a collective unifying ooh, Canada !
John Vanden Heuvel
Victoria
Preserve natural spaces to help the wildlife
Years ago, Margaret’s mother walked home in rural Alberta. A cougar walked the other way on the opposite side of the road.
Each went on, observing but seemingly oblivious to the other. Today we live in Victoria, in the centre of an urban conglomeration. But what of the wildlife still in need of a home?
As an ever-expanding human population settles, mostly in cities, there is a need to set aside habitat for our friends from the world of the animals and birds, both for their well being and for ours.
Green spaces significant for each of us is needed, some small but some large enough to provide for secure hiding spots.
The existence of such spaces can create an environment of riches for both the animals and birds and for their human friends.
Please be careful that all of our terrain is not covered with concrete.
Work to preserve those bits of open terrain across the area to provide space for the preservation of wildlife as well as opportunities for humans to witness and interact with it.
We will all be happier, the greater the natural spaces preserved among us!
Garry and Margaret Schaefer
Victoria
Maybe we can do without American news
What a thoughtful Canada Day gift from the giant American company Google, blocking access to Canadian news sites. Meta (Facebook/Instagram) also plans to block news from Canadian users.
So there will be less incentive to use their products. For news, you could connect directly to the website of the Times Colonist or other Canadian news outlets.
Perhaps we could turn this even more to our advantage. Could we tax American media for sending their news across the border?
They might do us a favour by withholding it. Canada would be a better place without the influence of all that American toxicity!
Alanne Gibson
Victoria
Drivers, take more care on our roads
On Saturday my husband and I went for a bike ride in Saanich. Within the first 20 minutes our lives were almost taken by car drivers ignoring traffic stops.
In the first case we were in an intersection on a green light when a car driver ignored a red light and started coming through. The driver stopped three-quarters of the way into the intersection as we charged out of her way.
Awhile later I stopped at a four-way stop, then proceeded. A car driver coming across chose not to stop and barrelled through the intersection.
I screeched to a stop, the driver swerved and then she carried on.
Please, if you are making terrible errors of judgment while driving, turn your licence in or take some lessons and retest. Do something before you kill someone.
Kris Poustie
Victoria
Huge costs are coming, but don’t worry about it
Re: “Avoid the utopian social engineering of the Net Zero promoters,” commentary, July 1.
I’m with former newspaper editor and University of Victoria instructor, Paul MacRae. I’m not interested in having my brain “greenwashed.”
What liberty-loving individualist, in their right mind, would want to try remaking human nature; especially if it means gaining “a deepening sense of peace and a willingness to help others, as well as protecting the climate and the planet”?
Obviously “piecemeal engineering” and individualism has worked so well for us in the past.
Sure, we’ll have to cover the cost of dealing with a few more communities being burnt to the ground; or destroyed by floods; or even ravaged by war, but history has shown, we’ll get over it.
Ken Dwernychuk
Esquimalt
Opportunities abound in the green transition
Re: “Avoid the utopian social engineering of the Net Zero promoters,” commentary, July 1.
Much is made in the piece referenced above of the “number of fires” occurring in Canada this year being fewer, it seems, than in certain other years.
To bolster the writer’s claim that this is evidence wildfires are hardly harbingers of climate catastrophe, the historic size, duration, intensity, and earlier and later occurrence of these fires are not mentioned, a classic case of cherry-picking evidence.
Similarly, the piece’s offering adaptations such as “flood-control measures” ignores the catastrophic future of cities situated on ocean shores as the Earth’s seas rise due to the cryosphere melting precipitously and the expansion of warming oceans.
Relocating cities of millions of people and their associated infrastructure inland is a task the monumentality of which is unimaginable.
Other adaptations the piece suggests, such as “air-conditioned community centres,” ignore the fact that wet bulb temperatures (35 C and 100% humidity) are fatal to workers who labour outside. The economic consequences of temperatures of this magnitude will also be immense.
“[T]ackling problems as they come up”, as the piece suggests, is reacting to symptoms, as opposed to correcting the root cause, which as everyone knows in the case of climate change is burning fossil fuels.
One must ask why the author of this piece is so dead-set against correcting this flaw in our economic system.
The piece claims environmentalists wish to “dismantle our technological civilization,” but environmentalists propose preserving our technological civilization by substituting wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and other sources of energy for fossil fuels to power civilization with green electricity.
Studies estimating “the cost of Net Zero by 2050 at $275 trillion globally” are claimed, further, to doom the possibility of a green transition, but such an enormous undertaking represents tremendous opportunity for worker productivity, economic growth, and prosperity for people everywhere around the world.
Finally, “a person gaining a deepening sense of peace and a willingness to help others, as well as protecting the climate and the planet,” is presented as unrealistic nonsense, but these happen to be the core civilizational values that enabled human beings to survive for the four million years preceding neoliberal plunder of society’s productive capacity.
Oops! “There is no such thing as society.” I forgot.
Bill Appledorf
Victoria
Factors in winning an election
Re: “If everyone voted, we would know more,” letter, June 29.
Two of the key factors that result in a candidate winning an election (whether municipal, provincial or federal) are the number of registered voters, and the percentage of these voters who actually turn out to vote.
Dr. David Black, an associate professor with the School of Communication and Culture at Royal Roads University, has talked about “the incumbency effect,” which is the likelihood of an incumbent councillor or mayor winning again. He said this effect is highest at the municipal level, relative to the provincial and federal.
“Eighty per cent of the time, eight in 10 times, a councillor or mayor who chooses to run again for that position will win,” he added.
Do you think incumbent candidates prefer low or high voter turnout?
What’s the likelihood of the present or a future B.C. government introducing legislation that makes municipal and provincial voting mandatory?
Mandatory voting in local, state and federal elections has worked well in Australia.
David Buckna
Kelowna
Marbled murrelet facing tough odds
Re: “Logging reduction aims to save threatened B.C. seabird,” June 27.
Flying far inland would consume much energy for the round trip from food source to nest where the chick needs it.
The ‘old growth’ connection may be that moss supports nests. But birds are far more versatile than eco-activists give them credit for.
Spotted owls for example have been found nesting on restaurant signs and in underpasses – proximity to food of course, they eat rodents like squirrels and mice. Marbled murrelets nest on tundra in the north of their vast range.
The marbled murrelet is somewhat of a Darwin candidate – only one chick per nest, survival rate low. (Average life span is about 10 years, of which only seven or eight are of breeding age.)
After fledging it goes to the ocean by itself, albeit having been fed fish not regurgitated food I gather, and perhaps observing others fishing.
Keith Sketchley
Victoria
With high gas prices, taxpayers always lose
Have you ever wondered why our elected officials don’t worry about our high gas prices driven by taxes? They rely on expense accounts to pay for their gas costs. That means you and I pay the bill again.
That doesn’t even take into consideration the excessive profit taking of the oil conglomerate.
The taxpayers, you and me lose, lose and lose again.
Jack Peake
Duncan
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