Letters To The Editor
Day care amalgamation raises red flags
Editor, Glebe Report
Re: “Glebe day care amalgamation brings hope and confusion to community,” Glebe Report, August 2024
This story needs the expertise of a seasoned investigative reporter. There are so many red flags. Daycare staff members, who are the heart and soul of GPDC (Glebe Parents Day Care), were clearly blindsided by their board. The environment of secrecy around the GPDC board’s actions and their decision to have GPDC taken over by Andrew Fleck’s board is shocking. How was this level of secrecy possible when GPDC is (was) a co-operative organization? Does co-operative not mean that daycare staff, parents and board members are ALL to be included in the decision-making process, especially a decision of this magnitude? No wonder people feel betrayed. It’s being called an “amalgamation,” but it sounds a lot like a hostile takeover.
J. Hall
Glebe has been robbed of green space
Editor, Glebe Report
Initially, we were told that Queen Elizabeth Drive would be closed to cars this summer from Somerset to Pretoria Bridge for “active transport,” i.e., cycling and walking. However, I see what the NCC has installed in the middle of the road: picnic tables, park benches, red-chair swings, static games, a cool mist station. In other words, they are trying to turn the road into a park.
Is this because the beautiful Queen Juliana Park was destroyed in favour of a mammoth and ugly parking garage? Is it because a huge section of the Arboretum was rezoned, without public input or consent, for the new Civic hospital, cutting down 700 trees in the process? Is it because we were denied the creation of a world-class park at Lansdowne so that it could become a developers’ paradise? Is it because the proposed new arena will destroy the green tobogganing hill and the precious little green space remaining at Lansdowne?
Take a look at the maps of Centretown and the Glebe – you will see that we have only minuscule parks, none of them large enough for sports, strolling, cycling or community gatherings. We have been robbed of green space in this part of the city. Now the public is expected to be grateful for a stretch of asphalt, with no grass, no trees, no shade, no nature, no beauty whatsoever, and asked to see it as a park. I find this absurd and insulting.
Dorothy Speak
See you at Fridays for Future!
Editor, Glebe Report
Re: “Let’s deal with the root causes of climate breakdown,” Glebe Report, August 2024
I appreciated Cecile Wilson’s August article titled “Let’s deal with the root causes of climate breakdown.” As she wrote, climate change requires us to take adaptive measures; if we don’t put the brakes on global warming, we will be constantly working to adapt to new and unpredictable conditions. With more or less success, it could be added.
Wilson reminded us that the “carbon footprint” is a British Petroleum concept intended to shift responsibility from the corporation to the individual. Absolutely we should all make the lifestyle changes that we can, but the heavy lifting on GHG emissions reduction has to come from political leaders and corporations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently said, “Current policies are taking the world to a 2.8-degree temperature rise . . . that spells catastrophe, yet the collective response remains pitiful.”
Governments won’t take decisive climate action unless they get a clear message from the people who elect them. I echo Wilson’s call for everyone who can to participate in the September 21 Fridays for Future March.
Jennifer Humphries
