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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - May 24, 2005
To the Editor;How would you like to live next to a junkyard? Probably you
wouldn't. Try selling a house that is close to such a mess. If it caught fire, firefighters wouldnıt be able to go in the yard and fight it because they would be injured falling over the junk. This place is a fire hazard. The owner also thinks his property is a farm. Over the years he has had pigs, ducks, and chickens to name a few. This is in the middle of a town. The R.D.O.S. forced him to get rid of the pigs. In the last two years I have had two cats go missing and a dog poisoned.
I challenge the R.C.M.P. and Department of Highways to get this property, and the road right of way cleaned up of his junk. On the street there is junk unlicensed vehicles, a wood pile, barrels, and other junk. I challenge the R.D.O.S. to get his property cleaned up before a major fire erupts. The pastor of the Historic Church across the street from this property has also complained about the junkyard.
Since Hedley is on the way to having a world class tourist attraction with the Mascot Mine, I think it would be prudent of all agencies to help Hedley grow into the new century. I canıt imagine tourists wanting to come back to Hedley, or telling friends about the town without mentioning this junk pile.
The reason cats go in his yard is because of all the hiding places in the junk. If there is no unsightly premises by law for Area G, or more specifically, Hedley, then I suggest Mr. Mayer have a referendum on it this fall when elections are held. It is very distressing to loose animals and especially hard on my children. The 'pot' is coming to a boil rapidly on the issue of this property. Again I challenge the agencies to resolve this matter.
- Don Armstrong, Hedley
To the Editor;
The item printed in the News Leader under Omy turnı titled, "Connecting the dots" was recently brought to my attention. Not that the 'Idiots' that decide how and where to spend our tax dollars give a hoot!
Under no stretch of the imagination does Highway 5A come under a highway to this writers mind. I have had the mis-fortune to travel on this obstacle course recently and I avoided one giant pot hole to only hit two in the opposite lane.
My poor false teeth, if I had them, would of surely been jarred out of my mouth. Instead my poor car took a beating. ANYTHING, would be a improvement over what that highway is now.
The government does no give a damn if ordinary people have to travel this route. They only seem bent on appeasing the Rich! The same as always.
In regards to the 'OLD Bridge', it has more History attached to it than my great grandmother's chamber pot! How dare anyone even suggest that it be removed for any reason. Even plate the damned thing in Gold and keep it for a Museum piece if no longer serviceable.
If they must build a new highway go across up by the arena and turn there, thereby bi-passing the Old Bridge, correct? Oh yes I am thinking about this article. And my sister made sure I did see it and paid attention.
About time the ordinary people stood up and made themselves heard. Keep the crap out on the range where it belongs!!!
- Smokey Pavich (McDermot) Westbank,B.C
To the Editor;
Shame on the people of Princeton!
I attended the Letıs Play Princeton 2005 concert on Friday night, 70 people attended. On Saturday night about 400 people attended out of a town population of about 3,000.
WHAT A PATHETIC SHOWING! If we want things to progress in this town we the residents need to get out and support events like this so it can become large enough to attract people from other areas.
Iıve heard it said not everybody likes one particular type of music. True, but if you supported the efforts of the people trying to get it started, they could attract more diverse types of format for the next Letıs Play Princeton.
No big name performers want to come and play for 70 people!
Shame, shame, shame.
- Joy Walker
To the Editor;
I was first introduced to Fred Eaglesmith's genre-defying blues /country/bluegrass/folk music about a year ago.
This Ontario-born musician doesn't have a string of radio hits, but his music has been covered by many mainstream artists, and he does have a very loyal following of fans throughout North America and beyond. His music has been featured in films by Martin Scorcese and in James Caan's "Viva Los Nowhere".
I was amazed and elated when I learned that local "Fredhead" Tom Evans and several of his friends had secured a commitment from Eaglesmith and his band The Flying Squirrels to play Princeton's own Legion Hall on May 12.
I have seen great bands play in Princeton, such as April Wine and Classic Rock All Stars. My girlfriend Holli, who travelled from Victoria, has seen many live acts from Dave Matthews Band to Radiohead and the Rolling Stones.
After the show on May 12, we agreed that Eaglesmith and his band rank among the finest musicians we have ever seen, anywhere. Enough said.
Kudos to Tom Evans for bringing an international act to Princeton. It was fun to see world-class entertainment in a packed house, right on Bridge Street.
- Jay Akerley, Princeton
To the Editor:
I have decided to call my letters to the editor Richardıs ranting and raving because this is how I feel about the lack of interest that the news media shows for those things that I write about.
I now know how Noah must have felt when he was telling the people of his day that they must move to higher ground because the ice dams that were holding back billions of litres of water that came about as the ice age was ending would soon be pouring into the ocean and the area they were living in would be under many feet of water (around 500) to be exact.
I would imagine that there were others saying the same thing but the Bible only gives Noah credit for sounding the warning.
Today we are again in the same position as they were back then except this time the problem is pollution caused by a very large population.We can save ourselves a lot of misery or we can let Mother Nature do the job for us, and that she will as our air and water get dirtier we will start to drop like flies. This we have already started to do, last year alone over 5,000 died of lung related illnesses from air pollution and this number will only increase unless we start very soon to do something about it.
We can do something about pollution or we can wait for the inevitable, this will be death to the very old first and the very weak and also the very young, because children are growing very fast and their bodies require clean air and water. Neither the old nor the very young can survive in a highly polluted environment, viruses and other chest related infections will take them down fast.
We talk of building cleaner burning cars, cleaner sources of power, cleaner this and cleaner that, do we really look at the true source of our problem, no we do not. Well it is right in front of our eyes we look at one of them every morning when we look in the mirror, the problem is over population there are just to many of us, the earth cannot take care of what we are throwing at it.
Yes we do need cleaner running cars and a cleaner supply of energy, but things are only going to get worse as the population of the world increases, we can cut the output from our cars and other toys in half but as the numbers of people grow then so will pollution it can only get worse not better. If we allow the world numbers to grow to 12 billion nothing will improve.
My solution to this is for the world to implement a negative growth policy, this would mean that there would only be one child for each couple, after a baby was born to this male and female both would be operated on so that neither could father or mother another baby, they could still enjoy their sex but there would never be another baby from the pair. The good thing about this would be that we would take more care about who was going to be that father or mother and also each child born would be a valued addition, the whole family would love the new addition rather than the way we do it now.
The end result would be a decrease in the world population, when we got back to 3 billion, we would then have to put a plan in place that would sustain the number keeping them at 3 billion.
In a very short period of time our air and water would be clean. Life would again be a quality rather then quantity. We wouldnıt be taking away the natural habitance of our animals our forests would once again flourish, life would be good for all.
So that this could come into affect we would only help countries that could prove, they were implementing this policy throughout their land, we would have to be very hard and not weaken or all that would happen would be that they would grow strong then try to take control of our lands, this has happened before and could happen again but it is either try or die, for if we do not change our ways we will have mass famine and illness these will bring about the decrease in population whether we like it or not.
- Richard Dodds, Princeton
Dear Editor;
I am a researcher at the University of Winnipeg, and I am hoping to get in touch with people in your community to learn more about shivarees. I am currently researching this tradition, which usually consists of an informal community gathering following a wedding.
I think that some of your readers may have had experiences with shivarees, or have heard older people talk about them.
I have a questionnaire that I would like to send out to people in the area to find out if anyone has any information that they might be willing to share about shivarees. As such, I am hoping that you will print this letter, which explains in more detail what shivarees are and why I would like people to fill out a questionnaire about them.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me by telephone at 204-786-9439 or by email at p.greenhill@uwinnipeg.ca
- Sincerely, Pauline Greenhill University of Winnipeg
