Dear Editor:
I am writing in response to a letter from Aubrey G. White, published in the Jan. 13 edition of the Osoyoos Times.
Mr. White signed himself as “vice-president, Osoyoos Wildlife Federation,” a group of armed men who like to kill wildlife, I think.
His letter is presented as a warning about “special interests” that are trying to foist a national park on the region in which he and fellow hunters enjoy their activity.
In fact, in his letter he inveighs against “special interests” five times. He never names them, but tried to use the term as a scare tactic.
The “special interests,” he says, are going to “come knocking at your door” to make you “give up your rights.”
Scary, eh?
He says that the people who support a national park (i.e. the majority of people in this area) are like Donald Trump, even though Trump’s politics are just the opposite of those who want the park.
Trump is in favour of high buildings with his name at the top, not public preservation of threatened nature.
Door-knockers are not the only fear, though. Marching drummers are another.
“In my view,” writes Mr. White, “a national park reserve will protect wilderness and wildlife, but will do it while marching to their own drummer.” To whom “their” refers remains a puzzle.
Actually, the only special interests he mentions are the hunters who enjoy walking around the area with guns or other weapons in their hands.
I know that I don’t want to see them marching or hear them at my door.
At the end of his letter, Mr. White promises to listen to our “rational argument as I hope you are listening to mine.”
Unfortunately I can find no rational argument in his letter, but only scare tactics and vagueness and allegations made without evidence or examples.
He says, for example, that “input” from local people is ignored in federal parks.
However, you should not be surprised to know that “settlement services in the Bow Valley – a program through the Town of Banff, in partnership with the Town of Canmore, Canadian Rockies Public Schools and Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy – is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. All services are free and confidential.”
Or maybe Mr. White thinks that all those outfits have “special interests.”
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak about this very important issue.
George Bowering
Vancouver, B.C.
Editor’s Note: George Bowering was raised in the Town of Oliver and his father was a longtime teacher at the local high school. Mr. Bowering was named Canada’s first parliamentary poet laureate a decade ago and he is one of Canada’s most prolific authors, as he has published more than 100 works of fiction and non-fiction and books of poetry. Since suffering a near fatal heart attack earlier this year, Mr. Bowering has managed to publish four new books.
