LETTERS
www.nanaimobulletin.com
Saturday, March 2, 2013 Nanaimo News Bulletin
Boat basin issue not well known
To the Editor, When I ask people have they heard that our Nanaimo Boat Basin is being leased out to a private company for 30 years, I’m happy to hear a lot of people answering ‘yes.’ On the other hand, there are still a lot of people who haven’t heard anything about it. On Jan. 7, I attended a public meeting at the Coast Bastion Inn because at that point I had heard about this
lease and I wanted to know more. I wanted to find out for myself what exactly leasing out our marina would look like. I was impressed how well the meeting was run and happy so many people felt as I did – that this deal was not going to be good for the citizens of Nanaimo. I have to get involved in doing whatever I can to help stop this ‘deal’ because I love our working harbour. There is another pub-
lic meeting coming up Monday (March 4) at 7 p.m. at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre downtown. I urge everyone to attend and get informed about this important issue. This is not a done deal, yet, but we will all need to speak up and have our voices heard if we are to have any chance at stopping this agreement from finalizing. The Nanaimo Port Authority has been invited to attend the meeting. In
F-35s Harper’s legacy To the Editor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is looking for nickels and dimes in the pockets of Canada’s unemployed while wasting billions of dollars on a problem-plagued jet fighter program. Those so-called state-of-the-art F-35 jets will be obsolete long before the horrendously expensive bills stop rolling in. Perhaps Canadian historians will say the Lockheed Martin F-35 program was to Prime Minister Stephen Harper what the Bomarc missile system was to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Surely Harper would prefer to avoid being linked to such an embarrassing historical footnote. Lloyd Atkins Vernon
the meantime check out the issues at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sV--e1IlP2c. Also check out an Oct. 15 city council meeting clip that shows a presentation by the port authority and the Pacific Northwest Marina Group at www. nanaimo.ca/meetings/ VideoPlayer/Index/ C121015V?time=193237. Please help save our harbour. Dorothy Houghton Nanaimo
Rick Smith, Counsellor
Proposals reduce students’ hours of learning To the Editor, Re: District seeks input on calendar changes, Feb. 26. I fail to see how any of the three proposed changes equates to the district’s ‘success for all’ plan. No matter what, the children are actually spending less time with their teachers in all three proposals. I am opposed to them all. Instead of taking the teachers away from the classrooms, why are the school trustees not seeking to find more academic and artistic venues for the children? How about science fairs, more artists in schools to teach workshops, creative writing challenges or visual arts displays in the Nanaimo Art Gallery. You could combine love of sports with drama, creative writing or visual art. A chess club, extra workshops for students who achieve high marks, enrichment programs, debate club … I could offer many suggestions in this vein. Note that each one of my suggestions revolve around including the children. Any one of these sug-
LETTERS POLICY: Letters should be no longer than 250 words and will be edited. Include your address and phone number. Unsigned letters or third-party letters will not be published. MAIL: Letters, Nanaimo News Bulletin, 777 Poplar St., Nanaimo, B.C. V9S 2H7 FAX: 250-753-0788 E-MAIL: editor@ nanaimobulletin.com.
gestions would directly affect them in a positive way. These are the real things that promote success. The three proposals from the school district do not. Perhaps trustees could have spent money on creative and academic venues for the children instead of a new logo. I still think there is money available for these venues. They could be set up without any monetary expense, aside from the salaries that we as taxpayers are already paying our trustees. What are we paying them for? What have they done for our chil-
dren directly? I think the trustees are focusing in the wrong directions and their behaviour is self serving without benefiting our children at all. Valentina Cardinalli Nanaimo
Letter strikes a health nerve To the Editor, Re: Help available for addictions, Guest Comment, Feb. 23 As an addictions counsellor myself, I understand the problem. The deep stigma associated with mental health or addictions issues is immense. Doctors are quick to judge a patient living with chronic pain, because if he or she says it hurts, it’s probably just to get their hands on painkillers. A client told me that her record is so tainted at the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital emergency room, that when she arrived a doctor saw her for five minutes, wrote a prescription for percocet and sent her packing. She was appalled by the way she was treated.
Doctors need to be educated in mental health and addictions issues if they want to be efficient in helping people. No addict is immune to pain, or any other illnesses most people have. They are people too. Thanks to Lorelie Rozzano for pinching a nerve. Mental Health and Addiction Services and the Vancouver Island Health Authority should be doing more to educate their doctors at the ER and family doctors to help people struggling due to an addiction, a mental health condition or both. Valentina Ross Nanaimo
Marina plans derail progress To the Editor, Re: Outcry over basin needs to be heard, Letters, Feb. 12; Boat show sunk this year, Feb. 12. The Nanaimo News Bulletin continues to cover this urgent issue, but where are the voices of citizens and government? Nanaimo’s downtown has come back to us from the brink. It has involved hard
work, persistence of small businesses that have stayed through all the construction and hard times. We lost our downtown once to developers – to malls that dragged business to the north where the concerns were commerce but not community. Now Nanaimo has a working, interesting, beautiful harbour as well as a vibrant, growing downtown. Why would we close off our harbour? Why would we limit access to our harbour to only wealthy boaters and developers? Towns and cities around the world would feel blessed to have a harbour such as ours where all people can walk and shop and interact. Have the concerns of local aboriginal peoples, the fishers, Protection Island residents and local boaters been answered? It is important for citizens to continue to ask questions, expect answers and persist in seeking ways to shape this development. Margaret Litch Nanaimo
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