Letters_11-20

Back to HomeLetters - May 19, 2011Letters: May 19

Re: By-law Officer Suspects Chickens may be Pigs, Robert Lovelace

Re: Ompah Library Closure, June Lovesey

Re: Ompa Library Closure, Peter Bunnett

Re: Harper vs Gadafi, Brent Cameron

Nuclear Elephant, John Kittle

Re: By-law Officer Suspects Chickens may be Pigs(SF Council, Frontenac News, May 5/11)

I appreciated Wilma Kenny’s news from South Frontenac Council last week. What more important issues could there be but raising food and creating laws that regulate the lives of chickens. After all, many of your readers get up every morning to a breakfast of wholesome eggs.

On Friday morning I took the newspaper out to my six chickens to see what they thought about South Frontenac’s discussions. They first wanted to know just what it was that a planning coordinator did for scratch. They were also a little perplexed about the idea of holding a council to make your mind up about such an indispensable thing as food. They were baffled why some humans would hold it against their neighbors for having less land to sustain themselves. But when I read them the part about a by-law defining what a hen was they began to laugh out loud. One smart aleck shouted out, “What do they think this is, the Indian Act?” Another boasted that if someone wanted to consider her domesticated, they had better take down the wire and see just what happens to those nice tender victuals in the garden.

I must say that instead of putting up much of an argument about the disposal of dead chickens, I was pretty hush-hush. After all, we disposed of 15 dead chickens and a rooster this winter. First we put them in the freezer and later, one by one, we cooked and ate them. I just wasn’t ready to go over that again with them.

On a lighter note, my chickens wanted to know if Council had discussed roosters. As far as they were concerned roosters were only good for one thing, generally ill tempered, too loud, ate too much and wanted too much attention. They wanted to know if there were any roosters (men) on council. When I said I thought the council was all men (roosters), they wanted to know why then were they discussing hens. One really bright hen perked up and exclaimed, “They may have eaten an egg but they seldom ever cook one”. The quiet hen who usually doesn’t say much commented dryly, “I’ll bet none of them has ever hatched one either.”

They got serious and asked me to read on. I knew that this next part would meet with severe ridicule so I cleared my throat and read in a steady voice, “No hen shall become a public nuisance through persistent clucking”. Again uproarious laughter. “I guess the old roosters have never laid one either,” was the chorus accompanied by defiant and sustained clucking. And, I began again, “No hen shall be permitted to be at large in the community.” There was silence. Their sometimes tragic eyes looked this way and that. They looked down self-consciously at those yellow feet with unkempt nails. They examined each other’s rough complexions after a long, cold winter. And then the giggling started. Finally one of the smarter chickens said, “We want our rights. We want to be able to travel on the bus like those chickens you see in Ecuador, you know, where humans really do know something about how to raise food and feed themselves.”

Robert Lovelace

Re: Ompah Library Closure

The Library Board's plan to close our little Ompah branch is completely unfair. Apparently we don't count because our community is small. But that's not right.

We shouldn't be put in this position. We've had a perfectly good library here in Ompah, and we've always made good use of it. It's small, but it meets our needs. We don't need anything big and fancy, just the basic services close by. The additional mileage to go to Plevna isn't easy for many of us who have limited mobility and fixed incomes.

Ompah seems to be the place they can just cross off their lists for services. We pay our taxes here the same as anyone else, and it's not cheap. Yet we're the last to get things we need, and the first to lose what we've got. Just because we're small. I hear a lot of people saying the same thing - they are fed up. And not only in Ompah - other small places are facing the same kind of unfairness. If we don't fight this Library closure, what will be the next thing to go?

June Lovesey

Re: Ompah Library Closure

I love our community’s library. To hear about a book on the CBC, and a week later be able to pick it up nearby at our library is a thrill. Our township and our citizens have stated their support for our local branch, yet the Kingston Frontenac Library Board wants to close it later this month. The decision doesn't even save money, since the staff hours are just transferred to another branch and the township provides space and utilities rent-free. To the people here who actually use the Ompah library, the chief librarian's talk about "minimum standards "and "master plans" is meaningless, and wrong-headed. None of it justifies taking away our library service and one of my favourite meeting places.

Peter Bunnett

Re: Harper vs Gadafi

I read, with some amusement, the recent letter (Letters, Frontenac News, May 12/11) by Helen Gomez. She is clearly upset at the result of the May election, both locally and nationally. In her mind, she cannot fathom why Canadians made the choice they did. She then goes on to compare Stephen Harper to a couple of Arab autocrats who, in no specific order, engaged in such behaviour as physically torturing, mutilating and killing their political opponents as well as financing the work of people who regale in blowing up 747s over the Scottish lochs.

May I venture to guess that the reason that Ms. Gomez and her ilk have been so unsuccessful in their campaign is precisely because they engage in hyperbolic rhetoric that is detached from reality? Like or dislike Stephen Harper and Scott Reid if you want, but does any rational person believe that there is a moral equivalency between policies of the Conservative government and the acts of crazed dictators who machine-gun crowds of protestors, or sadistically torture dissenters by applying battery jumper cables to undisclosed areas? If Ms. Gomez does not know the difference between Gaddafi and Harper, then one wonders what her grasp on the issues of the day is.

Then again, her party leader didn’t know the difference between a massage clinic and a “rub n’ tug”, so this knowledge gap is hardly surprising.

For the record, Ms. Gomez, Harper is the quiet one who plays the piano with his kids, while Gaddafi is the whackjob who dresses like Michael Jackson and drops explosives on his own citizens.

Brent Cameron

The nuclear “Elephant in the Room”

Reacting to horrifying scenes of severely damaged Fukushima nuclear plants leaking dangerous radioactive materials into the environment and food chain of Japan, Canadian authorities and the nuclear industry have assured us that this will NOT happen in Canada. Our nuclear plants are not built in major earthquake zones, or in tsunami areas.

But, what worries me is not an earthquake or tsunami. In Fukushima, these were not the root cause of the failure. The root cause was a power failure! Both primary and backup power failed due to an unfortunate combination of events not anticipated by the engineers. Critical cooling systems shut down, resulting in core meltdowns and potentially catastrophic overheating of hundreds of “spent” nuclear fuel rods stored in pools located close to the reactors. Where do you think the spent fuel rods are stored in Canadian reactors in Darlington and other North American nuclear power plants … in pools close to the reactors!

Could this scenario happen in Canada? Damn right! Remember the major blackout in August 2003? Next time, what if our power grid goes down for weeks or months? With the grid down, each nuclear reactor will be on its own and will have only onsite backup power to run its cooling systems. How long can generators keep critical cooling systems up and running? How long will it take for our nuclear cores and spent fuel rods to melt down, just like Fukushima and Chernobyl? The North American power grid is the “elephant in the room” that the nuclear industry doesn’t want you to think about.

There are scores of nuclear plants all over North America, most located close to large population centers, exposing tens of millions of people to a potentially catastrophic threat!

Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have forcefully underlined the fact that nuclear power is unpredictable and dangerous. We should not build more nuclear plants, or add to existing ones. Furthermore, nuclear power is not a clean energy source as the industry claims. It may be low-carbon, but radioactive contamination is a much more serious problem, not just from deadly materials in nuclear cores and storage pools, but also from the mining and processing of uranium and other radioactive ores to fuel the reactors.

Adding insult to injury, nuclear power is also very expensive and a long way from being cost-effective. The industry has never been able to attract private sector investment because of its terrible track record of being late, over budget and unreliable. So, it only exists because it is subsidized by billions of taxpayer dollars.

My request is simple - don’t pour any more money into the nuclear black hole. Spend only what is required to make our existing nuclear plants safe (to the extent this is possible) until they can be phased out and replaced. In future, redirect the taxes thus freed up into energy conservation and clean, safe, cost-effective energy sources like natural gas, clean coal technology and renewable energy. Imagine what could be achieved with billions of dollars!

John Kittle