Don't leave your pets in the car

During the hot summer, drivers stop and wait to pick up people with their windows rolled completely down, or completely up in the luxury of air conditioning. Pets don't have that luxury.

Try sitting in your vehicle with the windows rolled down an inch or two. The car becomes an oven for your pets and they could die in 10 to 15 minutes.

Please leave your pets at home if you are planning to shop or planning to leave the pets in the car for even a small duration of time.

Mall management and other businesses with a lot should consider having one sign at every entrance with a reminder not to leave their pets in the car. What would it cost? $30? $50 per sign? It is a temporary measure through the summer.

There are signs in all the parking lots that say "Do not leave valuables in the car." Is your pet not valuable?

Please avoid having your window smashed to rescue your pet as I will do so without hesitation and call the police where you may be charged with animal cruelty.

Readers pipe up in support of piper

Re: "Piper told to pack his bagpipe."

I think this is quite ridiculous! My 11-year-old son plays the pipes and most of the time we take him to a Richmond park to practice. Is someone going to tell him he can't use a park for practice?

It sounds to me like someone who doesn't like the bagpipes is using his "authority" to put a stop to someone else's enjoyment. Long live bagpipers!

Marion Walter
Richmond

Editor:

I really don't know how this bagpipe thing has gotten so blown out of proportion, but good on you Scots for standing up for your rights!

Of course they have the right to play. It's not as if they or rather Mr. MacKendrick is there all day every day. The poor guy sacrifices his precious time for half an hour, two days a week, for the enjoyment of others.

Do we complain about the stinky fish the fishermen bring in?

The harbour official should have been a little more manly and told them to take a hike when they complained about the music! I would have.

Keep on playing. Don't we live in a multicultural community? Or has the wool been pulled over my eyes? If we had any other cultural music happening at the harbour would we have this problem?

Go Scots go!

Leanne Donald-Jones
Richmond

Editor:

Steveston loses a bit more of its glorious colour when it disallows wonderful cultural expressions such as Highland bagpiping.

Up with the pipes and all displays of culture in Steveston and down with the insidious move to a grey, culture-bereft community.

René P. F. Cusson
Principal, The Pacific Institute of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts
Nanaimo

Editor:

So the bagpipes bother the fishermen selling their fish on the docks? Boy, you sure have my sympathy!

Imagine having to endure this for half-an-hour, twice a week, but not on weekends when you probably do your biggest business.

Of course, I'm prejudiced because I love to hear the pipes. However, I can think of a lot more annoying sounds!

To deny this man his right to play is sad. Maybe he could please a different ethnic group if he were in a different location but as I understand it, the Steveston waterfront is close to where he lives so is a convenient spot. Come on people, give him a break!

Mavis Creech
Richmond

Editor:

If Mr. Bruce MacKendrick has to leave, so do the Peruvian pipes and the young fellow who sings by the boats and any other entertainer of any sort whom I would place a bet do not have the so-called licence required.

My friends and I find the bagpipes very stirring when played outside.

All this fuss for half an hour of playing?

Bruce MacKendrick has played all over Richmond and no one has ever taken offence. The new people in Richmond may find the bagpipes no to their likingtoo bad. Bruce has lived in Richmond for 65 years, has volunteered at the Seniors Centre and played at Robbie Burns' dinners.

Play on, Bruce.

Helen Flynn
Richmond

Good parking news

Re: the letter from Capt. Bill Teague of Richmond, "Pay parking changes for the worse," Richmond Review, July 22.

For the information of people who use the services of the Richmond Health Sciences Centre, I would like them to know that anyone collecting their prescription from Regency Prescriptions has the ability to park up to 15 minutes free of charge to do so.

In addition, if you have seen a health professional in the building and then get a prescription from Regency, you will be reimbursed $2 by the pharmacy. As we are tenants of the building, we also have to abide by any changes to the parking.

I appreciate the ability to clear up any misunderstandings the new parking regulations may have caused with our current and future patients.

Local heroes

I wanted to be one of what will be many letters of praise and congratulations to the four young men Jesse, Andrew, Dave and Sean, who risked life and limb to save an elderly lady from her burning home on Saturday night.

These heroes don't have any idea yet how this brave action will effect the rest of their lives.

They have shown what they are made of and can look to a bright future in whatever field they choose.

Bring back the conferences

It's high time for a community conference.

As the city's planning department develops new infill-densification policies which affect our neighbourhoods, (especially those that are bordering arterial roads in Richmond), it is high time to hold a community conference for the citizens of Richmond, so that we have the opportunity to have constructive input into city affairs.

"Richmond Community Conference" used to be a yearly event from 1989 to the mid-1990s. I was the chairperson of the last conference in 1996.

From it's start Richmond Community Conference played a major role in forwarding the opinions, views and suggestions of Richmond's citizens on major issues to city staff and council. From the outcome of the conference, recommendations were developed which were forwarded to the appropriate levels of government.

This direct input helped residents cope with the major changes Richmond was experiencing in the 1990s. There were workshops dealing with health care, transportation, environmental issues, safety and policing, economic development, housing and density issues, to name only a few.

People could attend the workshops of their choice, ask questions of the experts, express themselves, make suggestions, and participate in the decision makingin other words, people had a say in what going on. And that was good. Good for us and good for city staff and politicians; because that way, if they listened, they made no mistakes.

A Richmond Community Conference should happen every time the need arises, or at least every five years, before staff starts updating the city's Official Community Plan. It is high time to have one.

In defence of the bagpipes

We wee Scots, lads and lassies alike have had our wee Piper MacKendrick waylaid by the uninitiated in Steveston ("Piper told to pack his bagpipe," p. 1, Richmond Review, July 22).

What has happened to the inclusiveness of Richmond?

Do we Scots, who shed our blood for this great country, not to mention our kilts, have to endure the slights, the jokes, and the putdowns of other groups unfamiliar with the great Highland tradition of our forefathers, "the right to blow out of tunepublicly." It is disgusting!

Why only the other day when we were having a wee tinkle at the local we had to endure the likes of, "You're cornered by a lion, a tiger, and a piper. You have a pistol with only two bullets. What do you do? Answer: Shoot the piper twice."

Or "How do you make a piper's eyes sparkle? Shine a light in his ears."

Yes and even at Pajo's some unwashed critic was heard to say, "Why do bagpipers walk when they play? They're trying to get away from the noise." Or "A moving target is harder to hit!"

Well enough is enough. I call on all Richmond Scots to rally around the Bag and together seek a federal heritage grant from Ottawa (it ought to be a cinch) for the 2005 Richmond International Bagpipe Festival at Garry Park.

With a whisky licence we are bound to make a profit, unlike that tall ship fiasco as we frolic to such favourites as "Flower of Scotland," "Barnyards of Delgaty," "Donald Where's Yer Trousers" and "What Does a Scotsman Wear Beneath His Kilt."

Our guest of honour will be Piper MacNeil. Ye'll a hae heard o' Piper MacNeil. A canty chap and a coothie chiel. And a' my days ah lo'ed him weel. For he clearly lo'd the whisky-o.

Attention Steveston Wharfinger—"We shall return!"

Citizens should be consulted over oval

Some of your recent letter writers have criticized Richmond city council for its ineptitude and I would like to concur.

Why aren't the citizens of Richmond being consulted about the skating oval? What about a referendum?

About 15 years ago, city council was contemplating several large construction projects including: a new library and cultural Centre; expansions to West Richmond and South Arm community centres; and I believe a fire hall.

There was to be a referendum on each construction and there were many public meetings.

Each of the various communities (library, arts, museum and community centre associations) worked together to convince the public that all of the projects were necessary and would benefit the citizens of Richmond. Certainly the success of their endeavours was a legacy for all of Richmond.

What kind of legacy will an ice oval bring to the residents of Richmond? Why are we not consulted? Surely the $500,000 we spent on the Olympic bid would reap some benefit, but for whom?

Perhaps we should just be happy with the RAV line. Council should be congratulated for insisting that it not be above grade in Richmondor will they cave in to corporate power?

Meanwhile, staff at city hall are canceling meetings (meetings that are crucial to one city organization's planning for the future and booked over three weeks ago), because they are working on the ice rink proposal. Surely this, and the junket to Norway, is costing taxpayers more than the $500,000 we have already contributed to these Olympics. So much money for an event lasting about two weeks. Couldn't we put the money to better use? (I knowsome of the money is coming from the federal and provincial governments, but it is still our tax dollars.)

There are also events happening that involve changes in the library/Richmond Cultural Centre. Five volunteers collected 296 signatures in four-and-a-half hours to petition the city to reopen the cafˇ for coffee/juice (perhaps dispensing machines), so that volunteers, staff and patrons of the centre could have a place to meet and have coffee or eat their lunch.

What we will get is a coffee cart in the rotundabut where do we sit? Citizens are not even listened to when they gather names on petitions. The coffee cart is not a solution people need a pleasant place to sit, read a book, meet friends or eat their lunchthe cafˇ is the perfect place!

Get those bus lane cheats

Without major infrastructural remedies the Massey Tunnel will continue to be a traffic "bottleneck" for the law-abiding suckers parked in a lineup, moving at intervals of several minutes and then advancing perhaps a car length.

This condition affords a wonderful opportunity to monitor the constant stream of single occupant vehicles blithely whistling past in the "bus lane," presumably destined for the front of the line.

Such is the situation approaching the tunnel from the south on any weekday late afternoon.

The presence of traffic authority is frequently in evidence when traffic problems don't exist.

Why not put a stop to this selfish practice? Surely our visitors are not favourably impressed.

Better priorities than oval

Re: Proposed speed skating oval.

There is nothing "free" in this world. Do our city officials ever think? Did they ask the public if we wish to be burdened for the next 15 or 20 years with even higher taxes? (Example: 1976 Montreal Olympics!)

I, for one, have no wish to give my grandchildren the burden of even higher taxes, or lose my home I worked all my life for a foreclosure.

Why are city officials so gung ho with the public money? Why are they ignoring our needs of better medical facilities for a rapidly aging society?

It was our old citizens who built this province. Don't they count anymore or is it because they are not producing anymore? Do they not need to be looked after, because it is very, very shabby as it is even right now.

Our medicare is in crisiswe hear it daily! We also need better policing and better driver education! Am I negative? I don't think so! I just see both sides of the coin! I think the city officials better think twice before they burden us more with their second agendas!