Loretta Anne Rogers (left) leaves the TD Centre with Martha Rogers after a meeting at Torys LLP, in Toronto, on Oct., 21, 2021.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
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Think of the children
Re The New Frontier Of Vaccine Hesitancy (Opinion, Oct. 23): We can apply what we’ve learned from adult vaccinations to the campaign to vaccinate kids. Clear, pro-active communication should be a must, as is outreach to specific communities. But also: Vaccine mandates work.
Scouts Canada has a vaccine requirement for all youths 12 and up, as well as for leaders and volunteers. Hopefully they will expand this to younger age groups as they become vaccine-eligible. I hope to see other organizations, from rec centres to sports leagues, bands and choirs, do the same.
Requiring vaccines for participation increases participant and community safety and sends a message about vaccine safety. It would also motivate parents who are on the fence, but want their kids to return to prepandemic activities.
Heather Ganshorn Calgary
In 1869, philosopher John Stuart Mill noted that when people can find no rational justification for a policy (such as denying votes to women), they then flash the trump card of “instinct.”
Columnist Robyn Urback refers to a parental instinct to prevent their children from receiving COVID-19 vaccines. As Mill writes, what some call “instinct” is a mere fiction.
Bruce Baugh Kamloops, B.C.
Media melee
Re The Rogers Rift: A Family Feud Worthy Of Game of Thrones (Oct. 25): So long infantilized by the tyrannical pricing practices of my shambolic internet provider, I watch with some trepidation as the Rogers family slugs it out in an acrimonious corporate divorce.
As a long-suffering subscriber, I wonder: Who will pick me up after school today and who gets me for the weekend?
Farley Helfant Toronto
Professors teaching governance principles in directors’ courses often refer to NIFO – noses in, fingers out – to describe the degree of oversight board members should exercise. But they don’t teach what to do when the chair moves to cut off his nose to spite his face.
Hopefully everyone involved in this sad saga can keep their nose clean and save face.
Éric Blais Toronto
Fingers pointed
Re Green Party To Call Off Legal Action Against Paul (Oct. 23): The Green Party’s financial pain is self-inflicted. I don’t think Annamie Paul lost the party national support in the election – the party executives did.
Heather MacIntosh Green Party of Canada member; former candidate, Calgary Confederation
Who pays?
Re Never Gonna Give You Up? (Letters, Oct. 20): A letter-writer believes that fossil fuels are the only affordable game in town – which seems to ignore that they are so because their costs are passed off to others.
The 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change calculated these costs to be more than $300 per tonne of carbon emissions, most of which is paid by the poor of the poorest countries.
The letter-writer is also enamoured of engineers who pursue efficiency and innovation. These engineers, though, have the privilege of dumping their garbage in our atmosphere for free, thus making their innovations seem efficient indeed.
So, as I read him, the well-off in Canada should continue to use fossil fuels while the rest of the world suffers the costs.
Margaret Brown Victoria
Housing solutions
Re Overpriced Housing Is A Job Killer (Editorial, Oct. 23): Although infill housing seems like an attractive concept, it would merely be treating a symptom rather than seeking a cure to Canada’s real estate bubble.
I would say the real reasons for sky-high housing prices are not based on supply and demand, but rather the fear of missing out, blind bidding and investors, both domestic and foreign. Despite vociferous opposition from industry associations, these issues should be addressed by the federal government.
This is the only way I see that we as a nation will find our way out of this crisis.
Page Graham Huntsville, Ont.
Forty years ago, a $3,000-per-month mortgage payment might get one a $250,000 house. Today, it will get a million-dollar home. But hardly anyone gets the cash value of their home sale: They have to put that money into their next home or pay off what they still owe.
This only changes late in life or at death. And that is where the real problem seems to lie: not in “affordability,” but in the enormous aggregate wealth accumulated by the fortunate one-third of households that have done well from rising home values.
Most of it is simply due to the location of neighbourhoods where homeowners (or their parents before them) happen to live.
Michael Poulton Halifax
Off-campus life
Re Kingston’s ‘Educated Idiots’ (Opinion, Oct. 23): Those of us who live in university cities, where disruptions associated with student street parties are annual occurrences, appreciate contributor Ken Cuthbertson’s observations and recommendations.
We might add that it should be time for “homecoming” to be banished from the English lexicon, and for all universities in Southern Ontario to take consistent action on making students accountable for irresponsible and illegal off-campus behaviour. It’s the least they can do.
Linda Davis The McElderry Community; Guelph, Ont.
I take comfort from my first taste of university life in Winnipeg, in 1952.
Freshie Parade day drew a crowd packed onto Portage Avenue, where a friend spotted me on the curb across the street. He shouted: ”Hey, Dave, where’s your old man work?”
I shouted back the popular answer: “My old man don’t work, he’s a cop.” Just then, I spotted the biggest and toughest looking police officer I had ever seen, standing directly behind me and doubled over with laughter.
I thought it best to flee, but as I started forward the big man caught me by the collar. “Wait for the green light.”
It was simpler times. We didn’t start a riot.
David Scott Toronto
Let’s dance
Re Winnipeg Jets Outslug Nashville Predators 6-4 On Home Ice (Online, Oct. 23): Two highly organized human activities I appreciate are ballet and hockey. What a surprise it was then to see a Jets-Predators photograph that immediately evokes both passions: four hockey cygnets linked by headlocks, imitating the linked cygnets of Swan Lake.
As George Costanza from Seinfeld would say in distress: “Worlds colliding!” But for me, it was pure pleasure.
Margaret Williamson Halifax
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com