There’ll still be an Ogden Point
Re: “Forget Ogden Point — it’s the Breakwater District,” Aug. 27.
It seems to me that Ogden Point is a specific feature or attraction within the newly named Breakwater District. It is appropriate to have a plaque at the entrance to the walkway on the point naming it Ogden Point within the Breakwater District.
In fact, the Breakwater District is within the district of James Bay, which itself has a number of features, such as the parliament buildings, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Royal B.C. Museum, Beacon Hill Park and now the Breakwater District. I am not sure what is complicated or controversial about that.
Bev Highton
Oak Bay
A name that bears repeating
Re: “Victorians likely to ignore name change,” letter, Aug. 30.
OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT.
OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT.
OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT.
OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT.
OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT. OGDEN POINT.
So there!
Alan Gregory
Oak Bay
Levy big fines for garbage sloppiness
Every summer, innocent bears are put down because of stupidity. How difficult is it to only put garbage out when the truck is coming? This summer, a mother bear and three cubs were shot and killed because of stupidity.
Hit people who don’t secure their garbage with a $5,000 fine, and make them take their garbage to the dump. Too many beautiful animals are dying because some people do not abide by the rules. Why is the government so reluctant to raise fines for offenders?
Eileen Mae Nattrass
|Saanichton
Carole James should back regional policing
Re: “Province says no to regional police force for Greater Victoria,” Sept. 4.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Carole James, our MLA. However, I cannot understand why she does not more aggressively represent the residents of her riding when it is clear most would welcome regional policing. She would appear to be mute on the issue.
Paul Brown
Victoria
We need to shift away from fossil fuels
Re: “No mystery to why gasoline prices are high,” Sept. 4.
The world is at peak use of fossil fuels right now; the 17 per cent that renewable energy sources of wind and sun represent is growing rapidly as their costs decrease, and as investment allocation increasingly transfers away from carbon. Sailing ships and horse buggies were replaced with more efficient steamships and cars; the oil and coal sectors now face being replaced with energy sources that are more efficient.
The reason for encouraging this is public welfare. Responsible governments are invoking various means to reduce fossil-fuel consumption, acknowledging as well the sense of urgency felt by the public.
This is not driven by ideology, but by objective scientific observation and calculation. Deniers of this reality, such as Maxime Bernier, who calls Swedish teenage environmentalist Greta Thunberg “mentally unstable,” would place us all in peril.
It is undeniable that the transition from carbon must happen, is happening quite rapidly, and needs to be managed in a balancing act with economic targets, enabling us to keep moving forward, while ensuring we can defend the Earth from climatic havoc.
Jeremy Kinsman
Victoria
Cyclists don’t belong on pedestrian paths
After narrowly having missed being pulverized by a speeding bicyclist on the Dallas waterfront pedestrian pathway on a busy Sunday afternoon, I would query the rationale behind Mayor Lisa Helps’ costly bike lanes. There seems there will never ever be enough of these designated bike lanes to satisfy Victoria’s cyclists — as evidenced by so many pedestrian sidewalks being overrun and turned into psychlopaths, aka bike lanes, for crazed cyclists.
Kate Hanley
Victoria
Before building more bike lanes, consult
I have been following the commentary and criticism of the new bike lanes and I agree with most of it. It is clear that many people do not like them and think they have been poorly designed. I think that our council needs to take a step back before committing to the new lane being planned for Vancouver street.
I have no trust that they will get it right this time. I think they should offer up several designs and ask the public for input before committing to one design. Slow down and get some input from the public this time.
John Miller
Victoria
Paradise or a self-created hell
We have a choice: be heroic saviours of the planet or its evil destroyers.
Nature, the almighty power of the universe, took the lifeless planet Earth, which was surrounded by a deadly poisonous atmosphere, and over millions of years, created life, starting with one cell of life that divided into two and kept dividing and mutating until the vast diversity of life on Earth today was created.
In this process of life creation, the created life cells absorbed the deadly poisons out of the Earth’s atmosphere, transformed them into fossils, safely buried them in the Earth and in the process produced life-giving oxygen without which most life on Earth cannot live.
For years, to produce energy, we have burnt enormous quantities of fossil fuel with oxygen and have released the resulting deadly poisonous gases into our atmosphere, which is quickly changing the Earth back into the lifeless planet of death it originally was.
We can continue this destruction or we can transition to harnessing the natural free energy of the sun, wind, oceans and the geothermal energy of the Earth, all of which is much cheaper for the people than the fossil-fuel-burning economy, with its mining, fracking, piping, shipping, global warming, devastating climate change and the associated cost of sickness, death and massive destruction to people’s properties and public infrastructure, for all of which the people have to pay.
We have a choice. We can live in a paradise on Earth or in a self-created hell on Earth. Smart people will stop the burning of fossil fuel or abiotic fuel.
Francis Blundell
Victoria
Consumerism is clogging our landfills
If there is one thing I support Donald Trump on it is getting tough with China on trade. Do we really need all this cheap junk from China that ends up in our landfills? Maybe 30 per cent of it has some value; the other 70 per cent we can do without.
Consumerism and waste run rampant, clogging our landfills and defiling our environment. The cost of all this garbage from China is suffocating the world.
We lived without it before. Put the money back into your pocket. How much do we need? Next time you are out shopping, ask yourself, do I really need that or do I just want it? We are addicted. Let’s stop fueling consumerism and garbage in Canada and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Canada can become the leader instead of the bad example.
Ron Jeffrey
Victoria
Fund rehab centres, don’t decriminalize
Re: “Time to regulate supply, decriminalize possession,” letter, Aug. 18.
I agree that the government needs to take the next big step. Where I virulently disagree with the writer is what that next step should be.
What the government needs to do is to fund more drug rehab centres, staffed with trained professionals who can safely get clients off their drugs, then provide individual and small-group counselling so that they can get to the root cause of their depression, which led to their using in the first place.
This would be followed up with life-skills and job-skills training, in sober-living facilities, so that they can get back on the road to a clean, successful life with their supportive friends and families.
Regulating the drug supply and decriminalizing the possession of illegal drugs is not only an admission of defeat, it’s a dangerous rationalization that this is actually the right thing to do.
I didn’t spend my teaching career enabling my students to embrace the idea of a future in which doing drugs is part of a normal lifestyle. Thank goodness for my teachers, who rammed the dangers of drug use down my throat in the 1960s — it paid off.
Lorraine Lindsay
Victoria
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