Firstly, I am very surprised that the Bower sisters sold the pristine land to Melcor. Very surprised.
Secondly, After all this time and development in Red Deer the most valuable land in the city has changed hands. Let us pray that they have the wisdom to follow what has unparalleled potential for future generations.
Thirdly, the concept of a road across the creek by Bower would be positive and allow splendid traffic flow but decisions like this need to be seen with eyes that look 100 years into the future.
As a future Red Deer citizen looking back, I would look back to a time when Alberta was in tough economic times and the phase out of gas powered vehicles had started. However, with the advent of flying cars and hover boards and personal flying suits, roads have gone out of vogue so roads that were once busy according to old photographs, are now long stretches of greenery, much like what once may existed. With one exception. Looking back on wildlife counts and the many green spaces around Red Deer, over the last 100 years, the flow of animals came to a standstill as the wanton destruction of pristine environments accelerated. Precedent after precedent allowed the desecration of The Kerry Wood area and green spaces alongside Highway 2.
As a present Red Deer citizen, I look at the example of Central Park, New York. More than a century ago, a civic minded individual donated land to create a timeless refuge for urban dwellers in the big city. Today, it is the #1 draw for tourists and those wanting to find peace in a busy city.
I imagine that the future citizen would see the same IF the proposed bridge goes across. The flow of animals, and desecration of virgin land that David Thompson, Leonard Gaetz, Sgt McLeod, and countless native tribes walked on would be severe.
I am aware the Melcor wants to develop a park, but I propose it is the entire land purchase, not a small fraction.
100 years from now, our descendants will be able to look at a pristine land area that hearkens to a time and leadership that dares make hard decisions on what could be an easy solution with incredible cost.
As a past candidate in one election, I would advocate that the good decision on this is NO bridge, and pressure on Melcor to preserve what will be our greatest resource and potential recreation area.
Fourthly, with land that is undefiled as the area is, the archaeology that is beneath must be incredible and must be examined. If it is not, it is in violation of Dalgemuuq and federal regulations on land development. In this case, an aerial examination of the land is not sufficient. There MUST be boots on the ground. Based on Cree habitation of this area, it is indeed possible that there is even a village beneath the area. In Red Deer, only two areas can boast summer village dating to pre-contact, and they are both under danger of desecration. Let us not make this a third. There would be legal action if action proceeds without in depth investigation.
I am in favor of development, but perhaps this is a time for future based decisions.
IF this development does come up and a bridge is truly proposed. I will run again, and strongly oppose it. STRONGLY.
Tim Lasiuta, Red Deer, Alberta
Most Canadians may be unaware that a Citizen-Led Inquiry into Canada’s COVID-19 Response is underway. The first hearing which took place in Truro, Nova Scotia has already provided the five Inquiry Commissioners with hours of evidence to consider.
Hearings are also scheduled for Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Red Deer, Vancouver, Quebec City, and finally Ottawa. The second round of hearings starts Thursday, March 30 in Toronto. On the eve of this, the National Citizens Inquiry has released a statement from renowned Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Below in his message to the commissioners, Dr. Peterson outlines all the reasons this inquiry is so important.
Canada’s federal and provincial governments’ COVID-19 policies were unprecedented. These interventions into Canadians’ lives, our families, businesses, and communities were, and to great extent remain, significant. In particular, these interventions impacted the physical and mental health, civil liberties and fundamental freedoms, jobs and livelihoods, and overall social and economic wellbeing of nearly all Canadians.
These circumstances demand a comprehensive, transparent, and objective national inquiry into the appropriateness and efficacy of these interventions, and to determine what lessons can be learned for the future. Such an inquiry cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by our governments as it is their responses and actions to the COVID-19 which would be under investigation.
The National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) is a citizen-led and citizen-funded initiative that is completely independent from government. In early 2023, the NCI will hear from Canadians and experts and investigate governments’ COVID-19 policies in a fair and impartial manner.
The NCI’s purpose is to listen, to learn, and to recommend. What went right? What went wrong? How can Canadians and our governments better react to national crises in the future in a manner that balances the interests of all members of our society?
Canadian psychologist, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson who is also an author, online educator, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto spoke out about the Canadian response to COVID-19.
Dr. Peterson’s prerecorded testimony was directed to the five Commissioners at the National Citizens Inquiry in Truro, Nova Scotia.
The National Citizen’s Inquiry Hearings Event in the city of Toronto, Ontario Canada.
This event takes place starting March 30th to April 1st 2023.
Hearings go from 9:00am – 5:00pm Eastern Time.
You can register to attend the event here.
The hearing schedule is here.
The problem with liberal tolerance in Canada is that it’s not particularly liberal and it’s certainly not tolerant. For instance, the “everyone must wear an LGBTQ-2 jersey” controversy we highlighted last week. The reverberations from goalie James Reimer declining to wear a San Jose Sharks rainbow jersey have continued all week.
It seems to have escaped many people’s tolerance that refusing to march in a parade does not mean you hate the people in the parade. It is to say that you have a different opinion. One your employer can’t compel you to abandon. An opinion guaranteed to you by generations of free speech and religious freedom.
It is why we have halal and kosher foods. Live and let live. But the hysteria is not stopping with Reimer. The radical blood hounds have tracked down new targets to mount on their gibbet of 100 percent conformity to Woke causes.
The latest NHLers caught up in this fundamental failure to communicate are the Staal brothers in Florida who followed Reimer’s path to say that they haven’t and won’t wear symbols with which they disagree. Immediately the SJW sports media attacked them. When they said they wouldn’t Pride jerseys it was shown by the gotchas ‘ that they had worn subtle LGBTQ jerseys in the past. As if this makes them hypocrites.
My friend Mark Hebscher asked if the NHL should suspend them. Really? What would Mark say if Edmonton’s Zach Hyman, a Jew, declined to wear Muslim symbols on an Islamic Pride night? Would Mark demand Hyman be suspended?
What would he say if secular players in the league declined to wear the cross on their jersey for a Christian appreciation night? Should they be punished as haters? What if a pro sports team has a Mormon appreciation night. Does refusing to wear an LDS badge make people haters?
Of course these examples are moot. There are no progressive DEI laurels for creating political trip wires over Muslims or secularists to advance Woke influence. The only targets that matter here are conservative whites. Sports teams these days would only entertain the most provocative causes to create “a crisis that shouldn’t go to waste” (in the words of Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals).
So Brian Burke was imported by Rogers Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday to further whip the herd into 100-percent compliance on Pride jerseys— and to push Rogers corporate bonafides as a Woke organization. Burke has become a fervent LGBTQ-2 spokesman since his son Brendan came out (and was tragically killed in a car crash). Good on him as a parent.
But he’s also a high-profile NHL figure, who was, in a major way, responsible for perpetuating the “boys-only” culture in the sport when he handled NHL discipline. He was his usual truculent self on HNIC as he conflated free speech with prejudice. He saw no room for tolerance on anything but the Pride agenda, insisting against all evidence that wearing the Pride jersey isn’t a political statement. “I was born and raised a Catholic, I don’t see any conflict between my religious beliefs and my ability to say to the LGBTQ+ community ‘you’re welcome here.”
That’s not what he’s saying, but play along. Host Ron Maclean— with whom we have had our disagreements in the past— did his job, gamely asking why wasn’t there a middle ground between hating and enforced 100 percent compliance to the cause? Burke shooed him away.
Naturally, radical social-media trolls pounced, asking for Maclean’s scalp for doing his job. There can be no exceptions! Reason is not a long suit for these Maoist shills. They want to be in Pol Pot’s Cambodia while their fellow citizens would prefer to remain in what used to be Canada before Justin Trudeau turned it into a postmodern state that stands for everything— and nothing.
The point that needs debate on HNIC is whether a few rich hockey players, who make so much money that they don’t have to give a flip, are going to make the league more inclusive by wearing a Pride jersey for one night. Likely not.
As we’ve contended over decades, the key to acceptance of gays in hockey will be the coming-out of a prominent NHL star(s). They are out there. It wasn’t high rhetoric from Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey that changed the colour line in baseball. It was Jackie Robinson’s forbearance. It wasn’t slogans that slowly changed the skin colour of golf. It was Tiger Woods’ utter dominance.
It was also the hyper-macho world that Brian Burke nurtured through the years before his son came out — not colourful jerseys— that has repressed gay participation in the NHL. The weeding-out of gay youth in the development process comes from the grass roots. (To his credit a penitent Burke now owns some of this.)
While it is commendable that Burke now supports his son’s memory, flailing Christians for refusing to wear Pride jerseys is not the way to achieve understanding. Worshipping symbols is a divisive, not a unifying action that plays into the hands of forces Burke clearly does not acknowledge or understand. Radicals who use terms like white settler and cis-gender-entitlement to baffle the vulnerable. And who will discard him when he’s no longer of use to them.
Those would be the people who applaud the current PM and his caucus for having equal numbers of women in their ranks— the same PM who fired his prominent female/ indigenous justice minister for insubordination when the RCMP dug too deep. And the same “feminist” women MPs who stood by silently as Trudeau publicly destroyed one of their own to save himself from RCMP scrutiny. Those are the cowards who back the destruction of free speech.
Churchill was prescient about appeasing today’s virtue warriors when he long ago said that appeasers “are like people who feed the crocodile in hopes that the crocodile eats them last.” Chomp.Chomp. Their day is coming.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Hockey Tolerance Is A Two-Way Street, Not A One-Way Road
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