If you like ghost town, keep shopping online
Take a drive downtown one of these days and see all the businesses closed, nobody on the streets shopping or chatting, nobody in coffee shops or restaurants — a ghost town, for sure. No excitement or friendly interactions, just empty streets.
This is your downtown in a few years if everybody keeps on shopping online. If you like it this way, OK, but if you liked it better the way it was then stop making Jeff Bezos richer and support your local businesses.
Mike Holt
Victoria
Wishing this was all an April fool’s joke
Re: “Lockdown to remain for weeks, says Dix,” April 1.
Is this an April fool’s joke from Adrian Dix? This kind of pessimism will have hoarders scrambling back to the stores to continue stocking up.
Jim Corder
Nanaimo
Leave bathrooms open at gas stations
While fuelling up a our local Co-op, we found the washrooms closed.
A father and his children also needed to use the washroom. I realize that extra caution is required at this time of crisis but, with proper distancing measures in place, I fail to see the harm in these facilities being left open for patrons.
Pat Lidstone
Shawnigan Lake
Social distancing dilemma for senior
Under the existing pandemic circumstances, I can understand the necessity for social distancing.
However, as a senior with hearing difficulties, I do ask that others appreciate the dilemma I face. At six feet with weakening eyes I can’t even see to lip read.
Graeme Roberts
Brentwood Bay
Keep business going amid pandemic
Re: “An urgent call for relief; a message from a group of community and business leaders,” March 29.
In this opinion piece, Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps and four others in the city call for government action in matters of rent relief.
Instead of a call for bailouts, Victoria and other communities in the province ought to assemble more creative thought and effort from commerce on how to get business up and running and generating revenue without undermining efforts to contain the emergency at hand.
We know the “essential” services that remain open. Even the liquor outlets have been deemed essential. Why can’t those models with modifications work elsewhere?
Brian Nimeroski
Sooke
Don’t use sports fields as homeless shelters
Re: “Victoria won’t use Beacon Hill Park as site for homeless people, ” March 26.
The current proposal by the City of Victoria to relocate and shelter the homeless from Pandora Avenue to Royal Athletic Park and Topaz Park should be reconsidered.
The fields in both locations are in prime condition, ready for when the baseball and soccer seasons are able to resume. They were very expensive to build.
Past experience with the tent city at the courthouse tells us these fields will be damaged, contaminated, and will require extensive repairs or replacement, funded by the taxpayer.
Hundreds of children use Topaz Park during the winter soccer season and it would be a shame if it were rendered unusable due to damage. If and when the baseball season can resume, there may be no facility for the games.
Would it not be better to requisition the arena or a large parking lot within the city (such as the gravel area beside Beacon Hill Park), or a school gymnasium for this purpose? The old B.C. Hydro site on the upper harbour could be a good isolated area.
I hope Victoria city council will consider these options.
Judy Gaudreau
Victoria
Let the banks do their part
The government should freeze all mortgages and interest to home owners and businesses. A three-month freeze on all mortgage payments would solve a lot of problems. Landlords could afford to lower rents to tenants both residential and commercial.
The banks are only paying 0.25% to the government for money and barely anything to depositors. No interest would incur on the mortgage and none of the principal would be paid down. After three months, payments would resume from where they stopped. Nobody loses, not even the banks. The banks may have a profitless quarter but they wouldn’t go bust.
Investors, and I am one, would lose a part of their dividend for the year, but most people invested in the stock market can afford it.
Otherwise, all the fallout falls on the average taxpayer, tenants and landlords, and the economy tanks for several years like the collapse in 2008. Oh, and who caused that and got bailed on the taxpayers’ dime?
It’s time the banks did their civic duty. And whose money do they have anyway? Ours!
Don McCarthy
Oak Bay
Use wardens to enforce distancing
I’m well over 70. As I walked around our building today it was hard to ignore folks who were not observing physical distancing. I tried to keep away.
Many senior folks will remember the wardens of the Second World War. At dusk you were supposed to switch off your house lights or use blackout curtains. This was to make it more difficult for the German bombers to find their way. But it was necessary to use wardens who would knock on your door if you were not complying.
So here we have a situation where there were bombs, explosives, your neighbour’s house being blown up, and a visible, tangible enemy who was trying to kill you. And yet many people did not voluntarily comply with the safety rules.
Now we have an invisible, silent, indistinct but deadly enemy.
Many people are ignoring the separation rules.
Maybe we need physical distancing wardens.
David Clarke
Sidney
Ceasefire key to surviving pandemic
Re: “Put armed conflict under lockdown,” March 23.
Canada and Switzerland are leading 53 countries in supporting the UN secretary-general in what may be the most important public-health initiative of this pandemic.
António Gutteres points out that we face a common enemy in COVID-19, an enemy that strikes the most vulnerable in every country, the women and children, the disabled, marginalized and displaced.
All countries must support this visionary response to a pandemic that is devastating even the most advanced medical systems in the world. Imagine how it will spread like wildfire through a crowded refugee camp with malnourished and desperate people huddled in tents in the mud and cold. What water they have is needed for drinking, not for washing hands. Isolation is impossible.
Although the secretary-general does not call for an end to sanctions, the suffering and death caused by the extreme lack of medical capacity of Iran and North Korea to address the pandemic imperils hundreds of thousands in those countries.
In war-ravaged countries, health care systems have collapsed, doctors and hospitals are often targeted, and this virus will hit combatants and survivors alike. Armed conflict must be stopped and humanitarian aid provided without prejudice immediately.
The Canadian government is to be congratulated on leading the call for a global ceasefire. No one is safe until everyone is safe.
Mary-Wynne Ashford, MD
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada
Victoria
Christmas-lights idea a waste of resources
Re: “Switch on this bright idea to support our health-care workers,” March 31.
I’m concerned that you are encouraging people to turn on Christmas lights in support of health-care workers. We need to support workers but this is a very wasteful way to do it. Don’t burn resources: hydro for the lights, gas to motor around town looking at them.
E.M. Walsh
Saanichton
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