Letters, Jan. 24

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/01/2024 (624 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Too quick to draw conclusion

Re: “Why the long wait?” (Letters, Jan. 23)

Ben Dearing has put the cart before the cops by jumping to the conclusion that police took many hours to respond to the Marlborough Hotel’s phone call that things were amiss.

According to the Free Press story, it seems there were two calls to police, the first at 10:30 a.m., the second at an unknown time before the police arrived at 1:30 p.m. Since police respond according to established priorities, the nature of those two calls is important. The first one takes a back seat to the second — a woman loitering in a hotel lobby versus a woman allegedly trying to stab someone.

It is unfair to conclude the cops were tardy until the time of that second call is determined. Therefore such a blistering denunciation of Winnipeg police is gravely premature.

Barry Craig

Winnipeg

Marlborough protest aftermath

Re: Rally inside hotel turns chaotic (Jan. 22)

It makes sense to me that if someone in a public setting is allegedly brandishing a knife, threatening to hurt another person, using restraint with such a threat-maker would be the prudent course of action.

With regard to the Indigenous woman who allegedly threatened others with a knife at the Marlborough Hotel and was subsequently restrained and held until police arrived, the courses of action taken by hotel staff appear to be reasonable. Because of the nature of her behaviour, the police placed this woman under arrest and charged her.

However, it is not known what course of action, if any, will be taken to address the obviously unlawful behaviour of protesters.

This mob behaviour crossed all lines of social acceptability in the use of extreme violence and destruction of private property.

Furthermore, claims by protesters that the behaviour by hotel staff sheds light on larger issues of missing and murdered Indigenous women, are outside the realm of reason in this instance.

In my opinion, if an Indigenous woman commits a crime, it is still a crime regardless of her race. While it is also evident that destruction of private property is also criminal, it is even more unacceptable to justify this rampage by claiming that there are unaddressed issues for Indigenous people.

As claimed by protesters, this whole scenario is seen as throwing light on what is interpreted as the larger issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. I, for one, fail to see this connection.

I do not fathom how claiming that there are such issues can possibly justify the use of behaviour that jeopardizes the safety of others. Using race alone cannot be used to excuse or justify such outrageous demonstration.

Mary-Jane Robinson

Winnipeg

The protesters at the Marlborough Hotel obviously didn’t consider what could have happened if armed police officers had arrived before she was restrained.

If the woman was indeed armed with a knife, as reported by the hotel staff, the final outcome could have had a very different ending.

Reid Bilodeau

Winnipeg

I am a Grade 12 student at Collège Jeanne-Sauvé who is enrolled in the Current Topics in First Nations, Métis and Inuit Studies course at my school. In class today, we discussed the article written by Tyler Searle titled Rally inside hotel turns chaotic, published on Jan. 22.

After reading the article, I found the headline and first sentence to be very misleading for the reader. It insinuates that the majority of those involved in this rally made their way into the basement of the hotel when there was only a small group of people involved.

It is clarified later in the article that it was a peaceful protest and only a separate, smaller group split into the basement; but I believe this should have been stated at the beginning of the article.

Many people will only read the headline and first few paragraphs of an article before moving on to the next article, assuming they have the whole idea of a story. I believe the title should have been changed and the first sentence should have been removed so the reader would not make assumptions about what happened at this rally based on the first two things they read.

I also believe the mention of them ransacking the bar area and leaving the floor drenched in alcohol in the first sentence of this article is unnecessary. To have that be the first sentence of an article about a peaceful rally, minus a few individuals, surrounding an Indigenous woman contributes to the negative stereotypes attributed to the Indigenous people of Canada and alcohol. I personally do not consider this information to have been important enough that it needed to be mentioned in the first sentence of the article.

Chloe Crockford

Winnipeg

Putting ourselves first?

Re: “Newcomers needed” (Letters, Jan. 23)

Yes, as a developing country we need more health-care workers. But there is a “however”: if the solution to our problem, rather than local professional training and education, is to attract health-care professionals from underdeveloped countries, whose populations suffer from much more dire shortages per capita than we in Canada do, we simply privilege our health over the health of those populations.

Fulfilling our needs deprives others in their needs.

Norman Rosenbaum

Winnipeg

Remove barriers to training

One solution to health-care staffing could be removing or alleviating the financial burden of becoming a health-care worker.

Many people who live in the country now, I am sure, would like to become a health-care professional but do not have the financial resources to do it.

There are probably thousands of people working at minimum-wage jobs in this country currently who would become nurses and MRI techs, among other roles, if it did not cost so much to go to school.

Maybe the various levels of government should lower the cost of training for people currently living in rural areas to become health-care professionals, say for the next four to five years, until we can get enough people working in health care to combat the crisis we are in and the government can consider it an investment in the future of our country

Other countries send their people to our country to train to become health-care professionals and their country pays for the education and once done they go back to work in their country. Maybe we should do the same here.

Just a thought.

Ron Robert

Winnipeg

Name game

Re: Bombers’ home to be renamed Princess Auto Stadium (Jan. 22)

Good grief.

Investors Group Field is now Princess Auto Stadium. Bell MTS Centre is now Canada Life Centre. Shaw Park is now Blue Cross Park. Why on Earth would we call them by any of these new names when they’ll just change in a few years? It’s ludicrous.

Make the signage digital so you can have a new sponsor and building name every month — I couldn’t care less. I’m just calling them the Stadium, the Arena and the Ballpark from here on out. Easy-peasy.

Cheryl Moore Hildebrand

Winnipeg