Canadian Roman Catholic Bishops have failed Canadian people by not condemning unjust war in Afghanistan

WHY HAVE BISHOPS REMAINED SILENT?

Pro-life peace propaganda by Gregory Hartnell

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has remained strangely and scandalously silent for almost eight years while this country has wasted billions on an unjust war in Afghanistan.  As a Catholic layman with less and less respect for these gentlemen because of the scandalous dereliction of duty that this silence constitutes, I hereby condemn their perverse silence and challenge even one of them to break ranks and speak the unvarnished truth to the power structure of this country: the so-called ‘Conservative’ Party of  neo-fascist Prime Minister Stephen Harper. 

Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas are the main Roman Catholic Church Fathers who formulated the so-called ‘just war doctrine’ that traditionally governs Roman Catholic Church thought on matters of war and peace, and these saints must be rolling over in their graves to witness how their doctrine, which has been referred to by Christian clerics in times of emergencies for centuries, has now apparently been perverted into the neo-con ‘pre-emptive war policy’ of  President George W. Bush.

 Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have condemned the pre-emptive war policy and the unprovoked incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq (both formerly sovereign nations), but neither the American nor the Canadian bishops have  followed suit.  They have effectively capitulated to patriotic and imperialistic warmongering  mania in their own countries and defied the Popes by their cowardice.

That radically evil neo-con warmaking policy was formulated by the buffoonish Republican President after the 9-11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and it infected the thinking of the nominally Catholic Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin who hastily ordered Canadian troops into Afghanistan.  Harper, a Protestant who also believes in the new imperialistic pre-emptive war policy, has committed Canadian troops to staying in the country until 2011, but thank God, no longer.  The bishops (or even just one bishop) should encourage Mr. Harper to bring the troops home now, and admit that both parties erred in supporting it without any aggression by this poverty-stricken nation against us.

The other night on CBC, pompous interviewer Peter Mansbridge asked a trio of so-called Afghanistan ‘experts’ whether the war in Afghanistan is lost, and it was quite pathetic to witness how all three parroted the neo-con myth that if we only upped the troop numbers, we might somehow be able to turn the whole damn thing around.   The so-called ’surge’ in Iraq is the model for this type of war-mongering propaganda.  No ‘peace option’ or dovish advocate is ever presented for balance, thus the national broadcaster is effectively used by the WAR PARTY to perpetuate the decadent status quo of constant and endless warmongering, according to the new pre-emptive (that is, offensive) policy.

Contrary to what many liberals and socialists may wish to think, the new president of the United States, a Protestant Democrat, is not a ‘peace option’ president at all, but represents, rather, just the other side of the WAR PARTY coin.  Any way one flips it, the United States seems doomed to repeat its historical mistakes no matter what party is in power.   The Empire is weakening itself daily by costly and futile foreign warmongering without end, and all the world, including Canada, suffers because of its hubris. 

The Roman Catholic bishops in that country have an even greater weight of  social sin to account to the Almighty for, much greater than that of their Canadian confreres.  I am not aware of a single one of them who has had the courage to speak the truth about the unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  No sooner had Mr. Obama been inaugurated into office then he precipitously ordered pilotless drones to bomb suspected Taliban enclaves in the Swat Valley of Pakistan.  Silence from the American bishops.

Now there are upwards of 2,500,000 refugees fleeing that area to escape the American bombing and the  Pakistani civil war that is aggravated by futile American aggression.  Gringo propaganda would us believe that these refugees are all fleeing Taliban barbarity, but obviously it takes two sides to fight a war.  We are only being given half the story here. 

The Canadian Army is exhausted and demoralised.   Another soldier from Quebec was reported killed today, making him  the 122 Canadian to have died in this futile and foolish unjust war, and the Canadian bishops say nothing.

With Canada Day just past, and the nauseating spectacle of a Death Culture Governor General inspecting troops in Ottawa broadcast on tv while Canadians brag about their fragile freedoms, I can understand perfectly why many hold my religion in contempt.  We follow and pray to the Prince of Peace while our bishops acquiesce to the forces of the Death Culture and render themselves mute in the face of undeniable evil.

Canadian Catholic laypeople (that is, those not in the hierarchical power structure that is the clergy) are not well served by gutless bishops who don’t understand the difference between an unjust war and a just one.  As a matter of fact, since the invention of the atomic bomb, very few wars are ever justified anymore, particularly when one is talking about nations that are capable of using atomic weaponry.  

Canada allows nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered Gringo ships into our harbours regularly, thus compromising our national sovereignty for the sake of the Gringo Empire and endangering our citizens. Pakistan and India both now are nuclear-armed, thanks to sneaky Canadian Candu nuclear reactor deals that were not honoured once those countries got the technology.  

We pretended that we were helping them by selling them the Candu reactors, on the promise that such technology would never be used for nuclear armaments.  We willfully looked the other way when the Indians and the Pakistanis started proliferating nuclear energy into nuclear arms.   The Canadian government thus proliferated the  nuclear option into a very unstable part of the world. We are in complete denial as a nation about this ungodly proliferation.

 The Canadian and American Roman Catholic Church bishops remain silent. 

PAX CHRISTI

CHRIS JOHNSON ON SOCIAL CLEANSING: ‘I have serious objections to plans to ‘beautify’ Pandora in order to discourage loitering’

A LETTER FROM AN ACTIVIST TO SOCIALIST MAYOR DEAN FORTIN

Mr. Mayor,

I commend your past work on the issue of homelessness, though I feel it is difficult for a Mayor and Council to properly deal with such an issue in the context of institutionalized prejudices within all levels of government and outwards into our society.

One of these prejudices being the tendency to isolate homelessness from poverty, to isolate the issue of poverty from that of finance, industry, culture and education and to isolate the public from a deeper understanding of any issue.

In short, I don’t expect ‘homelessness’ to be solved on a municipal level, to say the least.  So I understand the limitations of the City of Victoria to address these issues, which requires you to make difficult choices.

What I’m trying to say is that I have serious objections to the plans to ‘beautify’ Pandora in order to discourage loitering.  

I have read the news reports and I have heard you speak at various locations about the work of the Coalition to End Homelessness.  I don’t doubt that you have been working hard to help create housing, and I am glad to see there is a Mayor willing to take that on while we wait (without an end in sight) for the Province and the Federal Governments to step up to their responsibilities.

I am aware that you and Victoria Council object to the idea of tent encampments, and I have heard you remark, when asked to explain your position, that you would rather see real housing.  In the same vein, when it comes to dealing with the people on Pandora, I would rather see a more substantial impact on the deeper societal causes of such things as mental illness, drug abuse, family violence and ‘homelessness.’

I would point out as well that advocates of autonomous shelter communities are working to create a short term response to a problem that many cannot wait to be solved.

When we have dealt with the root causes of poverty, violence, drug additions and other human ills, then we won’t need to pave greenspace to discourage loitering.  Just as when we have built all the affordable housing we need, we won’t need to advocate that people be allowed to shelter themselves.

There are people on the street who can no more wait for those homes than the business owners on Pandora can wait for you to ‘end homelessness.’

In this city, like every other, some folks get what they want, and others wait.  I understand that.  I realize that discouraging drug use and other activities near to a homeless shelter will raise the safety level of those homeless people seeking to reintegrate back from the street  and allow them to not be tempted, exploited or otherwise exposed to that element.

 I see how this could have been spun as something more substantial to the people who need relief from poverty than just extra cart parking, so I appreciate the honesty of the explanation for why these plans had to be approved.

And while I cannot offer you another way to appease the business owners and tourism industry as society slowly digs its way out of a deep crisis, I must however stand firm that in no way do I find it acceptable that public funds be used in such a manner to be seen as social cleansing.  

Aside form the fact that I don’t feel that actions meant to alienate an entire class of people are appropriate, I don’t see the plan working.  I don’t see this beautification alone keeping Pandora free of loitering people.  (Though I imagine it is supplemented by a new policing tactic).  It isn’t greenspace and benches that attract them there in the first place.

Given that we haven’t ended homelessness or addiction to street drugs yet, it seems that discouraging people from one area only drives them into another.  If there are no homes for them, and you aren’t planning to arrest or hospitalize them all, will you pave every square foot of greenspace they land on as you chase them around the city?

I realize that this plan has already been approved, and I should have contacted Council earlier to register my objections.  I work two jobs and I find it hard to keep up on on civic issues sometimes.

I read the article that appeared in the media just prior to the meeting, but did not assume that the plans would be approved by Council so quickly.

That was my mistake, but I would also like to at this time make the suggestion that the City make its website much more dynamic and informative, that minutes of meetings be posted quicker than the one month lag time we seem to have right now, and that when you do get a webcam in chambers, footage of meetings be divided into sections and searchable by issue, so that we don’t have to watch two hours of zoning amendments unless we have cause to. 

We should be able to choose to view sections relevant to us.  This will help keep all of us more informed, and more able to make timely, informed and constructive comments on the issues facing Council.

Thank you for your time,

Chris Johnson

 

[CCC reprint: Victoria Street Newz, June 2009, Volume 6, Number 3, page 4]

DAVID JURE: DO NOT MOCK ME FELLOW STUDENT: An open letter to ‘wee Gordie Campbell’ from a disabled Concerned Citizen, written in 2002

Gordon Campbell, it’s people like you that are the chief reason people like me live in isolation, unrecognized, childless, sad and solitary, one paycheque away from the street.  Do not mock me fellow student.

Do not mock me fellow student.  The Fascist Rulers are talking about reducing my Level Two Disability from $780 to $608.  That will leave me seventy dollars on my monthly cheque.

Leave this on your on your monthly cheque, fellow Scot; I am not afraid to die for a noble cause if it means taking you with me.

If we were fighting over a piece of meat in Old Scotland could you stand up to me with a broadsword in your hand?

Or take me at Scrabble, Chess, Poker, One on One or Trivial Pursuit?  How do I threaten to take away thy livelihood?  I had such high hopes before spending a year of my precious life in your various mental institutions, a Prisoner of the State.

Is it at all possible that it was all political to begin with?  Is your I. Q. in the Genius Range?  How many lives have you actually saved?

Wee Gordie Campbell, on behalf of a free Scotland, this is war!  It won’t be fought with rocket launchers, though frankly, Cockburn, if I had one, a certain politician would pay.

At the age of 17 with hair down to my shoulders, alias Geronimo, I lead a campus revolution that rid us of the head of the Theatre Department, the Dean of Fine Arts, and the University President, who, it turns out, had a mail order law degree.

Yes, wee Gordie Campbell, this is war.  At age twenty five I played Julius Caesar professionally in one of Toronto’s top theatres and I know something about troop movements.

I’m not saying may the bird of Paradise fly up your nose, though something must have gone up your nose.  I’m saying may you too collect bottles and cans, scrounge for butts, stand endlessly in line at soup-kitchens, be marginalized and denigrated beyond the grasp of human dignity, walk miles for want of a bus pass, work day after day at minimum  wage, or rage, and finally choke one morning on your BLT and be without a single cronie to provide the Heinlich Manoeuvre.

May your children one day discover the rave scene and never be heard of hence.

But wait!  It’s not technically uttering a threat.  I’m going to kill you with kindness, while doing everything in my power to see that you spend your days opening breweries in Labrador and Newfoundland.

They say I’m mentally ill.  I say the Mental Health Team should be at your door asking if you have any weapons or illegal substances or kiddieporn.

In 1936 Hitler took certain steps that were overlooked by world powers.  Give him an inch and he’ll take a foot.  Give him a foot and he’ll take a yard.  Give him a yard and he’ll build a swimming pool in it.

Winston Churchill, also a manic depressive, had the right idea but lacked the backing and in their lives there’s something lacking; what they need’s a damn good whacking.

It’s now 2002 – let’s have that bustard out by 2004.  Before we all end up in Transit Camps.  My work is being an artist – I’m proud of a record of service and still sometimes I cry myself to sleep thinking about the way things are.

A B. C. flag hangs on the wall opposite my bed and I stare at it infinitely recalling an empire that was second to none.  With all the minerals, fish and forests – the envy of the world.  That was my B. C. – Before Christ these bananas are expensive!

I did everything in the name of personal liberty, carried placards, fought for marijuana legislation, called the police on heroin dealers, painted houses, took refugees in off the streets.  So do not mock me, fellow student.

Gave evidence against people smuggling machine guns, and if it seems a bit demonstrative, kiss my —, Gordon Campbell.  Or should I say the Dauphin across the water – to quote Henry Fifth – tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler.

 

[This piece of classic 'Juriana' was first published in 2002

in the Island Catholic News, edited by Patrick Jamieson]

PEACEMAKER: ‘From Tepic [Nayarit, Mexico] came a description of the most intelligent + ambitious British plan to colonized California, from Dr. Wyllie to William Hartnell’

With dignified asperity, Richard Hartnell decried such publications as Forbes’s California as “tending to induce ignorant and weakminded farmers, without further inquiry, to embark themselves and families to a country still subject to war, rapine, and disorder.”  Canada and other colonies established by Great Britain in the traditional way seemed to Cousin Richard the suitable goal for English emigrants.  In conclusion he maintained that Texans and Californians always will “sympathize more with their republican slave-holding mama than with their monarchical antislave-holding grandmama.”

Robert Wyllie had been visited by Richard Hartnell in Texas.  In correspondence with William, Robert discussed and disclaimed the prejudices which so violently colored their London cousin’s point of view.  But family feeling prompted his offer to defend Richard when a libel suit was threatened by angered Texans, claiming he had mentioned them by name in a superior, insulting manner.  Fortunately, wrote Wyllie, “it came to nothing.”

From Tepic on August 10, 1843, came a description of the most intelligent and ambitious British plan to colonize California, from Dr. Wyllie to William Hartnell, who were each to play a prominent part.  How Richard Hartnell, who would have ranted on reading such a letter from one outlandish cousin to another, in direct opposition to foreign office policy!

‘I have for years been a member of the Committee in London of the Spanish-American Bondholders, and have taken an active part in all their transactions.

‘By an arrangement with the Bondholders in 1837, the Mexican Debt was divided into about 5,000,000 pounds active bearing 5 per cent interest and about 5,000,000 deferred, bearing no interest till the first of October, 1847, but up to that date, at the option of the H0lder exchangeable for land at the rate of 5 shillings per acre, in payment of which the bonds were to be received at par with 5 per cent interest from the first of October, 1837, to date payable in so much more land, at the same price.  In guaranty of this arrangement, so advantageous to Mexico, its Government hypothecates 100 millions of acres of vacant lands in Texas, Chihuahua, New Mexico, Sonora and California; and the Bondholders stipulated for and obtained a further amount of 25 millions of acres of land in the Departments nearest to the Atlantic.’

[Pages 260 - 261  of Susanna Bryant Dakin's history of Alta California, The Lives of William Hartnell] 

GREGORY HARTNELL: WHY I QUIT THE DYSFUNCTIONAL B. C. ‘CONSERVATIVE’ PARTY

BCCP PRESIDENT McGRATH PRETENDS THEY CAN’T DO INTERNET VOTING

by Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

I just quit the dysfunctional British Columbia ‘Conservative’ Party, after having been informed by one of the few members who is still on the sinking ship, President Wayne McGrath, that the Party can’t allow Internet voting at its up-coming Annual General Meeting and subsequent Leadership Convention without a Constitutional amendment, and that can only be done by those who are prepared to attend the AGM in person.

That is a classic ‘Catch 22′ expressly designed to ensure that the innovative and safe voting system is never used in this Party, in my humble estimation.

At an earlier posting to this Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Blog, I listed ten suggestions that I thought might benefit the Party, putting internet voting at the end of the ten-point list.

I should have put it as Point Number One, as there is no real excuse for not allowing this in 2009.  The reference made by Mr. McGrath in his email correspondence to doing things according to the Constitution is laughable, when one considers that President McGrath seems to have been part of a small group that recently instituted a coup in the Party, after the precipitous resignation of the former Leader Wilf Hanni, the latter taking eight other Board Members with him.

Mr. McGrath may like presiding over a Party with a handful of holdouts, but I now question the legitimacy of the whole Annual General Meeting itself, seeing as how Mr. McGrath did not provide any evidence to me in his correspondence that the meeting was not the idea of just one or two people in his cabal.  I am under the impression that there is no Board of Directors left in this Party at all, so I now question not only the ban on safe Internet voting, but also the very legitimacy of the upcoming Annual General Meeting itself.

True social- and fiscal-conservatives (sometimes known as ‘paleoconservatives’) of which I consider myself to be one, need a principled truly CONSERVATIVE PARTY in B. C. now more than ever before.

This new party could do worse than adapt some of the ten points that I recently posted here under the heading: ‘MY ARGUMENT WITH THE B. C. CONSERVATIVE PARTY: Ten points for recovery (with apologies to Thomas Merton)’.

That kind of principled conservative (not libertarian) party would naturally attract all those disgruntled ‘paleos’ like myself and others who mistakenly have been propping up the so-called ‘Gordon Campbell BC Liberals’ for a shockingly long time.  These unprincipled yahoos should really rename their party the ‘B. C. Libertarian Party’, as it is quite clear that they worship at the altar of the Unholy Market Place, and have no social or conservation concerns whatsoever.  It is unregulated laissez-faire economics that Gordo and his gang of crooks is pushing, not conservatism, nor even liberalism, which is another thing altogether. 

To make ourselves attractive to the latter cohort, these people (disgruntled ‘BC Liberals’) have to be offered a true conservative alternative to the decadent status quo in Victoria under Gordo.

To take votes away from Greens and Socialists, the new party would also have to bring in new policies that would take the rug out from under these left-wing parties.  They do not have a monopoly on conservation or social justice issues, and that is why it is very important that paleos, whatever they do now, do not succumb to knee-jerk reaction on issues pertaining to the environment or to the plight of the poor.

Hard-hearted Campbellites, who pretend there is no money for the poor, the disabled, the homeless and the addicts and alcoholics that want to get clean and sober, while miraculously finding billions to squander on the Olympics, will always have their party in Mr. Campbell’s brand of quasi-fascistic libertarianism, complete with a phoney carbon tax as a sop to nondiscerning voters worried about so-called ‘climate change.’  

There is apparently no getting through to these Campbellites, save to pray for them.  But once the Olympics’ cost-overruns are truly understood by the people, and Campbell’s shananigans with lost emails pertaining to the BC Rail sale are exposed for the obstruction of justice that they constitute, the ranks of the disenfranchised will swell considerably.

I now consider myself to be a free and disenfranchised voter in every respect, unrepresented by any party at the federal or provincial level.   That does not mean that I don’t know what I believe in; on the contrary.

I am not an anarchist, nor a libertarian, although like most, I have smidgens of these false philosophies in my over-all political makeup.  I try to keep those anarchic and libertarian tendancies in check, as Mr. McGrath and his cohort would be well advised to do. 

63 HOOLIGANS ARRESTED AT VICTORIA CANADA DAY DEBAUCH: including 16 underage drinkers incarcerated

SHOP WINDOWS BROKEN, 4 BUS WINDOWS BROKEN,

140 COMPLAINT CALLS TO POLICE

The Times Colonist’s resident buffoon writer, Jack Knox asks the rhetorical question in today’s frontpage headline: IS CANADA DAY WORTH THE TROUBLE?

He suggests the jury is out.  This Citizen-juror has made up his mind.  NO, IT MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT.

Would Victoria’s new Police Chief Jamie Graham be smirking while being interviewed on tv, downplaying the havoc and mayhem, if these sixty-three arrests had been due to overindulgence in heroin or crystal meth?  Why is the man so blase about this alarming phenomenon when it comes to alcohol abuse and mass public intoxication? 

Equally stunned by the ‘patriotic’ booze bash are Victoria City Councillors Charlayne Thornton-Joe and John Luton, who both think ‘its worth keeping Victoria’s Canada show alive,’ as Mr. Knox puts it.

They must think it is normal to have helicopters buzzing around in the middle of the night, hearing dipsomaniac teenagers screaming “F___ing Canada rocks!” and urinating wherever they please.  One new City-approved urinal is certainly no match for this lot of louts.

I’m just old enough, I suppose, to be dismissed by these young people as a cranky old man (being born in 1952), but I do not remember feeling the necessity to display my love for my country in this obnoxious manner when I was their age.

In fact, it is my impression that this whole upsurge in faux patriotism is commensurate with the start of our foreign war adventurism at the behest of the Gringos, starting around 2001 with the Liberals’ foolish commitment to the unjust war in Afghanistan.

Is there a correlation between loutish behaviour and Liberal and Conservative WAR PARTY propaganda that attempts to gloss over the glaring injustice of our futile and vicious foreign policies?  I believe a serious case can be made that in fact, the more we try to export democracy through the barrels of guns, the less civilized we become at home, with the predictable reductions in freedom of speech and movement that inevitably come with a fascist police state, which is what the scene looked like the other night in the streets of Victoria.

Instead of fighting that war with civilized non-violent protest activity in the streets, these kids have been thoroughly brainwashed, it seems, into thinking we live in a free country.

Try telling that to the Canadian citizen who has been festering in Guantanamo prison in Cuba, Omar Khadr, for about the same length of time, without ever having been found guilty of a crime.

Try talking about the freedom of speech denied to Cecilia von Dehn and Donald Spratt, recently arrested in Vancouver for protesting peacefully against the notorious Bill 48, which prohibits peaceful protest activity in front of abortuaries.

Try talking about so-called ‘freedom’ in Canada if you are an anti-Olympics protester, many of whom  have already been hassled by the Vancouver Police for organizing against that obscenely wasteful folly, while the poorest of the poor are ignored or arrested, again and again …

Try talking about  so-called ‘freedom’ to the homeless, needing a safe place to camp, and constantly getting arrested in Victoria (and in other provincial cities) for the ‘crime’ of being poor. 

CANCEL THE DAMN THING NEXT YEAR

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

CCC

ROBERT McINNES: ‘Stephen Harper wants to double our prison population for nothing!’

CANADA DAY JOY MARRED BY WORRIES

My joy in celebrating Canada Day was marred by thinking about where the federal government is taking us.

Many of its paths are those the Americans are trying and failing.  

The war on drugs is U. S. alcohol Prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s revisited, complete with gangs providing what people want.

Stephen Harper wants to double our prison population for nothing!

The “war on terror” sent our brave lads to a failed mission.

The U. S. invented the Taliban, arming them to drive out the Russians, and today they are stronger than ever.

There might be no simple answers to either drug use or the problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but relentlessly pursuing the same old failed policies is a form of insanity!

Robert McInnes

Victoria

 

[CCC reprint: Victoria Times Colonist, Friday, July 3, 2009, page A11]

LARRY ZILINSKY: ‘Blue bridge fiasco … was put on the fast track way too fast by Victoria Council by saying they didn’t know the cutoff date for [federal] grants’

BRIDGE DECISION, OH, SO TYPICAL

When the blue bridge fiasco started it was going to cost x amount of dollars to fix it and about double that to replace it with a “state of the art” structure.

Now the cost has doubled and the bureaucrats explain it by now saying the original estimate would only give us an average bridge.  So typical!

One option hasn’t even been mentioned, which doesn’t surprise me, because no politicians have thought of it so it must not be viable, right?

There is a group that is trying to restore the historic roundhouse just up the road from the blue bridge.  So why does the train have to go across the bridge in the first place?

Why not stop the train at the roundhouse, turn the whole thing into a tourist attraction, and put at least some of the taxpayers’ money that’s saved by not needing a tressle and railroad bridge towards the restoring of the roundhouse?

Vic West benefits, the tourists benefit, the taxpayers benefit, and the bridge project is virtually cut in half.

It seems like a pretty viable option to me, but then I’m just Joe Citizen not a narrow-minded bureaucrat.

This thing was put on the fast track way too fast by the Victoria Council by saying they didn’t know the cutoff date for the grants was so close, so they passed it.  

Didn’t know?  These are the people who are spending our tax dollars.

So typical.

Larry Zilinsky

Saanich

 

CCC reprint: Victoria News, Friday, July 3, 2009, page A9 

Three eminent Victoria architectural historians oppose demolition of Johnson Street Bridge: Yule Heibel, Danda Humphreys + Martin Segger recognize significance of Joseph Strauss-designed ‘Blue Bridge’

by G. P. M. Hartnell, President

Concerned Citizens’ Coalition

Three eminent architectural historians residing and working in Victoria now oppose the ill-conceived plan by the City of Victoria under socialist Mayor Dean Fortin to demolish the Joseph Strauss-designed Johnson Street Bridge, recently popularly renamed ‘the Blue Bridge.’

Yule Heibel, a former  art and architectural history professor at Harvard, FOCUS magazine columnist, and now resident in the leafy Rockland neighbourhood of Victoria, was the first to courageously attack the plan in her June FOCUS column entitled ‘Blue Bridge Blues.’

In that two page essay, Yule Heibel wrote that the Johnson Street Bridge ‘was designed by Joseph Strauss (1870 – 1938) who subsequently built San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge (1933 – 37).  

‘Strauss wasn’t just any engineer: he patented the Strauss Bascule Bridge system, and used that system here.

‘The Blue Bridge is, literally, an embodiment of an heroic age that celebrated industrial progressivism.

‘There are relatively few bascule bridges left in North America overall, but there are even fewer of this particular sub-type.

‘Its historical significance is assured, yet its existence (in “heritage conscious” Victoria, no less) appears endangered.’

That unambiguous acknowledgement of the historical signficance of the Johnson Street Bridge was echoed by former Victoria City Councillor Martin Segger, one of the few Councillors who spoke out against inappropriate commercialization of Saint Anne’s Academy in the late eighties, and now resident scholar and director of the University of Victoria’s Maltwood Art Museum.

Commenting on Yule Heibel’s ‘Blue Bridge Blues’ essay, Mr. Segger wrote to the CCC BLOG: ‘The heritage values underpinning the significance of the historic Johnson Street trunnion bascule bridge are its iconic and monumental presence on Victoria’s Inner Harbour and the fact that it was designed by one of the most famous bridge designers in the world, Joseph Strauss.

‘Would Victoria’s current City Council have wisdom and fortitude to commission a contemporary world class engineer of the likes of, say, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava?

‘I doubt it.  So let’s leave the current bridge alone.’

The new issue of FOCUS magazine carries a letter from yet another architectural historian moved to speak out against the philistinism of the  N.D.P.- Green Party-dominated Victoria City Council.

Danda Humphreys, an English-born author of four popular architectural histories of Victoria, wrote to the editor of FOCUS, Leslie Campbell, in the July 2009 number of that free glossy magazine: 

‘I agree with Yule Heibel’s rationale for saving our bridge.  

‘We could keep the bridge, and make it work better for us, with some adjustments.  

‘Let’s move the E & N train station across the bridge to the Roundhouse (which the developer says he is eager to renovate/restore), and create a unique historic attraction there.

‘Small shuttle buses can take train passengers, nearby Dockside Green residents, and others across the bridge to downtown.

‘Then we can remove the rails from the bridge’s north side, resurface and divide it for pedestrians and cyclists, enhance appreciation of our historic Upper Harbour, and leave Strauss’ bascule (see-saw-style) bridge where it belongs.’

Danda Humphreys’ suggestion that the train station be relocated to the Roundhouse is echoed today in another letter to the Editor of the Victoria News.  

Larry Zilinsky of Saanich writes: ‘there is a group that is trying to restore the historic roundhouse just up the road from the blue bridge.  

‘So why does the train have to go across the bridge in the first place?

‘Why not stop the train at the roundhouse, turn the whole thing into a tourist attraction, and put at least some of the taxpayers’ money that’s saved by not needing a tressle and railroad bridge towards the restoring of the roundhouse?

‘Vic West benefits, the tourists benefit, the taxpayers benefit, and the bridge project is virtually cut in half.’

 

[The full texts of Yule Heibel's 'Blue Bridge Blues' essay, and Martin Segger and Danda Humphrey's comments on it are found in separate postings to the CCC BLOGROLL on the right, or by using the 'search' function.  Mr. Zilinsky's full letter will be found in the next post to the CCC BLOG.]

CCC

MY ARGUMENT WITH THE B. C. CONSERVATIVE PARTY: Ten suggestions for recovery (with apologies to Thomas Merton)

I don’t mind being associated with a so-called ‘fringe’ party.  I have been alienated from the Establishment all my life.  But the constant strange secret shenanigans within the new B. C. Conservative Party  enrage me, particularly when one considers the absolute hypocrisy, ethical bankruptcy, social irresponsibility and financial imprudence of the ‘Gordon Campbell Liberals.’

The B. C. Conservative Party should have done much better in the last election than it did.  In fact, it did shockingly poorly, and the blame can be laid right at the door of the outgoing Party Leader Wilf Hanni.  

Yesterday, Mr. Hanni quit his post and the Party altogether, although he seems to be leaving the door slightly ajar, not slamming it completely, allowing for a possible return at some future date.  Talk about delusions of grandeur!

In his sketchy responses to questions from CanWest News Service writer Jonathan Fowlie, Mr. Hanni offered few real details about why he quit, instead blaming the move on ’some members [who] perhaps don’t understand the limits on populism.’  That’s something like Pope Benedict XVI blaming the outrage of the Muslims on their incomprehension of his outrageous remarks at Regensburg a couple of years ago. 

Mr. Hanni is no longer a member of the B. C. Conservative Party, but he owes all party members more of a transparent accounting of what precipitated this debacle.  Frankly, I am embarrassed to be associated with a party with such infighting, lack of transparency and lack of accountability.  I am not part of any clique or faction within the party, and like most members, have no clue what is really going in our new Party.

In a letter to one of the few B. C. Conservative Party members who is still trying to keep this sinking ship afloat, I suggested that the Party should re-orient itself in the following ways:

1. Completely severe all associations or references to the so-called ‘Conservative Party of Canada’ (which, of course, is not truly conservative at all).

2.  Become an unapologetic pro-life party, advocating fetal rights (banning all abortions in the province) and end-of-life rights (banning all assisted suicides and euthanasia in B. C. hospitals).

3.  Advocate for a total ban on all off-shore oil and gas exploration off B. C.’s pristine coast.   Mr. Hanni was apparently an engineer associated with the oil exploration and drilling business and was a keen advocate of this folly. This idea will never be accepted on the coast, and will doom the Party to eternal obscurity if it is not jettisoned.

4.  Ban all clearcut logging in the province.  Ban all logging activity in old growth forests.  Only allow selection logging as advocated by Merve Wilkinson at Wildwood in Cedar in the remaining second-growth forests.

Here are a few other suggestions:

5. Ban all visits of nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships from our coastal waters.  These visits by American submarines and aircraft carriers are not in the public interest as they are dangerous, costly to Victorians in terms of extraordinary policing of unruly American sailors, unpopular among a majority of Victoria citizens and certainly not justified by their supposed economic spinoffs.

 6.  Ban all so-called ‘needle exchanges, ‘wet houses’ for using alcoholics, methadone clinics and ’safe injection sites.’  Instead, offer those addicts and alcoholics who desperately want to get clean and sober a real life alternative: immediate detox and subsequent rehabilitation through residential treatment facilities based on strict abstinence.

7.  Prohibit the provincial government from ever again pursuing costly and non-transparent Olympics Games hosting contracts with the gangsterish International Olympics Committee.

8. Advocate charging ‘BC Liberal’ Premier Gordon Campbell and his cohort with obstruction of justice for his scandalous destruction of public interest emails pertaining to the B. C. Rail sell-off.

9. Make email voting by BCCP members in good standing available for the new Board of Directors, Leader and Deputy Leader of the B. C. Conservative Party so that our party can become truly democratic and accountable to the majority who cannot personally attend the upcoming AGM and Leadership Convention.

10.  Attend to the Party website every day.  There is an embarrassing lack of information there, the last ‘news’ item being entered in May. 

- Gregory Paul Michael Hartnell, Member in good standing of the BCCP

President, Concerned Citizens’ Coalition