Weekend Mailbag: April 24, 2021

By Letter to the Editor on April 24, 2021.

Weekend Mailbag is an online feature at the Medicine Hat News which includes letters to the editor that could not be fit into the paper in a timely fashion. Check out our website on Saturdays for more thoughts from the community, or share yours by submitting a letter to the editor by email at letters@medicinehatnews.com.

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Is the Royal Family racist?

Dear editor,

The question is being asked: Is the Royal Family racist?

To those who are asking this question I ask: did you see the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markel? Did you hear the black gospel choir singing at Windsor Castle? Did you listen to the sermon delivered by a black Episcopal bishop from the USA in St. George’s Chapel? Was that a wedding organized by a racist family? I don’t think so.

Apparently someone in royal circles asked about the possible colour of Meghan and Harry’s expected royal offspring. Have you been a member of a family expecting a new baby? Will his eyes be blue or brown? Will she have her mother’s button nose or her father’s aquiline nose? Will his hair be straight or curly? Will the royal child be as light a brown as his mixed race mother or as fair as his very red-haired father? Give me a break, Meghan and Harry.

And if you were so devastated by a life lived in such a public environment, why did you go on Oprah Winfrey’s show and open the whole situation to further curiosity and comment? Was the world not paying you enough attention, Meghan and Harry? Had you slipped off the radar? Are you happier now? Is your royal son any better off with all of this publicity? Meghan, you are a well respected and well paid actor. You are a beautiful woman who can move in any circle anywhere on this planet. If you didn’t want to live in the royal fish bowl and sought to strike your own course in North America free from royal duties so be it. Harry, you took your leave from all of that with the blessing of your grandmother (the Queen), your father (the Prince of Wales) and your brother and sister-in-law (the future king and queen). Now you are spewing negative and unfounded criticisms trying to regain the spotlight. Start to behave like a real couple, part of a real family in the real world.

Bill Cocks

Medicine Hat

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Keep those eyes on the road

Dear editor,

I often observe parked vehicles idling for many minutes, even in warm weather. Sometimes I’ll also see the exhaust spewed by a vanity vehicle, a metallic beast with the signature superfluously very large body and wheels that don’t at all appear used for work or family transport.Â

They’re the same gratuitously tall monsters that when parked roadside hazardously block the view of short-car operators turning or crossing through stop-signed intersections; and they look as though they might get about 25 gallons to the mile.Â

Inside each is the operator, typically staring down into their lap, probably their smartphones. I couldn’t help wondering whether they’re some of the people posting complaints about a gas price increase and/or the carbon tax, however comparatively small (and now more than recoup via rebate), onto various social media platforms.Â

Frank Sterle Jr.

White Rock, B.C.

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Nothing conservative about him

Dear editor

While Jason Kenney continues to treat Albertans like morons this Liberal turned Reformer deliberately tries to destroy everything our Conservative hero Peter Lougheed created for us. In other words there is nothing conservative about him.

His failed attempt at trying to prove he is a Conservative has made him and Alberta the laughing stock of the world. No one I know in the oil industry believes Bigfoot is to blame for attacks on our oil industry. The truth is he can’t find anyone to blame, even Ottawa.

After cutting $9.4 billion off corporate taxes for his rich friends, over the next few years, Albertans are expected to believe that it’s necessary to cut thousand of health care and education jobs, privatize land titles offices and kick out the RCMP so he can dump the total cost of policing onto the backs of the property owners, like Ralph Klein did with the power industry.

Where is the intelligence in that?

Alan K. Spiller

Edmonton

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By the people, for the people

While these words, spoken by Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, were related to the cause of democracy, they sprang to my mind as I considered the international COVID crisis.

Considering the fact that much of the funding for research towards finding a vaccine has been bankrolled ‘by the people,’ should it not be universally ‘for the people?’

Perhaps I am idealistic, but if we could find our way to waiving trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, and if manufacturers around the world were able to ramp up production of the vaccine to ensure that everyone – young and old, rich and poor, weak and strong – could be vaccinated, wouldn’t we all be safer?

Sure, Canada might lag behind other developed nations in immunizing our population, but let us not lose sight of the overall picture. The ‘me first’ approach to obtaining and stock-piling vaccines by the world’s wealthiest countries is not the answer. To bring this pandemic to an end, the majority of the world needs to be immunized.

Connie Lebeau

Victoria, BC

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