Letters, August 10

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/08/2022 (1322 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Asper nails it

Re: Gail Asper sides with Murray for mayor (Aug. 5)

Gail Asper’s comments about the current state of our city articulated my exact thoughts and the thoughts of anyone in the network of people I speak to.

Whether Glen Murray is the one to effect quantum change isn’t my point. I just hope someone does.

Strong leadership has never been more needed. There is a lot of work to be done to bring the city back. We can’t afford to analyze, debate and further delay the required actions.

Thanks, Gail, you nailed it exquisitely.

Mark Wire

Winnipeg

Gail Asper sees Winnipeg as “falling apart at the seams” and believes this city is falling behind because of rising violence, homelessness, addiction and poverty.

I would like to point out that these issues Asper sees as holding our city back are largely provincial-level responsibilities. Not only is the PC government providing inadequate responses to these issues, since it took power in 2016 the PC government has frozen funding transfers to the City of Winnipeg.

The quality of life in Winnipeg is dependent on the provincial government taking its responsibilities seriously, and funding the city to keep pace with population growth, cost of living and inflation.

If the province continues to put ideology ahead of Winnipeg’s well-being, it’s time for the city to create new ways of generating revenue to pay for the services and programs it desperately needs.

Mike Edwards

Winnipeg

Printing racist joke unnecessary

Re: Alabama town disbands police department over racist text (Aug. 6)

Let me see if I have this correct: A police chief and an assistant chief were fired in Alabama for tweeting a racist joke, and the Winnipeg Free Press decides to print the joke. What can I expect in my next paper, a joke about two gay men and monkeypox?

Do better, Free Press editors. Think before you send more garbage into the hands of racist morons.

Kenneth Davis

Winnipeg

LRT has considerable appeal

Re: Light rail transit pushed back into city conversation (Aug. 8)

Once again the urbanists among us have the right idea. Jino Distasio, a professor of urban geography at the University of Winnipeg, nails it when he strongly suggests Winnipeg should invest a generational amount of capital into LRT. We need to remain competitive with other cities of similar size, such as Ottawa, Edmonton and Calgary. It only makes sense given that Winnipeg is sure to pass the one million mark for population within 10 years.

It’s clear that bus rapid transit has been colossally bungled by every successive city administration since Glen Murray left office the first time. Murray, as many readers will recall, actually had a fairly workable plan for LRT in Winnipeg. That’s why he has my vote for mayor now. We need someone with boldness and the requisite smarts to pull it all together, which means securing a big slice of federal transit money.

As for the location of LRT, don’t put it anywhere where car culture is prevalent, as you won’t make a dent in changing the transportation habits of these people. It needs to start in the North End of the city and end up downtown, so Portage Avenue to Point Douglas seems like a good start. Run it right to Chief Peguis Trail.

Put transit where there are people who will use it, the people who work but can’t afford, and shouldn’t be trying to afford, vehicles. That’s how to achieve success. Only then can you farm it out to more car-cultured areas of the city and look for transit converts.

Will Jones

Winnipeg

Urgent to stop forest fires

Re: Wildfires take root in northwest Manitoba (July 19)

Forest fires are burning all over our planet because of dry conditions helped along by climate change. Hundreds and hundreds of square kilometres of forests are burning and spewing copious tonnes of CO2, adding to what the petrol from hundreds of millions of vehicles is already putting into the air.

It appears that a few water bombers, a helicopter with a huge water bag and a plane or two that drop fire retardant on current fires are not enough to adequately control them. There should be a great urgency to extinguish all forest fires as soon as possible to prevent further pollution and the furthering of climate change.

Fifty to 100 water bombers should be built and sent to put out fires immediately when they start, before they become gigantic infernos that add to climate change even more.

No government even mentions such a control to attack forest fires, and few scientists mention how much damage forest fires are really doing to the world climate. How sad is that?

Robert J. Moskal

Winnipeg

Reading involves more than texts

Re: Social media literacy must be part of education (Aug. 9)

The article by Sam Wineburg and Nadav Ziv on social-media literacy raises important issues related to literacy education in general.

These authors suggest using social-media texts to help students take a more critical stance toward the “snippets” of text that are becoming their main staple of print consumption. Most certainly such a direct approach has value; however, as a retired reading clinician, I would suggest an additional curricular element: focused teaching on more extended texts.

Such teaching engages students in the close analysis of a piece of writing in which they explore its deeper structure, and can include writing activities that invite students to apply what they have learned about “how text works.”

Sometimes schools need to be a “conserving” force in society, compensating for excesses in the broader society. If we seem to be mired in short texts devoid of broader contexts, then it behooves the educational establishment to present alternatives.

In the “old days,” we teachers called it “critical reading ability.” We even used textbooks!

Edwin Buettner

Winnipeg

Home-care plan lacks workers

Re: WRHA seeks to ramp up ‘home is best’ long-term care philosophy (Aug. 9)

Where are the home-care workers who will look after these seniors at home? We have fewer such workers now more than ever, and this provincial government still won’t hire more.

This government can’t expect family members to drop their jobs to look after their loved one when the health-care system can’t. What family member is going to do the job of a health-care worker, which they are not trained to do?

If this government doesn’t start paying home-care and health-care workers what they rightfully deserve, we will end up right back where we started, except with more deaths on our hands because we risked leaving seniors alone at home.

Leah Durham

Winnipeg

Monkeypox vaccine unavailable

Re: Province pivots, offers monkeypox vax to high-risk population (Aug. 5)

I don’t know how many vaccination doses were made available for Manitobans but, upon going online Tuesday, there are no appointments available at any of the three sites.

I thought this must be just a computer glitch, so I contacted the phone number that was given and was told there are no more appointments available. The person on the phone did not know if it was a lack of supply or availability of personnel to administer them.

Let’s hope this is not another screw-up by the government to announce a vaccination program and then not have adequate supply on hand to cover all people who want to get this vaccine.

Will Franklin

Winnipeg