Letters, May 26

Winnipeg Free Press

26-05-2025

Opinion
Outdated services
Re: When workers are only a tool for business (Think Tank, May 23).
Alex Passey completely missed the requirement for a business to exist. When the product or service of a business (private or public business, including the postal service) is no longer needed, the buying public votes with their dollars.
Letter delivery is rapidly decreasing (or has decreased) to the point the number of employees is no longer required on a daily basis.
Parcel delivery is very competitive — both on service and price. The post office must change with the times or close completely. According to the opinion of Passey (an admitted post office union employee), the manufacturers of the horse drawn buggy used before the advent of the automobile should still be employing their people to manufacture a product that is no longer needed.
Mick Bronstein
Winnipeg
On passivity
Re: What could go wrong, did (Think Tank, May 22)
Mac Horsburgh's Think Tank column about the criminal trial of five junior hockey players' on Canada's gold medal winning team outlines a hockey culture that must be changed — regardless of the outcome of the trial.
The players allegedly sexually assaulted a woman after an event celebrating their victory. Some of their teammates were present at times but weren't charged. Apparently they were passive observers.
Mr. Horsburgh asks what is the ethos of the hockey culture: 'Is it to do right or to maintain the code of silence?' The passive observers who don't testify or who 'can't remember' what happened have made their choice.
Contrast their conduct with that of another Canadian. On April 29 at a Filipino street festival in Vancouver, a man drove his SUV through the crowd killing 11 people and injuring many more. Some in the crowd tried to attack the perpetrator. Dudley Green, a bus driver who happened to be there, intervened at great risk to himself and prevented adding another tragedy to the one that had just occurred.
Green demonstrated courage in the face of the extreme (albeit understandable) anger of crowd members. Courage is characterized by bravery but most importantly, it arises from taking on a risk because of a concern for others. Mr. Green demonstrated concern for the well-being of the SUV driver. But he also demonstrated concern for crowd members who might otherwise have committed a crime they would likely regret later.
Where was the courage of the passive observers in the hockey players' case? Where was their concern for the woman? Or for their teammates hoping to have an NHL career? They knew or ought to have known that what was happening could go very wrong and spoken up.
Green said his mother's advice to him is that everybody has the ability to do the right thing at the right time. It's their choice whether or not to do it.
Green made the right choice. He is a true hero and role model and his conduct should be celebrated. People like Green make Canada a better place.
The passive observers who made the wrong choice will have to live with the shame and regret.
Robert Pruden
Winnipeg
Don't go under the dome
Re: Trump wants weapons in space (May 21)
The US$175-billion Golden Dome; such projects always costs several times more, and, as Raygun Reagan found with his Strategic Defence Initiative/SDI/Star Wars program, don't work. A missile shield that we Canadians are supposed to pay to hide under too, with the only country that has threatened to invade us? What's wrong with this picture?
U.S. President Donald Trump won't fund education, universal health care, research, infrastructure and protecting the environment that we all depend on. But he can squander trillions of dollars on tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy and the military and a permeable wall from the Pacific to the Gulf of America (sic and sick) and a Golden Dome, yet we who are not supposed to be buying American are suddenly able to afford the price of admission to this big top?
Perhaps first and foremost, and for free, we should read Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: a Scenario and John Vaillant's Fire Weather from the public library before following a certifiable madman down this latest rabbit hole of his early morning ramblings.
Will the International Criminal Court take on this latest threat to world peace? Or are we all as mad as he is?
Andy Maxwell
Winnipeg
Weapons in space are likely to be used, humans always use the weapons they create. The U.S., Russia, China and India are known to have researched and even tested anti-satellite weapons.
The consequence of a war in space would likely result in the Kessler syndrome becoming a fact. This prediction by Donald J. Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais, who first proposed it in 1978, would see so much space junk in orbit that future space exploration or even the launch of new satellites would be impossible. There are currently between 11,000 and 14,000 satellites in orbit. And many more are planned for the near future.
If a cascade of debris starts, the collateral damage would result in an inexhaustible blanket of projectiles in near-Earth orbit. Humankind would be locked out of space for many generations to come. But this likelihood undoubtedly counts for little in the mind of an orange-faced politician.
Hopefully it's just another of his unrealistic ideas.
Richard Lockhart
Winnipeg
The more things change
Re: 'No need for cruel approach' (Letters, May 21)
In her letter to the editor, Danae Tonge mentioned fertility control as a method for dealing with animals the city considers pests. It reminded me that in 1988, while touring Paris as a student, a guide told me that the city regularly spreads birth-control-infused feed at high-traffic pigeon areas.
One year later, walking into the University of Winnipeg, I saw a group of concerned people gathered around a pigeon flapping on the parking lot pavement in obvious pain and distress. I located a box, captured it, and called the humane society. When they picked up the pigeon, which would be euthanized, they said it had likely been poisoned by the city.
Flash forward 36 years, and, while countless other cities now use long-available humane solutions, Winnipeg is firmly lodged in the Neanderthal phase of its evolution. It would appear that no one with any power at city hall in the intervening decades has had the courage and empathy to help our city evolve into humanity and exist in harmony with other animals. It's an embarrassment.
Cheryl Moore
Winnipeg
Don't neglect potholes
I sure hope city council doesn't think that all the city's pot holes are fixed because they are not.
Wherever I drive in Winnipeg, I am still dodging and hitting pot holes. Just where are the city's pot hole-filling staff? When the weather is dry and hot and the pot holes are dry and not filled with water, city pot hole crews should be filling these holes in the pavement with a vengeance until they are all filled in.
Robert J. Moskal
Winnipeg