Heads in the sand

Although we have now moved away from Sooke, I enjoy reading the Mirror to see what is happening in our former town. Sooke is beautiful place full of great people but I was very saddened to see that the rampant alcohol issues continue to mar an otherwise wonderful community.

Everything from huge issues at the soccer games to drinking in public in the middle of the day, to the most serious, drinking and driving, including someone in the ditch in the early evening and someone in the parking lot of the 17 Mile Pub who was four times over the legal limit. One can only hope this person wasn’t served any alcohol at any establishment, as this would clearly be someone who was way past being drunk.

Sooke is very lucky to have such a responsive RCMP department, or this person would have likely caused an accident and perhaps harmed someone innocent. I have to say, even after reading these Police Beat’s every week, I was disgusted and shocked.

Time to stop worrying about how to bring people and business to Sooke in a macro sense, the town will never have the appeal it needs as long as people roam even the downtown streets drinking outright in public?

What kind of image is that for Sooke?

Hopefully this is a wake up call for all in town, but if the past is any indication I doubt it. People will continue to keep their heads in the sand or erroneously just say, “that is Sooke” or “it happens everywhere” and just wait until someone is killed. It is amazing based on just this week’s police beat, no one was seriously hurt, but it is only a matter of time and then perhaps this issue will make the front page of the paper and get the community’s attention.

Andrew Bailey

Campbell River

Connect correctly

Many Snowbirds will be heading south for the winter to the U.S. and Mexico and should be aware of the practices used by certain telecommunication companies.

Many of us prefer to call the Telus operator when making long distance calls from down south but these calls are sometimes intercepted by other operating companies who do not identify themselves and will offer to put the call through.

Since deregulation these companies can charge rates many times greater than Telus would charge for the same call and this charge will appear on your telephone bill.

Telus will remove this charge if asked to but customers will later receive a bill from the company that completed the call for them.

If a caller suspects they are not speaking to the Telus operator they should ask to be connected to Telus or hang up and try again. 

 Allan Hornsby

Sooke

Watching speeders

I am a relatively new resident in Sooke having moved from Vancouver in July 2008.  

My family and I settled on Arranwood Drive close to Ecole Poirier Elementary School.  

Since arriving here I have witnessed nothing but constant inconsiderate and ignorant drivers barreling up and down our street.  Many of those drivers obviously late in getting their kids to school or picking them up. Between 8:30 and 9 a.m. and again from 2:30 to 4 p.m. seems to be the worst times when we witness people racing to and fro.  

As Arranwood Drive was originally a dead end street, this problem seems to have arisen as a result of the developer opening up a drop off purely as a convenience to parents.  This seems to have alleviated traffic congestion on the roads going into elementary schools.  Now, irresponsible drivers pay little attention to the 30 km/hr speed limit and continue to drive at excessive speeds.  

Despite my repeated calls to the RCMP nothing has happened to date.  There have been a number of near mishaps between cars and kids, one included my seven-year-old daughter nearly being run over while playing. The woman in the red van was driving at nearly twice the posted speed limit when this happened. On another occasion a jeep came barelling down the road with three kids in the back and nearly took out the traffic circle.  

I am terrified that this recipe of blatant disregard for the posted speed limit coupled with irresponsible and unattentive drivers will eventually cost the life of one of our children.  

So, since it seems that neither the police, nor the speeders are demonstrating any tangible solution to the problem, I am warning those drivers I will be watching you. I have been taking down your license plate numbers, the time and the location, and I will be video recording traffic up and down our street during the aforementioned times so if I do catch you, I will be turning this evidence over to the authorities.

Ian Buxton

Sooke

Sidewalks shameful

In response to “Town Aura trashed” printed in the October 28, 2009 Sooke News Mirror.

I, a young mother of three very young children, am appalled at the fact that you, G.R. Saunders, feel the sidewalks in place are adequate and need no upgrading.  

I walk the town core on a daily basis with the sidewalks that disappear into the street as well as the potholes and the street crossings which are a death wish.

If you live a day in the life of the elderly or a mother of young children, you will quickly see that it is in dire need of upgrading. No one can tell where the sidewalk ends and the road begins, nor can they feel comfortable trying to negotiate the obnoxious streets, shopping centres or facilities within the Sooke core.

Another example is on Townsend Road where there are sidewalks one third of the way on either end of the street but in the middle there is nothing. The hill is supposed to be a 30km/hr zone but everyone uses it as a speedway along the hilled section by CASA where it is blind to the cars and children walking along the edge of the road hoping the person speeding has enough time to negotiate around the child.

There are no elevators and very few handicapped doors to assist in making a very difficult and dangerous journey into town a very stressful experience.

So, please tell me where in Sooke you are referring to that, “there are sidewalks where it makes sense to have sidewalks?”

Sooke should feel ashamed considering the majority of the population is made up of young families and the elderly. The city of Sooke is regularly spoken of as a growing community where people want to raise their children and grow old, but the town does nothing to make things safer for this to occur.

There are many things which can be done that would make appropriate sense, such as ensuring the safety and mobility of both our young and elderly and this would still keep our city’s current aura.

Denika  Fercho

Sooke

Halloween is fun

To Jim Sinclair: Your article against Halloween really made me mad, and I think it was quite inappropriate.

First of all, you are just one of the few who doesn’t like Halloween. There are many people who would agree with me that Halloween is one of the better times of the year. Sure there might be a bit of crime, a little more drunk teens (which, by the way, happens every week), but other than that there isn’t really anything big.

People love to go trick or  treating, get scared at haunted houses and maybe some really good decorated homes, and hang around with their friends. What’s wrong with that? Sure there might be the trouble makers who like to cause mischief, but there aren’t many of them, and definitely none the cops couldn’t take care of if they got that bad.

Second of all, do you celebrate Christmas? I bet you do. I have nothing against Christmas personally, however I bet you didn’t know that what you are celebrating is actually an ancient religion, called Pagan, from the beginning of time when people worshiped the sun and a whole bunch of other gods. Halloween comes from Pagan times. The modern version of the Bible is nothing but a lot of made up stuff stolen from the Pagan religion, while Halloween is actually based on something that actually happened, as well as some other religious ideas, such as the Christian holy day of All Saints. And there is a lot more information and religion history behind it, just like Christmas.

Halloween really started when the ancient Celts (then called the festival of the dead) disguised themselves as a harmful spirit to allow their dead and harmful spirits to pass on to the afterlife. What can be more important than that for a holiday?

Halloween should be declared a international holiday (did you know that most countries in the world have Halloween?) and work and school should be off for one to two days.

You got to remember there is just as much history, importance, and fun in Halloween as there is in Thanksgiving and Christmas. Could you imagine a world without Halloween? I couldn’t, it would be horrible.

 Keegan L.

Sooke

Last name withheld by request