A tutorial on enjoying local strawberries
How to eat the lovely strawberries now available:
Step #1: Find a local farmer or farm stand with fresh berries for sale. Bring some cash like $5 or $10 bills and some loonies and toonies.
Step #2: Admire the fresh berries, select some and put the cash in the little box to pay for the amount of berries you have selected. Putting the cash in the box is crucial to sustaining the availability of the berries. Do not omit this step. Take the berries home.
Step #3: Admire the berries again and salivate. Then pick up the berries by the little green thing on the top, eat and enjoy.
Or go to step 4.
Step #4: Place a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a small bowl. Pinch the little green thing off the top of the berry with a thumbnail and add the berries on top of the ice cream. Eat and enjoy.
Step #5: Go back and buy more berries and repeat steps 3 and/or 4. And do it now to support our local farmers. It is a short season and our farmers need us to step up and help to keep them producing these amazing strawberries.
And that is your strawberry lesson for today.
Elizabeth Hanan
Saanich
Emergency mental-health teams are needed
Re: “Victoria council eyes alternatives to police for social problems,” June 16.
When the only option for someone who is either in a mental-health crisis or is witnessing a mental-health crisis is to call the police, we know something is very wrong, and it has been wrong for decades.
Imagine having to call the police because someone is having a heart attack. This is not rocket science. We need emergency mental-health teams, with police as backup, to receive these calls and respond to these crises.
This isn’t a new idea; it’s common sense. These units should be standard procedure.
British Columbia has a Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions. One would think this issue would be high on their to-do list, and if it isn’t, then this ministry is a waste of time.
Lorna Hillman
Victoria
Social problems have potential for violence
Re: “Victoria council eyes alternatives to police for social problems,” June 16.
This topic has been subject of extensive media coverage worldwide. Many are calling for defunding of police department budgets. It is certainly a very complex issue.
Most of these calls (non-criminal crises involving addictions, homelessness and mental-health issues) will have the potential for violence.
I have no doubt that whatever agency attends the calls will be requesting a police presence for this reason. Will this allow the police more time to devote to other police matters? I think not.
Terry Hluska
Campbell River
Victoria’s police chief serves the public
Re: “Victoria council eyes alternatives to police for social problems,” June 16.
This is certainly a step in the right direction. However, we will collectively hold our breath as to whether or not anything actually materializes. We have been down this path before on any number of critical social issues.
What I found alarming was that Victoria Police Chief Del Manak said he was “willing” to have ongoing discussions about the department’s role and the community’s expectations.
Willing? I think the chief needs to remind himself that as a public servant, and given the current concerns with respect to policing here and everywhere else, that “will” is the appropriate response. He serves at the pleasure of the citizens who, at the end of the day, put him in office.
John Stevenson
Victoria
Small-business owners need tax holiday
I propose and encourage anyone, especially small business owners — the backbone of our economy — who has suffered financially, to lobby the federal government for a tax holiday equalling their financial loss due to COVID-19 mandatory shutdowns. This is the only way they can hope to survive.
Contact your elected representative and demand this.
Bennett Guinn
Victoria
We could order a ghost town from Amazon
We aren’t very farsighted if we let Amazon ruin our local businesses!
We had many empty buildings for lease in downtown Victoria, and now, due to closures from the COVID-19 virus, we have the ominous threat of losing many others. We need to realize how imperative it is to make every effort to support as many shops and services as each one of us possibly can. The operative word is “Now”!
Now is a perfect time to spruce up our homes and yards; to replace tired old carpets, appliances, indoor and/or outdoor furnishings; to buy paint or curtains for a fresh look; to have shoes, jewelry or other items repaired, and so on. Even going out for a meal or buying some mundane item encourages a seller.
The letter-writer from the West Shore says he had to turn to Amazon because he couldn’t get what he needed locally. Fair enough.
But some buys Jack Knox noted — large appliances and other hefty purchases from Amazon — put a strain on our postal system. Getting such huge and costly things online ignores local outlets and erodes our economy generally.
Enough people habitually making thoughtless purchases could create a ghost town here.
And Amazon wouldn’t even blink.
G.M. Jackson
Victoria
Food trucks aren’t paying fair share of taxes
It appears COVID-19 did not deal a large enough financial hit to local restaurants, which employ hundreds of people and pay a large portion of municipal taxes.
Now Victoria council wishes to make sure they are dealt a fatal blow by allowing numerous food trucks on a pedestrian portion of Government Street. Allowing this will be the last nail in the coffin for some restaurants.
Food trucks simply do not pay their share of property taxes. A small 1,000-square-foot restaurant is paying between $6,500 to $9,000 in property taxes annually. A larger 4,000-square-foot restaurant or pub on Government Street might be paying $45,000 or more annually in property taxes.
Cost for a food truck? A single $100 business licence fee paid to city.
Victoria council members need to revisit their decision and provide support for local jobs and restaurants to avoid numerous empty storefronts or at least increase food truck business licence fees to be in line with that of commercial property tax rates to level the playing field.
To continue to enjoy downtown’s vibrancy, heritage buildings and lively patios — and not empty storefronts — support local brick and mortar restaurants, not food trucks.
These are the Amazon of the restaurant industry, really convenient but leave little money behind in local community and municipalities to maintain roads, provide police and fire departments, support the arts and yes, bike lanes too.
Nicolas Denux
Saanich
Misuse of the word ‘systemic’
I truly believe we have made an error in grammatical usage, which in turn has caused the public to misunderstand the problem we have about racial differences and concepts.
We should be using the word “endemic” to describe what is taking place in our public institutions regarding police forces as the real situation pertaining to racial bias or perception.
We will always solve problems as a human race if we understand the dynamics better by definition rather than emotion.
J.F. Logan
Courtenay
Statue toppling and the revising of history
When I see statues being defaced and street names being changed, I can’t help but see Winston Smith routinely sending history book pages to the vapourizer in Orwell’s 1984.
Oceania had changed its alliances and the books needed to be purged of the “history” that had been written in the previous decade or so. I know statues are not literature but the principle of vapourizing unfavourable history is seemingly growing in popularity.
The suppression of “The Germans” episode of Fawlty Towers further exemplifies this foolishness. If anybody should be upset by this program it should be the German people. But they have the common sense to see it for what it is and to laugh along with it.
More people should read Orwell’s masterpiece and learn to take care when authorities and street gangs set out to revise history.
Robert Pellow
Parksville
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