Big difference
Dear Republic:
This [The senate came to town, issue 106] is completely wrong. Pat Carney was an MP and a cabinet minister through all FTA business. She retired. Mulroney needed four senators more to pass GST and Carney was appointed a senator to pass the GST.
- anonymous
Change the system
Dear Republic:
I appreciated Rafe Mair's excellent article "the End of Free Speech" [Issue 108],with one caveat. Though it has often been referred to as such, the Globe and Mail is no more Toronto's paper than the Vancouver Sun is Vancouver's, or the Montreal Gazette belongs to that city. Of course these dailies have a certain local focus in their content, but they are owned and operated by vested interests whose agendas are certainly not determined by local politics or business lobbies.
Both the Vancouver Sun and the Montreal Gazette , for example, belong to subsidiaries of the Canwest Global entity which is based in Winnipeg. As for the G&M, it is part of the CTV/Globe Media unit, which is mostly under the Thompson family umbrella of holdings. Though that may soon change as Ted Rogers, Canada's "everything magnate," eyes that media empire as another business acquisition.
Simply put, all the major media work for Canada's "oligarchy," or power elite, and serve to advance their purposes of high level (read: government) influence-peddling and monetary concentration. As for solutions to this over-control of media, unimpeded by the federal government's watchdog, the CRTC, they aren't obvious. Nothing less than an overhaul of our entire political system is at stake. Basically what we need is a re-enfranchising of local governments, mainly at the municipal level, which respond to community needs foremost and not the will of corporations. How that is going to happen is anyone's guess.
- Charles Leduc, Vancouver BC
Oil was first drilled in Canada
Dear Republic:
Re: your issue 108 cover story "Full steam ahead for BC offshore oil drilling." As with documenting the invention of the telephone and compatriot, John Fessenden's pioneering of music and spoken word on radio, US historical sources too often lead researchers astray and obscure the role Canadians played in the development of scientific industry in North America and the world.
The first commercial oil well was sunk in 1858 in Southwestern Ontario's Oil Springs. The Rockefeller family—then based across Lake Erie in Ohio—moved in to dominate the plentiful source of axle grease and what became "coal oil" (kerosene). That's why Lambton County's Sarnia on the Great Lakes waterway developed as one of the largest petro-chemical production centers on Earth, beginning as an ESSO company town.
I think it's ironic that one of the most complete books of Canadian firsts was edited by Ralph Nader.
Let me suggest The Republic publish the story of how Canadian Thanksgiving evolved after beginning as a solemn memorial day for our troops sacrificed in South Africa and to commemorate British victory in the Boer War.
A century ago, King Edward VII chose the Anglican Church's Harvest Ritual (October's second Sunday) which was turned into a long weekend in the 1950s. Later the bellicose colonial overtones and the pompous association with England's state religion became a cultural embarrassment and was systematically ignored by government and educational authorities to the point where our holiday is now spuriously linked to the Puritans. (It's origin is why Canadian Turkey day is not a big deal in Quebec).
Ironically, the Puritans were trying to escape Anglican intolerance, the monarchy and other witchcraft. Try looking up Oil Springs and Petrolia Ontario on the web.
- Jason Logan, Vancouver BC
All caged up
Dear Republic:
Surely Canada and Mexico are not so tonto as to enclose themselves within the same cage as a wounded lion to enhance their security. Until the lion cures itself of its agression, rapacious appetites and extraterritorial hunting instincts, the best way for other species to remain safe is to stay away from enclosures and seek collective harmony with the rest of the animal world.
- Roger Barany, Vancouver BC
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