Rating: NNNNN
TTC sucks and drags
Mike Smith, the writer of Losing Service Was A Drag, But… (NOW, May 1-7), should realize that the people the TTC’s strike hit the hardest are the ones who have to work weekends: the minimum-waged, holding three jobs to survive, with no benefits, students and low-income earners who fucking need the money. You know, the people no one cares about.
Most low-income earners live far from their shitty jobs. So no, it wasn’t just an “inconvenience” or a “drag” on someone’s weekend. Most of us don’t even have a weekend.
Karen J. Cao
Toronto
Something’s gotta give
Mike Smith is right in saying “the right to strike was used frivolously last weekend.” The citizens of Toronto have given TTC workers good jobs by any measure. For this they expect the workers’ gratitude, not a sense of entitlement.
Either the transportation market is opened to competition from the private sector and the monopoly withdrawn or the TTC should be declared an “essential service.”
To continue with the right to strike and a monopoly situation is to give the TTC the power to hold us hostage.
G. Lee
Toronto
All the fuss on the bus
To the driver of Jane bus 7250 going south at 11 am Friday, May 2. My wife got on the bus with an expired weekly pass I’d mistakenly transferred to her instead of a current one. You confiscated it. When she asked if she could have the pass back, you threatened to have her charged and fined. Where do you get off abusing women? An honest mistake, and she even had a token to pay the fucking fare, but you didn’t let her. Asshole.
Naseer Ahmad
Toronto
Spadina vintage
RE Spadina’s Missing Thread (NOW, May 1-7). Sheila Gostick says it’s cool to find the union label on her vintage T.O. garments.
Wait a minute! You don’t have to look for vintage. Thousands of workers in our city are producing Canadian union-label garments right here every day of the week.
While Gostick’s article was a loving look back at the shmatte industry, the loss of tariffs, the flood of cheap imports and the rising Canadian dollar all challenge Canada’s once thriving apparel industry.
I hope your readers visit the Common Thread exhibit as Gostick invites them to.
I also hope they’ll remember it the next time they go clothes shopping and look for the Made-in-Canada, UNITE HERE label.
Alex Dagg
Canadian Co-Director
UNITE HERE!
Stealing from Salton’s saint
David Carey’s story on the Salton Sea (NOW, May 1-7) advises visitors to explore visionary artist Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain for “free if you can sneak in while he’s out.”
It’s rather mean-spirited to exploit a septuagenarian desert hermit existing on a meagre pension. And unnecessary, given that Leonard Knight does not charge admission.
In fact, if you ask him nicely, he’ll give you an 11-by-14 inch picture puzzle of his mountain for free.
He insists that while he does accept donations of money, food, paint and brushes, if he asks for it “the love is gone.”
It seems rather churlish to recommend stealing from the Saint of the Salton Sea. By the way, there are some nice pics of him on the mountain at our site (www.shrines.tv).
Michael McNamara
Markham Street Films Inc.
Toronto
Mugabe rules
RE Black Monster, Red Dragon (NOW, April 24-30). Letter-writer Ted Turner (obviously not the Ted Turner) puts a perplexing spin on the situation in Zimbabwe.
He conveniently overlooks the fact that the confiscation of white-owned farmland has taken the economy of Zimbabwe from one of the richest in Africa to one of the poorest.
He also overlooks the fact that Robert Mugabe has not only impoverished his people economically but politically as well, including the most recent election. Does the name Morgan Tsvangirai ring a bell?
As for China, the human rights record of that country, whether with respect to Tibet or other situations, speaks for itself.
David L. Shanoff
Toronto
Cannibal heart
Regarding your reference to compassionate carnivores” representing the next wave of environmental consciousness (NOW, April 17-23).
How can killing anything that does not want to die qualify as being compassionate?
Now, if we could genetically engineer animals (including ourselves) to be born without brains, then “compassionate” killing would be less of a contradiction. Even cannibalism could be justified, at least more than current meat-eating practices.
Boshko Cenic
Etobicoke
PETA paradox
RE Peta Plays Chicken (NOW, May 1-7). Does PETA not realize that if we stopped eating chickens, PETA would soon become an endangered species?
David Barkham
Toronto
Hero to the homeless
What gives, Toronto? In a city where good citizenship awards and commendations are handed out like candy to people who dial 911, where are the accolades for Valerie Valen?
Valen risked her life trying to save homeless man Paul Croutch and was injured by his assailants, too. She was both a good Samaritan and a braver person than most of us in that she stepped up and put her life on the line for another human being.
This shocking oversight is utterly shameful and contemptible and speaks volumes about political attitudes of the less fortunate in the community.
Amanda Britain
Toronto
Anti-Semitism on the rise
Before I read Paul Weinberg’s Temple Tempest (NOW, April 24-30), I was a 70-year-old mother and bubie who had become concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism (i.e., Israel Apartheid Week).
After reading this article I have become an aging retro rocker and maybe even Judeo-supremacist. I can add the titles to my business card.
I believe Weinberg is a self-hating Jew and wrote such a negative article because he had to pay $180 like everybody else to get into the Moshe Feiglin dinner and speech.
By the way, there were 300 people there, not 150. And I would describe Feiglin’s appearance as bookish, not nerdy.
Beverley Bartlett
Toronto
