The Editor,
Over the years I’ve contributed a number of letters, expressing concern over the effect that the proliferation of empty mega-houses, Chinese-only signage, consumption of shark-fin soup and entrenched ethnocentric attitudes might be having on the quality of life in Richmond. But I ask, has the furor over these issues caused any attitudes to change? For example, have certain restaurant owners and our MP Alice Wong become more sensitized to and respectful of the values of the majority of Canadian citizens or have they just been keeping a low profile, waiting for the storm to pass?
Are we any more willing to engage in discussions with each other about finding ways to overcome or defeat the most problematic social and inter-cultural problems that exist in this community, or are we content with the degrees of misunderstanding, distrust, and divisiveness that result from distance, exclusivity, and ignorance?
Are we any more willing to engage in discussions with each other about finding ways to overcome or defeat the most problematic social and inter-cultural problems that exist in this community, or are we content with the degrees of misunderstanding, distrust, and divisiveness that result from distance, exclusivity, and ignorance?
Have our government and business leaders become more proactive in addressing such problems, or have they remained as invisible and disengaged as they have mostly been in the past?
Has the devolution of our residential neighbourhoods into rows of un-occupied, off-shore-owned, money-banking, pseudo-mansions shown any signs of slowing down, or does the relentless journey to the destruction of the very concept of neighbourhood continue in many parts of Richmond?
And what evidence do we have that mayor and his cabal at city hall care any more about the concerns and welfare of Richmond’s long-time, full-time, senior, and disadvantaged residents than they used to (which wasn’t much to begin with)?
But don’t feel too badly if you feel the answers to all these questions are in the negative. Chip and Shannon Wilson, they of the vehicle-free Point Grey Road mansion and clothing fit for only skinny people fame, have arrived in town with their new school of design. I am sure our mayor, like his counterpart in Vancouver, will be only too eager to bask in the warm glow exuded by this billionaire’s new vanity project.
Meanwhile ......
Ray Arnold
Richmond
