Twittered and Thai-ed
Mark MacKinnon's milestone article The Twitter War (May 22) made me realize that the two fundamental battle calls have been changed irrevocably. They are now "Charge!" and "Re-Tweet!"
Julie Hughes, Ottawa
Stopping infant mortality
Re Why Are Our Babies Dying? (Front Page, May 22). Canada's infant mortality rates are not only high, but also embarrassing and unacceptable.
Identification of vulnerable groups is essential in designing targeted and effective interventions. Aboriginal communities have significantly contributed in skewing these rates, and as such any intervention strategy that is not targeted to them specifically is bound to fail.
We need to concentrate our efforts on improving the quality of life in our aboriginal communities, and the statistics around infant mortality rates are a wake-up call.
Bongs Lainjo, Montreal
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Canada has maternity-care models that are cost effective and successful in reducing infant mortality. One such place is the Maternity Centre of Hamilton, which has delivered more than 3,500 babies since 2001. The need in Hamilton is great with approximately 25 per cent child poverty, high unemployment and above-average rates of teen pregnancy.
One woman, eight weeks pregnant, on cocaine, thin and living on the street, presented to us. Her first child had been delivered at approximately 24 weeks and was in the neo-natal intensive care unit for five weeks before dying: terrible for the mother and expensive for the "system."
This time, the team - nurse practitioners, social workers, family doctors and public health workers - spent the necessary time to get her off cocaine, into temporary housing and onto a healthier diet. The outcome? A drug-free healthy baby, born at 37 weeks, a healthier mother and less cost to the system.
We have many of the answers in Canada already. Neither are high tech nor terribly expensive. But we require a commitment to work together to provide the appropriate care to those most in need. A national program, informed by local needs, is crucial to saving our babies and mothers.
David Price, Chief, Department of Family Medicine, Hamilton Health Sciences, Hamilton, Ont.
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I read this quote with interest: "'We're losing our reputation,' said André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada. 'We have fallen way behind.'"
I would have thought losing our babies was the issue, not losing our reputation.
Deborah Allan, Toronto
We Sherwood agree
Margaret Wente's whimsical look at the Robin Hood story (The True Meaning of Robin Hood - May 22) leaves out one obvious fact. No matter what story or myth one believes about them, Robin Hood and his "merrie men" were a medieval organized-crime gang. As Mel Brooks once said in a comedy routine, "Who knew if they robbed from the rich and gave to the poor after they hit you over the head so hard and took your money?"
Many well known organized crime groups got their start by helping little people against state-sponsored oppression - the mafia in Italy and the triads in China, to name just two. Now look what they have evolved into.
James Dubro, Toronto
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It's true that women don't figure much in the Robin Hood ballads. In the oldest and most complex of them, "A Gest of Robyn Hode" (which some scholars date from the fifteenth century), the only woman is tacked on artlessly at the end, to lure the outlaw prince to his death.
Robin and his band grew as folk heroes because the rule of law had become so corrupted by the late feudal establishment; snubbing them both seemed a reasonable, revolutionary act. The band's characterization as "outlaws" was not a romantic (or merry) inflation of "scofflaws," but a formal act by oppressive, classist authority: It meant, as the Norman term hors la loi makes clear, the men were literally outside the law's protection. The citizenry could kill them on sight with impunity.
For this reason, as U.S. lawyer Charles Rembar noted, "The merry men of Robin Hood could not have frequently been merry" - presumably whether or not they ever moved from "homosocial" to homosexual.
Jeffrey Miller, Toronto
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Margaret Wente harrumphed recently about the sad state of universities, what with humanities professors wasting their time on research, the benefit of which is "often remarkably obscure" (Universities Are Sitting Ducks For Reform, April 13). This English professor was thus heartened to read her perceptive piece on Robin Hood based on research by - you guessed it - two literary critics.
Kate Lawson, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont.
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Margaret Wente writes that the current cinematic iteration of Robin Hood is a waste of money. This is doubtless true for those who have great expectations of yet another fantasy romp through jolly Sherwood Forest.
But the creators of this film decided on a time-machine approach: We are transported back to a world which is arguably a realistic reflection of the times: nasty, British and short. This is effective film-making.
Frederick Sweet, Toronto
Accountability goes on smooth
Re Accountability (MPs Invite Suspicion and On Guard, Guardians! - May 22). How about proportionality too?
There is one reason MPs have blocked Auditor-General Sheila Fraser: They all have some little thing in the basket of expenses they have charged that would be difficult to defend, and the likes of The Globe and Mail will be relentless in pursuit. The public may lose good representatives over small issues.
Your editorial board questions André Marin's fitness for office over a large screen television, some deodorant and body wash in five years of expenses. Frankly he can't justify the toiletries; on the TV, he probably can.
Mr. Marin may have made an error in judgment, but he has held the government to account on major issues involving huge amounts of money. Yet you suggest he is unfit and devote considerable space to the topic of expenses that sound worse than they are.
With a more rational approach, we would catch the real abusers, improve the rules for everyone, and that would be that. Unfortunately the word proportionality isn't something many in the press understand.
Paul N. Hornsby, Toronto
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Ontario has the "Sunshine List," publishing salaries of public officials making over $100,000 a year. May I also propose a "Sunshine Lottery."
All senior officials paid by public money would be identified and every year, 5 per cent of them would be chosen randomly to have their previous year's expenses fully published.
The risk of disclosure of itemized expenses should make these leaders reflect carefully, and I believe reduce what gets expensed.
Jack McKeown, Cobourg, Ont.
Still biased after all these years
The absence of women for the Excellence Chairs may well relate to the topics selected (All-Male Roster In Academic Star Search 'Shocks' Clement - front page, May 20). However, studies show that work attributed to a man is rated more highly by both men and woman than the same work attributed to a woman.
While much progress has been made, and some women have managed to break through the "glass ceiling," gender bias and discrimination is still a problem in academia.
Until this is acknowledged, the contribution of women academics to solving world problems will continue to be thwarted.
Annalee Yassi, Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Capacity Building, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Bored at the borderline
The perversity of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's priorities in deciding to rebuild the little-used Morses Line Port facility (Standoff At The Border As Family Farm Stares Down U.S. Homeland Security - front page, May 22) is put into even sharper relief by the fact that, according to the Winnipeg Free Press (May 22), by midday Friday of this Victoria Day weekend "there were already waits of up to 45 minutes long in the passenger vehicle lanes at the Pembina-U.S. border crossing."
Rod Yellon, Winnipeg
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Back in the 1950s we used to travel through Morses Line frequently from our farm near Bedford on the Quebec side of the border to shop in nearby Vermont.
As a young boy, I can remember stopping one evening on a return trip to read the sign posted on the door of the Canadian Customs building. "Please report at house next door," it read, the house being the home of the customs agent, a man my father knew well.
"Oh, it's pretty late," said my father, " we won't wake Albert up."
And we drove on through and back home again.
Ron McIntosh, Bracebridge, Ont.