Email your letters to: letters@pentictonherald.ca

Don’t use our home as a garbage dump

Dear editor:

Plastic bags, plastic cups, straws, vinyl floaties, flip flops, styrofoam coolers, entire bags of household garbage, most recently an entire bag of toilet paper unleashed along Highway 97.

It’s appalling the amount of trash left on our roads from the college along the Channel Parkway through to Highway 97 south as far as Okanagan Falls. I drive this route every morning. I'm Just so saddened that with all the important messages about recycling and plastics people still feel the need to dispose of their garbage along our roadways.

I mean, don't you come here for the beautiful valley that it is? I ask you then why leave it in a worse shape than when you arrived?

We have plenty of beautifully created garbage bins that include displays of our gorgeous valley, most complete with compactors and a space to return recyclables.

I lived abroad for many years in Central London, a city that does not even have garbage bins from a history of northern political chaos, and yet the tourists remain well-behaved by taking their garbage home to dispose of properly. Where is the difference in respect for two equally beautiful cities halfway across the world from each other?

I would encourage you, if you’re reading this, to pass it along to our visitors.

Jillian Wellbelove


We’re not ready for national park traffic

Dear editor:

A national park reserve means inviting people, lots of people, onto what is now a quiet space. Economics is the main selling point being used: that figures.

Parks Canada with all its PR keeps us looking at the benefits to local economy, jobs and dollars and away from the realities in the mountains. An NPR means infrastructure, restrooms with septic systems and kiosks, new or upgraded roads and new trails to spread people around the area.

In fact, Parks Canada suggests that in only a few years of operation, an NPR could see a modest 77,000 visitors come through in a season. Consider that the Myra Canyon Trestles above Kelowna attract 300,000 visitors annually and do not have the advertising power or cache of a national park, and Parks Canada numbers seem improbably conservative.

One imagines what will happen to traffic on Highway 97 and development from Oliver south as the Town of Osoyoos advertises being the wine and National Park Mecca of Canada, as no doubt will happen.

The South Okanagan contains a very special and unique place filled with creatures that need, as we do, their own space to live, in privacy. At present, species at risk in those mountains enjoy very little human interference, especially in the Kilpoolah Lake area, which is accessed over a rough road.

Once we understand what truly is at stake up there, the questions become, how best to help the things at risk, and who is best suited for the job?

The cost of creating an NPR would easily pay the salaries of several full-time conservation officers on the ground throughout the area for years to come if nothing else was done.

Class A Provincial Park expansion would prevent development and the expansion of what is already there with more conservation officers on the ground, would give continued access to people, and protect the species at risk. The NCC and NTBC would be good, perhaps the better options as they are focused on the job of conservation, restoration and preservation rather than profits.

The message all of us should be focusing at our politicians is that our mountains must be protected from human intrusion as much as from ATVs and condominiums. The Burrowing Owl, the Lewis Woodpecker, the Lyalls’ Mariposa Lilly, the flat topped broomrape and a host of other intriguing species at risk deserve not our exploitation but rather our respect and critically, non-intrusion.

Lyle Smuin


No road hog ought to go unpunished

Dear editor:

Do only some people see the whole picture whereas others have an "anti-" agenda against cyclists?

Let's get real. Selfishness is the problem ultimately. Selfish automobile drivers speed, run yellow or red lights and drive recklessly around pedestrians and cyclists.

There are selfish pedestrians who jaywalk or hog the whole sidewalk while walking two or more side by side. Some hog the sidewalk with large strollers.

Cyclists? Yes, there are selfish cyclists too, such as those who race out of Safeway's back lane and across the street without stopping or yielding. 

Some cyclists hog or misuse the sidewalk, speed by pedestrians or other cyclists, some disobey the rule about travelling with the flow of traffic, not against it.

Courtesy is the responsibility of all properly raised children and adults, so why are there so many discourteous drivers, pedestrians and cyclists?

Were they all "raised by wolves," apologies to true wolves who cannot even speak never mind drive?

As a former driver and current pedestrian and cyclist, I say that it is time to stop pointing fingers through letters to the editor and, if necessary, holding accountable those who "spit" at the rules of courtesy whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or especially dangerous and selfish drivers.

Maybe it is time to photograph and report drivers, cyclists and pedestrians via the police, ICBC, and social media who ignore or flout safety and courtesy?

Patrick Longworth


Skaha Marina plan there for taking

Dear editor:

Peter Osborne has provided Penticton with a plan for Skaha Lake Park, particularly focused on the marina portion.

This plan is the result of thousands of hours of research, study, creative thought and systematic application of that work. It is available for all of us to see at the Marina building, currently from 10 a.m. to noon. All of city council, its relevant committees and staff are seriously remiss if they choose to ignore this outstanding effort.

I find the boat house to be the best part of that plan, and sincerely hope that it is adopted in its present form. It utilizes the footprint to maximum function, and represents a subtle aesthetic statement which fits well into the park's ultimate benefit.

I disagree with his concept of returning a portion of the foreshore to riparian usage, for several reasons.

While creating the expanded beach zone, vehicle/boat trailer parking is reduced, and replaced within an area to the east of the marina building. While this may indeed accommodate the goal of expanding beach front access to the public, it drastically forfeits precious green space which is already established at that east side location. 

The lawns, trees and creek-side growth provide valuable habitat for many indigenous species of wildlife, currently under

considerably aggressive attack from urban development. Perhaps equally important, there, a quiet ambiance is currently provided for those seeking a less harried park experience.

I consider the proposed loss of this area, as an exchange for the parking size reduction to be poor, simply from a cost-benefit perspective. The east side area is already established. Please leave it as it quietly stands.

Thanks, sincere thanks, to Peter Osborne for the tremendous effort he has generously given to all of us.

Barry Salaberry


Weight of world too much to bear

Dear editor:

I bet Charles Atlas could never support the weight of the world today on his shoulders.

Planet earth is simply overcrowded with humans and their self-made garbage.

There is no way to reverse the rotting wheel of life as mankind is in too much of a hurry to realize, creating his own demise on the


Tom Isherwood


Feud is definition of true insanity

 Dear editor:

It distresses me, as a Pacific War survivor, how we insist on repeating the mistakes of the past. The Pacific War was launched by the imposition of economic sanctions on Japan, effectively placing that country in a bind.

The objective of those sanctions was to alter Japan’s behaviour in China, where it was conducting a terrible war. The result of those sanctions was the launch on Dec. 7, 1941 of the Pacific War which ended after the death of millions and the use of the atomic weapon, while leaving China in a state of chaos.

In 1961, economic sanctions were applied to South Africa with the aim of stopping Apartheid policies. It resulted in a relentless drive for self sufficiency.

More recently, we have imposed sanctions on Iran to encourage that country to ditch its theocratic government, and now, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s relentless drive to make the sanctions bite, we are again hearing the accelerating beat of the war drums.

Economic sanctions are a cheap and therefore politically attractive way of satisfying domestic outrage in democracies by applying pressure on foreign countries seen to be misbehaving, and without incurring the cost in blood of armed intervention.

They are always applied in the hope of fomenting an uprising, bringing about regime change, and never reflect the reality within those countries.

Foreign aggression of whatever nature

always brings about a call to protect home and hearth, and in escalating steps, that reaction leads to a war that nobody in their right mind wants.

Boudewyn van Oort