Opinion

Your dual national writer (May 18) seems not to believe that Canada is an independent country because our head of state (the King of Canada) is foreign-born and a non-resident. Well, he is largely wrong in that and has been since the Statute of Westminster of 1931. Many Latin American countries were born of revolution: not so Canada, as we deliberately chose a different path than the 13 colonies below us on the continent.

When I was a child in this area, it was not uncommon for the police to pick one up for walking on the wrong side of the road with your back to traffic and take you home where one would be punished for transgressing the law.

I have a suggestion for the letter writer who would like to have a Latin American government in Canada, and to everyone else who objects to Canada having a monarch as the head of state. Don’t think of Charles III as a ‘monarch’, but as a ‘hereditary chief’. That should reconcile the problem.

I’m laughing sadly at Robert Berry in your recent housing series telling of his friends leaving Oak Bay, which is the poster brat fiefdom in this region for rejecting more housing.

Our sympathies to the people who live near Mike Miller’s proposed renovation project on Beach Drive.

I received a seatbelt ticket in Sidney, on Mother’s Day.

The April 24 Saanich council meeting was the most Kafkaesque I’ve ever witnessed.

As it was once written, bilingual today, French tomorrow, it appears tomorrow has arrived. Quebec again becomes the beneficiary of a major make-work program under the Liberal government.

Across Saanich, dozens, if not hundreds, of properties encroach upon municipal property and, despite official assurances, little is being done to prevent it. Thousands of square feet of public property, worth millions of dollars, upon which no taxes are being paid, have been illegally appropriated by homeowners for their sole use and enjoyment. People who know how to manipulate the system are obtaining permits for fences and hedges at the expense of the majority.

I like dogs. I have friends who own dogs and I consider myself their dog’s friend as well.