‘Callousness’
Dear Editor:
RE: Halliburtons sentenced in Lucas Shortreed hit-and-run case, Oct. 5.
I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t seen those roadside signs asking for help in solving, what was until a year ago a cold case.
I’ve been looking at Lucas’ face ever since the first sign went up 10-plus years ago and I couldn’t help but feel for the Shortreed family.
Closure is important in these horrific instances, but when I read the sentences handed down by Justice Stanley, I was very disappointed in our judicial system. Thirty months in prison and six months of house arrest for wilfully hiding their guilt seems light to me.
To claim, as David Halliburton claimed, that even if he were “stone cold sober” it would of been the same result. Then why didn’t he do the right thing and call 911?
I suspect the “few beers” he had were more than a few, based on the fact he decided to run off and hide his involvement in this horrific crime for the next 15 years. And his wife’s complicity makes this horrible “accident” even more heinous.
Purposely changing VINs and registration, hiding the car, lying to their 11-year-old, etc. exhibit a degree of callousness usually reserved for the most cold blooded of killers. Nope, two and a half years in prison for the husband and six months of house arrest for the wife seems a far cry from what it should have been.
Maybe Justice Stanley considered the 15 years of living with their “guilt” equivalent to “time served”.
To me they both should have received the same sentence as Lucas did – life.
Brett Davis,
Orton
Same ‘grifters’
Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Concerned parents,’ Oct. 5.
One must assume from Susannah Sinclair’s letter that children are nothing more than chattel owned by their parents. So parents are the slave owners and children are the slaves to do the parents’ bidding. My late wife and I raised two wonderful daughters, but they were never our chattel in the same way I did not own my wife or she me.
As for the so-called “1 Million March” – I saw the demonstrations which contained a few hundred.
Of course Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre loved it in the same way he embraced the criminals of the convoy. This “Save the Children” is a group of anti-gay people; the same group of grifters that were in the convoy, taking their orders from Trumpland.
People like Poilievre set in motion the nastiness that we are seeing on a daily basis: gay flags burned, bullying of women, cowards. He is part of the movement.
Jim Trautman,
Ontario, California
‘Solution to paving conflict obvious’
Dear Editor:
There is a very obvious and
fair solution to the conflict and cost surrounding the pav- ing of Concession Road 4 in Wellington North.
Three local gravel pits are hauling tonnage along a three- kilometre strip of road, one of these pits owned by the town- ship.
If the cost of paving and road-base construction were to be divided into three equal parts, with the township and the other two pits each pay- ing one third, it then becomes an affordable and appropriate use of taxpayer dollars (the pits themselves are the pro- ducers of the material needed to upgrade the road to pave- ment).
The need is more than evi- dent. The question of paving this 3km strip has been a con- tentious issue before council and an ongoing, urgent request
by residents of the road for eight years. Negotiations par- tially achieved. Costs have risen and so has the traffic, without reaching effective solutions.
I have occasion to use this road frequently. There is not only multiple-purpose traffic (industrial trucks, commer- cial vehicles, cars, buggies and bicycles), there is a Mennonite grade school, Marigold Meadows, on Sideroad 3, just slightly west of the junction of Sideroad 3/Concession 4.
Discussions in council in different years have ensued. Studies and analysis also cost taxpayer dollars and time.
As reported, councillor Lisa Hern has expressed concerns about not offering “equality” to other Wellington North roads.
“Other roads” are not pro- viding a haulage route for three local pits.
Traffic truck counts in both directions have been taken on different occasions, with a recent count in March, 2023 of 210 and 256 vehicles in a 24-hour period. Objections arose that this was not an accu- rate estimate of use. Gravel is hauled as required or request- ed and also by schedule. So, of course the tonnage is not identical each day, however it is the business in question and it’s rarely hauled on just one day of the month.
The remaining two pits that use Sideroad 4 North as a haulage route could and should view a shared cost of road improvement (other than maintenance), as the cost of doing business. That’s approxi- mately one kilometer each.
A private entrepreneurial business does not have the right to negatively impact the lives, health and endeavours of other citizens.
Bronwen Stanley-Jones,
Orangeville