Have your say

Radical change

I am very disappointed in the provincial election to date. I am not hearing very much from the mainstream parties that differentiates them, or anything that is visionary.

If one of the parties would be in support of moving the CP Rail yards to the new inland port site by the airport, they would get my vote. It is time to revisit that idea and give it a serious second look. There would be huge benefits:

• There would no longer be a physical barrier that separates our North End from the rest of the city.
• Acres of land would become available for social housing, recreation and industry.
• The dismantling of the yards and the new construction would create huge employment opportunities.
• The trains and trucks would no longer need to haul dangerous goods through the heart of the city, where one major spill would prove to be catastrophic.
• All of our major transportation infrastructure would be in one end of the city.
• If some of the rail beds were kept, cycling trails and/or rapid transit rights of way would be immediately available.
• Many of the bridges that currently span the yards and currently require expensive upkeep could be dismantled. The list goes on.

All of the suggestions would certainly fall into the City's Plan Winnipeg document. This one complex, difficult and expensive move would fit with the document's vision and change Winnipeg forever.

Richard P. Sawchuk

Winnipeg

Part of the problem

Re: Math teachers skills alarmingly weak (Sept. 10). It's ironic that among the academics critical of weak skills of incoming university students are education faculty professors whose unproven theories and methodologies, such as the no-fail philosophy, mainstreaming, new math and whole language, among others, have contributed to the problem in the first place.

Equally culpable are education departments and school boards who adopted the above because they sounded fashionable and progressive yet failed to do the proper homework to see whether they actually enhanced student achievement.

Added to the mix were vague curricula that de-emphasized the learning of skills and facts so that grades could be more easily inflated, graduation rates made artificially high and dropout rates reduced. Incidentally, it's no coincidence that many from the above groups have often been the ones most vehemently opposed to standards testing.

To address the issue, universities and colleges need to raise entrance requirements. Maybe the education faculty should return to its previous practice that demanded aspiring teachers have at least one degree in arts or science before entering a one-year training program. Why teacher preparation has to last four years is beyond comprehension, but such a change would cost jobs, so we're unlikely to see it.

EDWARD KATZ

Winnipeg

Illegal and shameful

Re: Vilifying Israel, (Letters, Sept. 13). Amnesty International notes in its response to the Palmer report on Israel's attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla that the siege of Gaza is a collective punishment of the 1.6 million Palestinians and therefore not legal.

The naval blockade of Gaza's coastline -- deemed legal by the Palmer panel -- is used by Israel to justify violent attacks on local fishermen who try to make a living. According to the Oslo agreements, Palestinians should be allowed to go fishing within a zone of approximately 30 kilometres.

However, the fishermen in Gaza get shot at with live ammunition when they try to reach fishing grounds less than 10 kilometres offshore. Many boats have been damaged; some men have lost their lives.

This is not legal and it is very shameful of Western governments to support such actions against civilians.

MARTINA LAUER

Chesterville, Ont.

An obvious truth

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not been the first to link Islamism to Muslims. The Islamists accomplished that fact long ago by attacking the Twin Towers and, since then, committing 17,500 individual acts of terror. In the last five years, 88,000 people have been killed by Islamic extremists.

Harper stated an obvious truth. If that truth is so objectionable to Muslims such as Ab Freig and Shahina Siddiqui (Targeting Muslims, Letters, Sept. 10), perhaps they should do something to halt the ongoing rise of their radical brethren.

They could start by re-examining -- even rejecting -- some of the suryas in the Qur'an used to foment jihadism, such as: "Surely the vilest of animals in Allah's sight are those who disbelieve" (8:55).

DAVID SQUARE

Tyndall

Dangerous eyesore

Re: Gordon Bell green space waiting for donors (Sept. 14). With all the parties making promises to improve education, it seems ridiculous that we have an inner-city school with an undeveloped field. This field is a dangerous eyesore on one of our busiest streets.

Tax dollars should be invested in making this field usable. Extra amenities can be financed through community fundraising. It will be interesting to hear the leaders' views on this issue.

FRED MORRIS

Winnipeg

Zambian memory

The sidebar to Summer of tragedy continues (Sept. 8) lists 12 sports teams involved in fatal plane crashes from 1949 to 1993. Not to deflect from the tragedy of the first nine in any respect, but the last one listed was different in many ways.

Zambia's national football team, 18 players, five officials and crew, died in Libreville, Gabon, on April 28, 1993. The plane was a Canadian-built Buffalo belonging to the Zambian military. It was climbing to a higher altitude when witnesses on the ground heard a loud bang followed by the plane falling apart into the sea.

The consensus was that a bomb had been planted on the plane by agents from an Arab country making certain demands on the government of Zambia that were denied. The Zambian government requested a forensic investigation on the plane crash. It was denied by Gabon.

All or most of the bodies were recovered and sent back to Zambia. They are buried in a corner of the field at the football stadium in Lusaka, the capital. I was working in Zambia at the time.

STAN KOROWSKI

Winnipeg

Respecting ourselves

Re: Ancient precedent (Sept. 14). I'm a 22-year-old female, and I have a few opinions on the idea of a slutwalk. First, let me say that I do agree that no matter what a girl wears it doesn't give a guy permission to do something that she doesn't want.

But all girls should know by now that most men are pigs (no offence, guys), so if you plan on wearing clothes with your goods hanging out, you can't expect men not to notice or look. I truly believe that if we girls started respecting ourselves, and dressing more conservatively, we would get a whole lot more respect from the male gender.

KYLA PETERS

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 17, 2011 A19