Letters to the editor: ‘Go up to the lookout on Mont Royal, visit Jean-Talon Market when it’s packed with weekend shoppers; stroll along the waterfront in Old Montreal.’ Canadian travel tips, plus other letters to the editor for July 23

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Not because it appears

Re Parents, Minor-league Associations Question Transparency Of Hockey Canada’s Equity Fund (July 21): So Hockey Canada has a “Nationwide Fairness Fund.” Fairness for whom? Oh, the irony.

Heather MacAndrew Victoria

Medical consideration

Re Crises Collide (Letters, July 16): A letter-writer and his spouse, each of whom follow household drugs in Toronto, ought to contemplate shifting to Peterborough.

They may work as a lot as they need and personal a brand new three-bedroom house for significantly lower than a comparable house would price in Toronto, and with cottage nation proper subsequent door.

Michael Doran Peterborough, Ont.

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Re Situation Critical (July 16): What is occurring in Canada’s emergency rooms is a results of decades-long neglect of emergency well being care. There was inflexible adherence to the mythology that crowded ERs are a results of sufferers with non-urgent points who needs to be redirected to primary-care settings.

Protected hospitals are outlined as ones with 85-per-cent occupancy, which permits speedy transfers of ER sufferers to the wards. Canadian hospitals have one of many lowest charges of mattress availability within the industrialized world, and haven’t seen protected ranges for the reason that finish of the final century. Hospitals routinely attempt to cope, and fail, with over 100-per-cent occupancy.

Crowded hospitals result in crowded ERs, with analysis linking these situations to poor affected person outcomes together with preventable demise. With the intention to get out of this mess and its attendant risks, governments ought to understand that staffed hospital beds are vital, and capacities needs to be restored to protected ranges.

Alan Drummond MD; co-chair, public affairs, Canadian Affiliation of Emergency Physicians Ottawa

Not altogether

Re The World Needs Canadian Energy (Opinion, July 16): I’d be one who stands with nearly all of these surveyed by Globe and Mail pollster Nik Nanos. His summation is clear to me: We are going to go nowhere as an power superpower till “the basics are mounted” with co-operation between the federal authorities and the premiers.

However given Quebec’s intolerance for Western oil, regardless of receiving a big portion of its provide from the West, along with varied curiosity teams resolutely opposed elsewhere throughout Canada, such an final result appears unlikely.

John Nightingale Ottawa

Thoughts the hole

Re The Safety Gap In North American Cars (Editorial, July 16): Whereas modifications in design might make automobiles safer for pedestrians, I believe the true security hole is behind the wheel.

Drivers rising depend on expertise to make driving their mechanical beasts less complicated and safer for them alone, to allow them to flip consideration to actually necessary issues in life comparable to texting. I’d really feel safer on a racetrack than on multilane highways; on the observe, everybody is considering driving and nothing else.

Fashionable site visitors enforcement with cameras don’t impose efficient penalties on those that discover the fines paltry. Absent demerit factors and elevated insurance coverage premiums, the wealthy will doubtless proceed to flout legal guidelines designed to make our roads safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.

Richard Austin Toronto

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The trouble to have car design evoke “an enormous fist shifting by the air” is a telling perception into what motivates firms comparable to Normal Motors. The quote gave me déjà vu, having just lately reread Excessive and Mighty: SUVs – The World’s Most Harmful Automobiles and How They Obtained That Means by journalist Keith Bradsher.

Printed 20 years in the past, the guide describes in chilling element how, in 1994, auto executives intentionally designed the Dodge Ram truck to “look as massive and menacing as a Mack truck.” Gross sales have been so good that Ford and GM determined to enter the full-size SUV market with automobiles such because the Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, Chevrolet Suburban and GMC Yukon XL, all constructed on truck chassis. The Dodge Durango’s entrance finish was designed to “resemble the face of a savage jungle cat … vertical bars throughout the grille signify tooth.”

Plus ça change.

Glenn Miller Toronto

Hear in

Re Its Latest N-word Controversy Proves Two Solitudes Endure At CBC/Radio-Canada (July 21): Columnist Konrad Yakabuski is to be thanked for highlighting the strain between reasonable progressives and their doctrinaire fellows within the CBC.

The ascendancy of the latter group has succeeded solely in rendering huge swaths of programming on CBC Radio (to call however one arm of the company) nearly unlistenable to me. Maybe a precipitous drop in listenership will behoove the mandarins to degree their collective head and honour journalistic freedom and integrity.

Andrew Milner Peterborough, Ont.

Like an area

Re City Confidential (Arts & Pursuits, July 16): How about advising that guests to Montreal spend an hour on the Tam-Tams on a scorching Sunday afternoon?

Or go as much as the lookout on Mont Royal; go to Jean-Talon Market when it’s filled with weekend customers; stroll alongside the waterfront in Outdated Montreal; savour a gelato at Pile ou Glace in Little Italy; hire a Bixi bike and journey alongside the canal or riverfront; eat a “particular” at Wilensky’s or a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz’s or Fundamental Deli?

Ours is a culture-rich metropolis the place a transit go brings riders to delights that one can not discover in different places. All a customer has to do is look misplaced and ask a passerby for directions.

Jack and Judith Kornblatt Montreal

A present

Re Author Made Sure The World Never Forgot Auschwitz’s Horrors (Obituary, July 16): Max Eisen spoke at a writers workshop I attended in 2016. We have been all bearing witness to our personal tales.

However Mr. Eisen’s story of surviving the Holocaust was past our imagining. He was a gifted speaker who may deliver any viewers to tears due to his decency, grace and humanity. I treasure my copy of his autobiography, By Likelihood Alone: A Outstanding True Story of Braveness and Survival at Auschwitz, my identify written in his hand.

Whereas his survival might have been by likelihood, it was a present for the lives that he touched.

John Sudlow Oakville, Ont.

Different manner round

Re Watch This Space (Opinion, July 16): I believe it’s just a little misguided to say that the brand new photographs from the James Webb House Telescope “present us the facility and great thing about science.”

They present us how sensible, by science, we people have turn out to be. The ability and wonder that science reveals us are these of the universe.

Frank Burgess Edmonton

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