‘Choice and autonomy’
Dear Editor:
RE: Council reverses decision on support letter for new hospice, Aug. 25.
We applaud the Centre Wellington council for their recent decision to support a six-bed hospice in the township that will provide comfort care at end of life on site, including palliative care and medical assistance in dying (MAID).
MAID is a legal end-of-life option for eligible people across Canada; allowing MAID on site ensures a patient does not have to leave their community of care through a forced transfer during an already difficult time.
MAID is a choice made by an individual; there are robust criteria and safeguards in place to rule out coercion, including that the person must be approved by two independent assessors; there is no slippery slope.
Through consultation with various community members, the council established that people support a hospice in the region that permits both palliative care and assisted dying, giving patients choice and autonomy at their end of life.
Helen Long,
CEO, Dying With Dignity Canada
‘We were so wrong’
Dear Editor:
We can remember Dieppe as a day of horror because the Allies were too certain that they could conquer the Germans. We were so wrong!
The enemy was already prepared – just above that beach and so the Canadians were destroyed.
Our men had depended on their tanks; but could not manoeuvre the landing crafts quickly enough to leave under the constant rain of enemy fire. They were prime targets for their enemy, just waiting for them on top of hill!
Those brave men who managed to run toward the safety of the over hanging cliffs were very few.
On Aug. 19 we remembered Dieppe: the unfortunate outcome of that day but most of all, we remembered the bravery of those men who looked death in the eye and ran toward it. May we never forget them.
Sytske Drjber,
Rockwood
‘Top notch’
Dear Editor:
We don’t know what a great hospital and staff we have until a crisis arises.
Recently I had a problem with my heart going out of rhythm; it had to be stopped and restarted.
The professionalism of the ambulance crews and trauma department, emergency department and the doctors and nurses of the third floor (blue and green) was top notch. Also the food was great.
If it wasn’t for these dedicated people I would not be writing this letter today. A big thank-you to all.
John Cornish,
Fergus
Grateful grandma
Dear Editor:
A profound and heartfelt thank you to the 911 dispatcher, the EMS crew and Groves Hospital staff for the professional and calming way in which they attended to my grandson after he tumbled down my basement stairs during his visit.
I am truly grateful.
Colleen Roberts,
Elora
‘Proud’ mayor
Dear Editor:
RE: Thank you, Aug. 25.
After reading your editorial in the last edition of the Wellington Advertiser I felt a need to thank you for your kind words.
Having been in a similar office, you are immensely qualified to comment on the work load of a mayor or council member. It is not an easy job. I have had many challenging roles in the various occupations of my life, but it has been an honour and privilege to represent the residents of Erin and Wellington County.
Although COVID-19 did make our role more complicated and difficult, it also created a common understanding and comradeship amongst all the mayors of the county. The role of local councils affects the day-to-day lives of residents more so than senior levels of government. It is dismaying to see traditional low voter turnout and the struggles to fill all the needed positions.
It is critical that our residents make it a point to vote and/or run for council if they genuinely want to make a difference. I urge everyone to mark their calendars for Oct. 24, municipal election day, and ensure that they cast their vote. Residents need to exercise their rights in this democratic process if they want it to be truly reflective of their collective will. This is the crux of democracy and it cannot implement itself.
I want to thank all my constituents: those who supported me and those who were opposed. I stand by my contributions to Erin and am proud of the work by this council.
Mayor Allan Alls,
Erin
Dialogue important
Dear Editor:
It is with anticipated pleasure that I read the Advertiser each week.
Last week I read with gratitude the empathetic article on Mathias Bunyan, the excellent editorial which commended the unsung selflessness of serving on council, the flagellating Letters to the Editor, about Kelly and the Carpenter, and of course the obituaries.
These many unique features combine to make the Advertiser a one-of-a-kind locally driven newspaper. As a community we should acknowledge the quality of this paper, as small papers which report on local news are fast becoming extinct.
Obviously there can never be a happy balance when granting equal space to people who challenge the ever-changing notions of truth, and those who wish to rectify false information. To weigh in on contentious issues is a mine field and one which no matter how carefully the information is presented, will always be challenged.
I trust this paper and the contributors; especially when the editor treads that information mine field of opinion. We are not “a mindless herd” succumbing to hysteria, we clearly see the direction of our moral and physical world. Dialogue among us all is desperately important as our ideological differences are not as vast as they may seem; we are all good people.
If an editor’s note is required then I will read it with the same interest as the letter that prompted it.
Michele MacRae,
Fergus
‘Tiny minority’
Dear Editor:
RE: Comments appreciated, Aug. 25.
I wholeheartedly agree with Jan Corbett that it’s the Advertiser editor’s right – even responsibility – to comment at the end of letters, and especially those that contain improbable “facts”.
Adding, as he did, to a recent letter that 97 per cent of climate scientists agree that human activity – primarily burning fossil fuels – is causing climate change is helpful to readers.
But to add my own two cents, even that 2013 survey number is now outdated. In 2021, Cornell University found the scientific consensus on climate has reached 99.9%. And, as the UK Guardian stated when reporting this study last October, “The tiny minority of sceptical voices has diminished to almost nothing as evidence mounts of the link between fossil-fuel burning and climate disruption.”
Here’s something else nearly 100% guaranteed: Advertiser readers who think climate change is a hoax will find yet another source – almost always backed by fossil fuel money when you dig around – to reject peer reviewed science.
But even if people scoff at science they don’t agree with, how to explain what is happening in the real world of extreme weather events? Those massive floods, deadly heat domes, punishing droughts and brutal wildfires that are all breaking historic records in so many places, including western Canada.
Our part of southwestern Ontario has thankfully dodged a lot of the climate catastrophes experienced elsewhere this summer. Yet who even knew what a derecho was until that monster storm ferociously slammed this province and parts of Quebec on May 21, causing more than $875 million in damages and 11 deaths.
The odds are awfully high we’re in for many more climate-related disasters in the years and decades to come.
So yes please, dear editor, keep adding those comments!
Liz Armstrong,
Erin
Just like teenagers?
Dear Editor:
RE: “Hysteria on steroids”? (Aug. 11).
Climate change deniers are a lot like teenagers: they look but don’t see; they hear but they don’t listen.
Right now, France is on fire. Wildfires rage in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. According to the USDA Fire service, it used to be that fire season was only for certain months of the year in the western states. Now climate change has turned fire season into a year-round issue.
One thousand deaths in Portugal and 500 in Spain are linked to extremely high temperatures. The UK saw temperatures of more than 40C for the first time. This July, the Yukon and NWT experienced record-breaking temperatures.
Drought in the western U.S. has left Colorado’s largest reservoirs only a quarter full and is endangering food production, hydro generation and the water supply for 40 million people. Drought is causing similar consequences in China, Europe and Asia.
In Alberta and the NWT, thousands evacuated their homes because of floods. In the Sudan, floods affected 130,000. In Pakistan, monsoon rains and flooding left 700 dead and thousands displaced. A state of emergency was declared due to flash floods in West Virginia and Kentucky. There has been deadly flooding in West Germany and Belgium.
With more and more records being broken, this is climate change, not weather. Should we try to do something about it? Absolutely! The longer we wait, the more it will cost us.
Toronto350 presented a brief to U of T suggesting they should divest from fossil fuel stocks. U of T didn’t take the advice, but I did.
Between 2013 and 2014, I sold off all my fossil fuel stocks for about $75,000. Had I held onto those stocks, they would now be worth about $19,000. Listening to that advice saved me $56,000. Between 2014 and 2020, I switched to investing in wind and solar stocks. The cost of those investments was $21,000 and their current value is $73,000.
Failure to be proactive in addressing climate change is what may turn us into a Third World country.
Ron Moore,
Hillsburgh
‘Blind idiocy’
Dear Editor:
RE: “Hysteria on steroids”? (Aug. 11).
With others, I suggest your footnote (that Over 90% of climate scientists believe global temperatures have increased during the past century and that human activity is a significant contributing factor”) be removed from Jane Vandervliet’s letter. It seems to be a not-so-subtle attempt to discredit the correspondent’s opinion.
The truth is that climate scientists do agree that in 200 years the planet has warmed just over 1C. In more detail we are now 1C higher than the planet’s lowest average temp in the last 10,000 years. We are also 2C colder than the warmest average in the same period.
Overall, we’re in an historic cold period. Given this, one wonders why some extremists have irrational fears of an upcoming hot apocalypse? Frankly, it’s good people are being skeptical of some irrational extremist ideas.
Green extremists never ever talk about the good things fossil fuels have done for us (ie – machine technology, less poverty, living longer, safer and healthier lives, etc.). Reliable energy has given us fantastically powerful tools that tame nature’s threats.
Canadians should watch the EU this winter. It will be a bleak place as they suffer an energy drought thanks to blind idiocy of green politicians who over-invested in unreliable renewables and under-invested in natural gas.
We should be embarrassed that our own federal government (and Quebec) have foolishly canceled and choked numerous natural gas projects (a good fossil fuel). Our massive endless natural gas reserves could have significantly helped friends.
Two excellent “zero emissions” solutions (nuclear/hydro) are always opposed by the Green Party and extreme environmentalists – why? In Ontario that’s nearly 90% of the power in our grid.
Sincerely hoping we wake up soon.
Mike Hall,
Guelph/Eramosa
*Editor’s note: Most climate change experts agree that a one-degree change in global temperature is significant.
Damaging, costly
Dear Editor:
RE: Critical thinking, Aug. 25.
John Burger defends the Editor’s Note that was added to Jane Vandervliet’s letter in which she challenges the oft-repeated claim that there is a “climate emergency”, by claiming that Vandervliet’s letter contains false statements about climate change, without stating what was false about them.
Why is it false to state what many climate scientists and other experts are saying?
While it may be true, as the editor and Burger note, that the majority of climate scientists (who might be afraid of losing their government funding if they challenge the politically correct view), say that the relatively small increase in temperature over the last century is reason for concern, it doesn’t follow that they also believe that we have a “climate emergency” that requires us to take immediate extreme measures to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.
Who can say for certain what the ideal temperature of the Earth should be, or what portion of the temperature increase was caused by using fossil fuels compared to natural weather and climate variability?
The planet has been warming for more than a century. So far, the world has done a decent job at adapting to this change. Crop yields have doubled or even quadrupled since 1960. Over the past century, the number of deaths per million people from weather and climate catastrophes has dropped by 97%.
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and similar natural disasters or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2 mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly, as Europeans are discovering.
Henry Brunsveld,
Puslinch
Stop arguing
Dear Editor:
Why are we still arguing about the truth of the climate crisis? In terms of what we need to do to keep this planet habitable, it is almost a non-issue.
The weather network put out a video telling us about the algae contaminating and poisoning our shellfish. I am not going to argue whether they are contaminated by the change in temperature and the other factors that the climate crisis brings or whether the problem is man-made.
We have the means to stop or mitigate every problem facing us now: air pollution, water contamination, pesticide laced food that is slowly poisoning our bodies. Our arguments are pointless and take up the time we could devote to working together in stopping the extinction of species, the sickening of our children, the emergence of new diseases, because we are destroying the habitat of the very creatures who keep the planet livable.
Why are we arguing? Why aren’t we getting together to work on changing our habits that make this Earth sick, and yes, even dying!
This situation is like two physicians standing on opposite sides of a patient and arguing endlessly about the origin and cure of her disease while she is actively dying. She dies because both sides will not come to some agreement about what to do because they see their own research and techniques as superior.
If we can’t agree on anything else, couldn’t we agree on the fact that the planet is dying, because the evidence is right before our eyes?
I only hope that we stop. Stop arguing and get to work. Stop consuming as if the Earth can endlessly provide us with everything we want. Stop excusing away our use of fossil fuels. Stop thinking we need driveways full of cars. Stop fighting over an issue while the Earth is still being is mined, burned, slashed and poisoned.
We can work together just by agreeing that we have created a very sick planet and we need to work together to solve the problem. Look at how we did that during the Second World War. Our grandparents farmed differently, they accepted rationing, they wore clothing until is was not longer wearable. They made sacrifices and did what was necessary. We can do it. We can change, whether or not we agree on climate change. All the answers are out there.
They are not perfect yet, but the patient is dying. Let’s stop the debate and work together about the things we can agree on. All the rest is academic and seems to achieve nothing. We are smarter than that.
Gerry Walsh,
Erin