Letters to the editor, May 31: ‘We are overdue for our … governments to collaborate and rapidly address this ever-growing fentanyl plague'

Globe and Mail

a day ago

Re 'How fentanyl transformed Victoria's Pandora Avenue from downtown hub to open-air drug market' (May 24): As someone who observes the chaos on Victoria's Pandora block almost daily, I am grateful you have given national exposure to our civic crisis.
Perhaps because we have so many governmental and charitable organizations trying to address the problem, we seem incapable of even describing it holistically in the way your reporter has, let alone pulling together to solve it. I find it ironic, because British Columbia is good at deploying the Incident Command System when it comes to co-ordinating a response to natural disasters.
The time has come to take charge of our drug calamity in a similar, localized fashion.
Rory McAlpine Victoria
Tragically, the deterioration of downtown Victoria owing to fentanyl can aptly describe many cities in North America today.
As a resident of Calgary's East Village who overlooks the Calgary Drop-In Centre, I witness firsthand the similar deterioration of a planned community of condominiums, parks and the stunning RiverWalk.
The main grocery store is now supervised by staff wearing body cameras. I see sidewalks riddled with human urine, feces, used needles and users smoking drugs.
The solution may be a return to provincially run institutions such as Riverview Hospital in British Columbia, deemed inhumane and deinstitutionalized in favour of community-based mental health services. The old may become new again.
Current community services, touted as the solution, are often underfunded and understaffed and seem incapable of dealing with the fentanyl onslaught and its users. We are overdue for our municipal, provincial and federal governments to collaborate and rapidly address this ever-growing fentanyl plague.
Martin Wilkins Calgary
My memories of Victoria date back to the 1960s, when my family would visit from Nanaimo.
As a current resident of Victoria, I can still say it is a city of wonder, with its ocean vistas off Beacon Hill Park, the B.C. Parliament Buildings and, of course, the Empress hotel. But one doesn't have to travel far to witness the fentanyl crisis: the contorted bodies trying to stay upright or the lost souls passed out on storefronts, for some of whom I've beckoned the help of our bicycle-riding medics.
My hope is that all levels of government will come together and find a solution to get those who need our help off the streets and into treatment. Only then may they find the dignity we all deserve.
Unless that happens, living in a city seemingly more focused on bike lanes makes me think of a slippery slope with no return.
Andrew Waldichuk Victoria
Re 'What is happening to higher education in the U.S. right now is not reform. It is destruction' (Opinion, May 24): I believe these institutions also undermined their own defences from within.
Long before the current political assaults, many campuses began punishing unpopular speech and sanctioning faculty under vague codes of 'harm.' By stifling internal dissent, often without due process, these universities eroded their credibility and validated the critics now calling them ideological echo chambers.
This hypocrisy makes academic freedom harder to defend. To credibly resist external attacks, these universities should first recommit to open inquiry and intellectual consistency.
They should get their own houses in order or risk defending the idea of a university, rather than the institution itself.
Kristen McLeod Regina
Re 'The men who left their mark on every corner of the brain' (Opinion, May 24): My father was suffering from a crippling spinal condition in 1949 that had rendered him almost unable to walk.
He was 34, with a wife and three children (including me) to support and another on the way. His doctor advised him to see William Cone at 'The Neuro' as his best bet in seeking a cure.
Dr. Cone took him as a patient. When my father asked if he could have a private room, the doctor replied, 'After paying me $3,500, I don't think you will be able to afford a private room.'
Despite this letdown, the operation was a success, and my father lived without back pain for the next 54 years. In our family, Dr. Cone was a god.
Fraser Laschinger Prescott, Ont.
I never met Dr. William Cone, but Dr. Wilder Penfield first came into my life when I was four years old, in 1929. He operated on my mother's brain cancer and gave her four more years of life.
Our families began a lasting friendship. When I was about 10, I spent a happy two weeks with the Penfield family at their summer home on Sargent's Bay off Lake Memphremagog.
Some time in the 1940s, Dr. Penfield was invited to open a facility in Cowansville, Que., designed to provide local artists with studios and exhibition space. He began his address by noting he was a good choice for the task. 'I'm good at opening things!'
Cowansville now has a lively art scene. The project Ruée vert l'art has a dozen artists' work displayed as banners on lampposts on streets leading to what I take to be the successor of the facility that Dr. Penfield opened.
Robert Stairs Peterborough, Ont.
I met Wilder Penfield several times at Rideau Hall where, in 1965, he was head of the newly created Vanier Institute of the Family.
During one of the doctor's visits, he fascinated a group of us with this anecdote: Before hiring a new doctor at the institute, he took them home for lunch with him and his wife, Helen. Her father and grandfather had both been doctors.
He had become keenly interested in a particular candidate. But try as he might, the lunch with Helen kept running into scheduling problems, so much so that he decided, just this once, to forgo it. The new doctor was hired.
Within months, the institute had been turned upside down by the newcomer, and, as Dr. Penfield lamented to us that day, he only had himself to blame.
R. Bruce Stock Former aide de camp to governor-general Georges Vanier; London, Ont.
Re 'To be tall is to be big – and to be big is a no-no for women of all sizes" (Opinion, May 24): My sister and I grew, much to our horror, to be 5 foot 10.
Relegated always to the back row in class pictures, I too dreamt of having a section of my legs removed.
When we were old enough to wear heels – our father insisted we always wear heels when dating – we learned to slouch and appear a couple of inches shorter.
Then along came my husband, a handsome 6 foot 2. Together we raised three boys who topped out at 6 foot 5, 6 foot 4 and 6 foot 3.
They make me feel small, and I love it.
Judi Conacher Toronto
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