Editor:
Re: “Vandals defeat their own cause,” Editorial, July 17 and “Rejecting racism and our path forward,” Column, July 17.
As a lifelong resident of Pender Harbour I want it on the record that the vandal who hung a sign vowing to cut down the totem poles at the local high school did not speak for me or anyone I have talked to here and we firmly condemn his disgraceful act. We are all appalled by the incident and the black eye it has given our community.
I question whether the culprit was even from here because if he was he would know the “totem poles” he threatened to take his revenge on were actually made by students of the school with the assistance of a shíshálh carver and honour the spirit of friendship between our communities, which is a truer expression of Pender Harbour sentiments than graffiti by some night raider with bad spelling.
I’m sorry such an otherwise astute observer as editor John Gleeson would place so much import on the act of one illiterate delinquent he thinks it totally discredits local opposition to replacing the name Madeira Park with salalus. If the vandal even knows of that issue, he didn’t mention it.
MLA Nicholas Simons goes further, conflating the totem sign with Japanese-Canadian internment in WWII and the razing of a black neighbourhood in faraway Halifax.
Such over-reactions don’t help. As the late, great shíshálh statesman Clarence Joe used to say, “Whatever happened in the past, we are all here together now and it’s up to us to figure out how to get along.” This means accepting everyone’s essential humanity, giving all parties a chance to be heard, resolving conflicts in good faith, and not being distracted by cranks scrawling graffiti in the night.
Howard White, Madeira Park (salalus)
