It’s a dog-fight-dog world in fenced park
Re: “City installing security cameras in Britannia area park,” Feb. 18.
In the 12 years I have taken my dog to the Britannia Slopes area, I have never seen as many dog fights as I’ve observed in the last three months with the new fenced-off area for off-leash dogs.
What a recipe for disaster this has become. Too many dogs being forced into a small stockade has created problems galore. The winter ice that has built up in the corral creates significant danger for humans and dogs alike.
Eric Harvie would be livid if he could see the unsightly mess created through this land he donated to be open use for us all. What response do we get from Coun. Brian Pincott and Doug Marter, city manager for planning and development? Arrogance that defies belief!
Now we get more of Big Brother watching our every move. Smile, friends; you’re on Candid Camera.
John Thorson, Calgary
Clueless in Calgary
Re: “Councillor calls for freeze on public art program during economic slump,” Feb. 18.
If public art is not a necessity, then let’s save even more money by not teaching Shakespeare in school and banning music lessons. Let’s close the public library, too, because why should the city subsidize people who want to read?
If we got rid of all creative thought in society, then we could all be like Coun. Peter Demong — clueless.
Richard Bronstein, Calgary
Feeling blue over ring
I am in total agreement with Coun. Peter Demong about cancelling this type of art for underpasses. The blue ring near the airport is an eyesore, and the money spent on this ugly ring was atrocious. What it depicts is beyond me.
The money the city’s art program paid for this is disgusting and could have been spent on more important things than this meaningless object. We have done without decor on underpasses and roadsides. This is not on many taxpayers’ priority lists.
Joyce Conley, Calgary
Sugar overdose
Re: “Why sugar babies seeking sugar daddies is not good,” Margaret Somerville, Opinion, Feb. 18.
The biggest problem with these deals is one that has plagued such arrangements since the first one many centuries ago — humans rarely stick to contractual details when even the slightest whiff of emotion is involved.
There is the young woman who just wanted an old guy’s money, only to learn he perhaps did not have as much as she thought, and the price she had to pay to get that money (including his other women and the occasional slaps he administered to her face) was rather steep.
There’s the old man who thought he was paying for his sugar baby’s devotion, only to learn she did not find his bald spot and evening fatigue attractive, and that afternoon liaisons with men her own age were far more appealing.
Money is seldom free. And sugar cane is never sweet at both ends.
Mary Stanik, St. Paul, Minn.
Staying safe
Re: “Gay-straight alliances and Bill 10,” Feb. 9.
I just want to say how much I appreciate your paper presenting issues that really are a concern to me and other Calgarians.
I think it is very important to make sure that gay people feel and know that they are safe and not in anguish living in our society. Gays have enough issues they have to think through and safety should not be one of them.
Many gays, in their striving to understand themselves, become prized intellectual members of society because they dig deeper into why they are who they are. It is much better to help them than to turn gays into outcasts where they spiral into self-destruction and despair.
I am a Christian and Christians care.
Doug Ferguson, Calgary
Sierra Club blameless
Re: “Keystone’s academic critics misinformed about world of oil and pipelines,” Deborah Yedlin, Opinion, Feb. 20.
Deborah Yedlin suggests the Sierra Club should take responsibility for derailments of trains transporting oil. Is she willing to shoulder the blame for Enbridge’s massive 2010 pipeline spill in Michigan?
In 2010, a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. natural gas pipeline exploded in California, killing eight. In 2013, 52 died in China after a Sinopec pipeline ruptured. How does Yedlin sleep at night?
In Alberta, the list of pipeline spills grows longer by the year. Funny, we never hear pipeline boosters take the credit. Since when is the Sierra Club responsible for rail standards and track maintenance, personnel training, and governments’ failure to regulate?
It’s a fallacy that more pipelines means less rail transport. With the boost in oilsands production enabled by pipelines like Keystone, more oil will be shipped by both pipeline and rail, increasing the frequency of disasters on both fronts.
If Yedlin has a plan about how to reduce our carbon emissions while going full-steam ahead on oilsands development and export, let’s hear it. Locking in fossil-fuel use by investing billions in oilsands and pipeline infrastructure is not a solution.
Canada’s oil is not blood-soaked? Do the highly polluting production and combustion of fossil fuels have no impacts on public health? Does the proliferation of carcinogens downstream and downwind of the oilsands have no carcinogenic effects? What about all the dead birds and wildlife?
Geoffrey Pounder, Rocky Mountain House
Unsurprising
Re: “Speed-on-green cameras nab motorists going double the speed limit,” Feb. 18.
Your headline comes as no surprise to a professional driver. The speeds clocked at the SAIT intersection were sedate to the point of geezerism.
If you’re out on one of the trails in a delivery truck, it’ll be no more than 10 minutes before someone weaving from lane to lane passes you at twice the posted limit or more. Are they trying to outrun their paint job? Beat their text-message to its intended recipient? Suffering from the delusion that they’re on the Autobahn?
Guy Plecash, Calgary
Ditch the bylaw
As an 11-year-old child, I love going tobogganing in the winter, but I never imagined a bylaw for a common activity. On sunny weekends when there’s fresh snow, popular tobogganing hills are usually crowded with children and their parents.
Since there are only 18 hills we can sled on, those hills might just be more crowded. The bylaw is to keep people safe because of the number of crashes that have happened, but if many people still go tobogganing, hills will just be more crowded.
Another reason I don’t believe there should be this bylaw, is that tobogganing is part of the Canadian identity, just like hockey.
In Calgary, our chances of going outside and getting vitamin D are quite low because of the cold weather, but people still say to go outside as much as you can. Tobogganing is one of those cheaper sports you can do during the winter, but now with fewer hills, it is getting less convenient for people who live farther away from the hills.
I think council should reconsider this bylaw.
Lidia Liu, Calgary
Lidia Liu is a student at Foundations for the Future Charter Academy.
