Letters, May 29

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/05/2025 (301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Realities of trauma

Re: Haunted by the vagaries of fate (Think Tank, May 28)

What an excellent article by Pam Frampton that described how she and her husband were out for a walk and saved a man who was drowning in a pond.

Ms. Frampton glossed over the bravery they displayed and rather focused on the trauma they experienced when returning to the scene of the incident. What she described is well known to every police office and is known as locational trauma.

The general definition for this is found on the internet: “the specific location of a trauma, whether a home, workplace, or even a wider area like a town or state, can be associated with the traumatic experience, making it difficult to navigate or associate with that area without experiencing distress.”

I don’t want to minimize in any way what Ms. Frampton is experiencing, but try to imagine a police officer with several years on the job out for a ride in the city and passing this address or that intersection where they experienced similar trauma. If their spouse or children are their passengers, they can’t share the gory, bloody details, so they grow quiet and keep driving till it passes.

The city is too small to avoid all of these locations even if they wanted to. Why do I write this letter? I write it in the hope that the next time you see a police officer, you might appreciate what they endure to keep your community safe.

Stan Tataryn, Winnipeg

Staying safe amid smoke

As wildfires rage across Manitoba and beyond, choking the air with dense smoke, you have to wonder: where is public health? Why aren’t N95 respirator masks being distributed to evacuees and frontline workers?

N95 particulate respirator masks are a basic, proven tool for protecting against the dangerous PM2.5 particles in wildfire smoke. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies these particles as Group 1 carcinogens, and they can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, leading to a host of serious health problems.

Other Group 1 carcinogens include asbestos and tobacco smoke. Yet public health is missing in action.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, masks have been politicized, dismissed and framed as a personal choice instead of a basic public health necessity. Meanwhile, other airborne diseases like measles are surging across Canada.

When climate disasters strike, evacuees are often crowded into poorly ventilated shelters, becoming hotspots for disease.

During this year’s Palisades fires in Los Angeles, Calif., grassroots groups like Mask Bloc LA distributed tens of thousands of masks when government agencies failed to act.

Climate change, pandemics and disease spread go hand in hand. Warming temperatures expand the range of infectious diseases, weaken healthcare systems and force people into unsafe conditions where illness spreads easily.

This is the reality we live in, and yet public health continues to respond as though everything is temporary, exceptional or someone else’s responsibility.

Manitobans deserve to protect their health while navigating the climate catastrophe, and it’s the responsibility of public health officials and the provincial government to communicate the risks honestly and equip people with the tools and resources they need to stay safe.

Jenn Allen, Winnipeg

The phosphorous issue

Re: “The will to work on water woes” (Letters, May 27)

Terry Toews’s letter to the editor calls for more effort on the behalf of the City of Winnipeg to clean up our rivers.

While this is certainly important, we should not forget that there are significant discharges of phosphorus (the constituent which drives eutrophication in Lake Winnipeg) from farming operations both in Manitoba and upstream in the U.S.

Recent changes to legislation in North Dakota will likely result in the corporate ownership and intensification of dairy farming operations. Absent any action by governments this will result in increased phosphorus discharges to waterways including the Red River and further degrade Lake Winnipeg.

The water quality in the Red River does not at present conform to the International Joint Commission requirements and with the present North Dakota government and the overarching Trump administration precious little will be done about this over the next few years. In fact, it is almost guaranteed to get worse.

Tom Pearson, Winnipeg

Have patience

Re: Whiteshell Provincial Park residents, cottagers frustrated by closure, lack of communication (May 26)

To those cottage owners in the Whiteshell impatiently awaiting the reopening of the park, I ask you to consider the following: if parks authorities were to allow you in and conditions suddenly changed, putting lives in danger, there would be a chorus of complaints about officials mismanaging the fire situation.

Be grateful these firefighters are giving their all trying to bring these fires under control. You at least have a cottage to go back to. In Nopiming Provincial Park, Beresford Lake was devastated by a fire that is still out of control. At least 20 cottages were reduced to ashes, including ours. Forty-five years of work and play gone in a flash.

I think we sometimes forget that when you decide to live in a provincial park, you live by nature’s rules, not yours. We rely on the protection of wildfire services but some fires are just too intense and unpredictable to combat. We are grateful that the firefighters in our area gave it a shot.

Roland Dion, Winnipeg

Old school, new school

I’ve read with interest the various opinions about education and the conflicting opinions about grading today’s students. Apparently, students are horribly traumatized by the current system of grading using percentages and numerical marking. All the while there are educators who oppose this traditional methodology and ask students to grade themselves through their own eyes; reflection in fact.

As someone who is by definition an “old school” student, subjected to these traumatizing grading methods, and an “old school” educator with 40 years in the classroom who used these same grading methods, I feel compelled to comment.

First, as a student, I was not a very good student. I failed. I got low grades. I was upset, but I didn’t blame my teachers, nor the grading system. I blamed myself.

And yet I succeeded. I acquired three degrees. Obviously the “old school” grading system wasn’t the problem. In fact, I would argue that it was a motivator.

I saw the stars, numerical numbers and letters on my assignments as an indicator of how I failed or succeeded. Grades are motivators. They should be a challenge.

Second, as an educator with 40 years of experience as a resource teacher, working in alternate classroom settings and in regular classroom settings, I knew that the grades I assigned would influence my students, good or bad, but because I am a professional and I knew my students and their abilities, I graded knowing the impact on them and the emotional affect as well. I did so because it was expected of me.

What I did do was talk with my kids about their assigned grades, because each one of my students were important to me. I provided comments on their report cards emphasizing their positive efforts regardless of the mark I assigned whether it was a 50 or a 90. And yes, I wrote comments that spoke honestly about their need to be better because, as a parent myself, and the parents of my students they and I wanted honesty.

Old-school report cards were handwritten by an actual person rather than a computer generated assortment of comments like “emerging” or some other nebulous comment. They were sincere and honest.

Bottom line is this. In my view, the old school works.

Perhaps these experts should spend less time worrying about the emotional well-being of kids, which is enabling, and instead focus on empowering these kids to see that grades and marks are enablers in and of themselves.

Brad McKay, Winnipeg