Letters, May 9

Clarification

The May 8 editorial Housing the homeless safely, for all suggested that unhoused people had been placed in the Canadian Polish Manor under the Your Way Home program. While formerly homeless individuals have been placed by the program in other apartment buildings, the Canadian Polish Manor was not one of them.

Protecting what matters

Re: Natural resources minister to meet with bear cub rescue operator, reeve over proposed quarry (May 7)

The proposed quarry near Black Bear Rescue Manitoba in Stonewall raises an important question: how do we protect what matters most?

Black Bear Rescue provides an irreplaceable service by rehabilitating orphaned bear cubs, many of them victims of human activity. There is no alternative facility if its work is disrupted.

A quarry can be developed in many locations. Black Bear Rescue cannot be relocated or replaced. It was established before this proposal and has been quietly doing essential work saving bear cubs ever since.

This is where leadership matters. While decisions may begin at the municipal level, there must be stronger opportunities for communities to protect the assets we value most. Wildlife and rehabilitation efforts like Black Bear Rescue should not be outmatched by developments that can be located elsewhere.

Manitoba has an opportunity here to get this right. Protecting Black Bear Rescue is the compassionate choice and one we should strive to make.

Erica Vido

Winnipeg

Decision a real shame

Re: Parents irked after school ditches Mother’s Day (May 6)

I find that I have to respond to the article regarding the decision by the school in Sage Creek not to recognize Mother’s Day as we have traditionally been doing for decades.

Let’s just stop and think about this. Mothers, the most important position in a family. This lovely person, who puts us to bed with a kiss every night, who gets us up in the morning for school, who has our breakfast ready, who sends us off to school with a kiss or who drives us to school. Then we have this lovely person who washes our clothes, keeps our house clean, shops for our food and cooks us lunch and dinner.

Children know this and love to honour mom every year on her day.

This opportunity has been taken away from the children of this school. What a shame!

But the other thing to me is more disturbing is that this braintrust is in charge of educating our children. If that doesn’t turn your bowels to water, nothing will.

I guess the next beauty will be Father’s Day. What a shame!

D.Duane Johnston

Winnipeg

Tough situation

Re: An important step for provincial child care (Think Tank, May 4)

This is in response to a recent op-ed by Molly McCracken from the Manitoba Child Care Coalition. McCracken suggested that the 60/40 split for the renovation grant from the province does not work for community-based organizations. She is right.

I am part of such an organization and we are living proof that a better system is needed if the Manitoba government wants to create more affordable and safe child-care space. We had the prefect opportunity to create 112 child-care spaces. The local United Church decided to donate its building to the community, rather than sell it to a developer of condos. Parents in our neighbourhood were desperate for child care with a waiting list up to three years. Using the building for child care seemed a solution for both.

It has taken us two years and over $200,000 just to get us to the point where we had all the assessments and documents in place to apply for the child care grant of 60 per cent for construction. But where do we get the 40 per cent, which is about $1.5 million? As a local community group, we have no bank account with tons of savings. Luckily, the church agreed to use the building as collateral for a loan.

However, paying interest only during construction, when there is no income, is a problem. But it is more of a problem when the centre is operating to pay the $150,000 a year in loan payments. It is simply impossible. Our financial projections, even without paying rent on the building and with expenses minimized as much as possible, puts us in a deficit position of $50,000 annually.

We are hopeful — but there is a strong possibility that we will not make it. We have smart and dedicated volunteers organizing this, we have the backing and support of the church and the congregation, we have supportive families in desperate need of child care and we have a building that is suitable for childcare and is free.

If we can’t make it, who can?

Beverly Suek

Winnipeg

Memories of the ice

Re: The best hockey I knew was the first I played (Think Tank, April 30)

What a peach of a story. Being female, I never got to play hockey. Also, I can’t remember learning to skate. But the sound of skates on ice is crystal clear.

So is the time the Flin Flon Bombers opened their rink to free skating, and my brother Bill pushing me at a thrilling pace around it.

We moved close to a school in Fort Rouge and it had a rink. I put on my skates and crossed the street under the gaze of some boys waiting for me to fall on my face. How disappointed they were when I proved I could skate! Delicious!

Esme Peterkin

Winnipeg

Valuable insight

Re: The ER is not the problem, it’s just where the problem lands (Think Tank, May 7)

Dr. Alan Menkis has written an imperative-to-read article, for anyone using our health-care system, to know that a Manitoban best-practices medicine system exists, “built by the patient outward,” designed to deliver quality medicine in a timely and proficient manner inside of a range of flexible capacities.

Disturbingly, with growing regularity, there have been numerous front-page stories detailing the circumstances of ER deaths.

In this reader’s opinion, when there is finally an article explaining rational governance frameworks in detail, that uses a range of well known existing pathways, designed to deliver quality Canadian medicine, it should be front-page news.

Further, the article explains that what we are currently abiding as health care for all Manitobans is clearly a result of a governance failure over multiple levels of administrations to provide responsible accountable medicine: the “absence of a structure” to define the details of responsibility for the entire range of medical care and provide the statistics systematically, has been deliberately unused.

What has happened to the health-care system in Manitoba, could be remedied.

No one has to die unnecessarily inside of an emergency room in Manitoba. Condolences expressed with a followup of carefully spun medical reassurance wording, has become an outrageous bridge for the gap between the next unnecessary death.

Either we collectively stand up and say something now, demand that what is available, be immediately utilized, to restore appropriate urgent care infrastructure to the medical system or we will all be responsible for accepting a hideous form of new normal, when preventable deaths continue to occur in an ER.

Bev Jacobs

Winnipeg