A painful wait
I have a friend in the Yukon who has a vary painful “worn out” hip joint.
He is halfway through a two-year wait to see an orthopedic surgeon — if he is not bumped for further delay he should expect a replacement six months after that.
If he were an automobile or a furnace his problem would be fixed promptly, perhaps with a little overtime, or the repair people would soon be out of business.
Harvey Bickell
Gabriola, BC
Woe is Teslin
Living in Teslin means that you only get access to daily newspapers after a trip to town, and there’s lots of time to think about what you read.
It seems impossible to believe that Liberal leader Arthur Mitchell would try to promote honesty and ethics as a major part of his platform.
This seems ridiculous given the overview of his cousins in Ottawa over the last 20 years.
His limp-wristed attempt at mud slinging at the Yukon Party seems to have blown back in his own face. If he had such a narrow view of ethics perhaps he should concentrate on more than criminal records and look at business holdings and blind trusts to administer these holdings.
He comes from a real-estate background; maybe a disclosure policy in that area would give him the squeaky clean appearance he is trying to promote.
Perhaps he could look at the urban vs. rural split of the last Liberal government. The communities were not well served by that government.
Teslin’s game warden got a new computer and our local contractors got a roadside rest area to build. This job lasted two weeks, just before the election was called.
That was not much for a two-year mandate in a community looking for economic growth and support from Whitehorse.
It was sole-sourced too.
Under the last Liberal government, Yukon Housing Corp. donated a perfectly viable house to the local fire department for fire practice because not land policy could be developed for the land the house was sitting on.
This does not inspire confidence.
The last time the Liberal Party came to Teslin for a policy strategy session, one old dinosaur asked me, “Are they still building Teslin canoes here?”
The shop has been shut down for 25 years. Are they really that out of touch?
Maybe they need a little more time in the penalty box just like their federal counterparts.
Neil Johnson
Teslin
Who are you walking for?
It has been only just over three weeks since the XVI International AIDS Conference left Canada and HIV/AIDS has fallen off the radar in the Canadian media.
The headlines in the papers have turned to other issues, but people in Canada and around the world continue to live with this horrible disease.
While attending the recent AIDS 2006 conference, I heard many people asking the question: “What can I do to help fight the battle against HIV/AIDS.” And I have an answer for them: the Walk for Life.
The Walk for Life is Canada’s most important HIV/AIDS awareness and fundraising event.
Each year, during the national weeklong event, cities and communities from coast to coast host walks to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and to raise funds for local services and programming.
The Walk for Life is your chance to support the organizations that provide services to people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS in your community. You can walk, donate or volunteer to do your part for HIV/AIDS in Canada.
This year’s Walk for Life tagline is Who are you walking for? When I asked one of the amazing individuals organizing a Walk for Life in their community who they were walking for, I received the response, “I am walking for everyone who has ever been infected, who is infected, or who might have the chance of being infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.”
From September 17 to 24 more than 130 Walk for Life events will be hosted in cities and communities across Canada.
For more information or to find your Walk for Life, please visit www.walkforlife.ca.
Who are you walking for?
Monique Doolittle-Romas, executive director, Canadian AIDS Society
Energy solutions
Does anybody else find the news depressing?
I don’t know if it has been this way “forever,” but that’s beside the point.
I have an idea: Instead of following this news, subconsciously frustrated, why not create some good news!
With a little population in this big territory, we are lucky.
Right now, you can easily find information on the internet about an electric motor for your car.
For around $1,500, and some help from a mechanic friend, you can retrofit your car, no matter the make, to run 160 kilometres before needing a battery charge.
So now it is not only people who can afford the new hybrids who can make a difference — you can, too.
The car’s charge can come from solar power, wind, or magnetic electricity.
Besides the dam and wind turbines, our town has abundant sun — in the summer — when all of those gas-guzzling RVs are here.
Instead of complaining about them, why don’t you provide them with a place to charge their battery and charge them for your ecologically efficient power?
Though it has a correspondent in Iceland, this very paper, which is better than most, never (it seems) mentions Iceland will be completely free of its last gas station in 2008.
Time to get on the bandwagon, folks. Why aren’t we concisely receiving this information?
On September 1, The News ran this in a Reuters story:
“Industrialized nations’ emissions of greenhouse gases edged up to the highest level in more than a decade in 2004, despite curbs meant to fight global warming” i.e. Kyoto.
Canada was a premier participant in this protocol agreement, but now sports one of the worst emissions ratings.
I don’t mind paying Shell, Mobile or Exxon, but, please, can it be for electric power?
Now that we’re in an election, what better time to demand our politicians implement even modest measures that see government trucks running on these new methods.
If it comes to the crunch, what do we pay taxes for?
I do not think the economy would suffer this way either.
Erini Petroutsas
Whitehorse
