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Kudos to Canada Post

I and almost everyone I know have at times criticized Canada Post for one reason or another. But a mistake I made was handled so well that those I told the story to were amazed.

A few weeks ago, I went to mail my Christmas cards. Included was a birthday-card envelope for a grandson. I had written only his first name on the envelope because I had planned to deliver it personally. I tossed the Christmas cards and the birthday card containing cash into the mail receptacle.

After realizing what I just done, I deposited a note explaining my error and phoned the post office. I was advised that the envelope may never be located, or it could take a few months. I believed it was lost forever.

On Dec. 17 I got a call from post office security informing me that the envelope had been located and I could pick it up at my convenience. Considering the mountains of mail produced at this time, I feel this is extraordinary. My thanks go out to them.

EDNA LAWRYNIUK

Winnipeg

Trumping animal cruelty

Re: It's about animal cruelty (Dec. 19). Letter-writer Kim Gainer chastises letter-writer Bill Raap for daring (in her opinion) to write that unnecessary abortions of human children are worse than the practice of keeping pigs in cages. Gainer goes on to say that Raap should keep his nose out of women's business.

How dare she. While the practices of the hog industry are horrifying and disgusting, murdering human babies (abortion is just another word for murder) while still in the womb will trump animal cruelty any day. The murder (abortion) of innocent babies is everybody's business and I hope and pray to God that it always will be.

CLARENCE DAVIS

Winnipeg

Thorny question remains

Letter-writer Leigh Halprin clearly exposes the hypocrisy behind the world's most autocratic and repressive regimes holding seats on the United Nations Rights Council (Guidelines must be clear, Dec. 14), a body "whose mandate is the responsibility for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe, addressing situations of human rights violations, and making recommendations on them."

Indeed, she has indirectly castigated the UN itself for offering membership to the very nations that so flagrantly violate the international organization's own standards of human-rights observance.

The thorny question that remains for Winnipeg's new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, however, is whether it will be equally as culpable in not displaying exhibits that speak to those rights violations despite the ill will that will be engendered toward Canada from diplomatic missions in China, Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Syria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.

Here at home, the new museum will have a more contentious rights violator to showcase -- if it is courageous enough to do so. As has been written on these pages before, the Quebec government continues to challenge the Canadian charter's constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression on a daily basis. Will the museum expose that violation, too, or will it be cowed by censorial political forces in Ottawa?

As the Canadian War Museum discovered, interference from above quickly changes the nature and content of otherwise objective truths to fit political expediencies. Let's hope that experience doesn't repeat itself here.

ARTHUR ELLIS

Winnipeg

Adding painful details

The writer of the Nov. 26 letter 'Like living in limbo' makes an entirely valid observation regarding our incredible and unforgivable wait times for hip operations in this province.

She notes that she could have her hip done in Scottsdale, Ariz., where she was wintering, in approximately five days. However, she says nothing of the excruciating pain 24/7, getting a maximum of two or three hours of sleep per night, the hazard caused by the afflicted driving on our roads, the damage caused by the dysfunction of a contorted body, the atrophy that sets into affected leg muscles, the risk of tripping on uneven ground, or slipping on ice, or over a sidewalk curb, and the otherwise inability to function properly or adequately every day. Not only should our wait times be a concern, they should be unacceptable.

BILL STEELE

Winnipeg

U.S. debt mind-boggling

I think our Canadian friends need to know how deeply the U.S. has gone into debt. A friend has taken the time to calculate how enormous our debt of $16 trillion is when expressed in terms we can better understand.

Put into simple words, at the rate of $36 million per hour, 24 hours per day, it would take 50.7 years to pay off the U.S. national debt. This assumes that nothing further is added to it and that it carries an interest rate of zero.

As one frustrated American, I am sick of our politicians arguing about nickel-and-dime tax increases and spending reductions while Rome is burning. Canadians should be concerned about our fiscal mess, as should the rest of the world. The only possible solution seems to be huge inflation in a few years.

VICTOR OAKES

Winnipeg

Open-minded Mordenites

Methinks Rick Miller doth protest too much (Prejudicial statement, Letters Dec. 17). Harm done? I'm sure that most Morden residents would be pleased that I did not refer to them as Dippers.

GEORGE WOODS

Winnipeg

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 26, 2012 A1