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Letters Nov. 12: Count your blessings; a key fob returned

Walk, enjoy, and count your blessings I walk the Willows and the Dallas Road waterfront regularly. We live in the most beautiful place on earth. We also have very little exposure to this nasty virus. Count our blessings, everyone.
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Pedestrians and cyclists use the newly restored pathway along Dallas Road near Ogden Point. Darren Stone, Times Colonist November 2020

Walk, enjoy, and count your blessings

I walk the Willows and the Dallas Road waterfront regularly. We live in the most beautiful place on earth. We also have very little exposure to this nasty virus. Count our blessings, everyone.

Paul Arnold
Saanich

Thanks to TB Vets for returning key fob

A sincere thanks to the person who found my car key fob on Willows Beach and took the time to mail it to TB Vets. Fortunately I had only put the ID tag on the fob a few days before.

Imagine my delight when it arrived in the mail. Thanks are due to TB vets also for this incredible service to Canadians.

I encourage anyone who hasn’t used this service to do so. Key fobs these days are extremely expensive – in excess of $500 including the reprogramming – so to have the key returned was such a relief.

Valerie Elliott
Victoria

Never forget their sacrifices

Re: “Across the region, there are ­remnants of our wartime past,” Monique Keiran, Nov. 8.

The suggestion that the “only direct wartime enemy attack to B.C. soil” was a Japanese submarine firing on Estevan Light on June 20, 1942 overlooks the unsuccessful fire balloon attack that meant to create a firestorm in B.C. forests.

Also, while the attack was at sea, a Japanese submarine torpedoed and shelled the SS Camosun just 11 hours after the freighter departed Victoria Harbour on the same day.

Canada’s first response to the First World War was to dispatch HMCS Rainbow from Esquimalt to confront two German light cruisers off the coast. Fortunately they never met, as Rainbow was outgunned by the newer ships.

The Royal Canadian Navy’s only loss in the First World War was HMCS Galiano, with all 39 hands off the north coast of Vancouver Island.

The column also referred to the air force personnel who died in training accidents flying from Pat Bay Air Station. This highlights our predisposition to speak of our “war dead” on Remembrance Day rather than all those who have died in the service of Canada including peace operations, humanitarian aid, Cold War operations and training (1,800 casualties), and the experiences that are complicit in their subsequent death or whose service was cut short regardless of the cause.

During 2020 we are reminded of the six who perished when HMCS Fredericton’s helicopter crashed in the Ionian Sea, the Snowbirds’ public affairs officer in Kamloops, and just weeks ago, Cpl. James Choi of the Royal Westminster Regiment.

Their Names Liveth Forevermore — Lest We Forget.

Gerald W. Pash
Victoria

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Victoria, B.C. V9A 6X5

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