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Letter: Richmond councillor told the truth...and it sometimes hurts

Dear Editor, Reading about Harold Steves’ comments regarding the kicking incident at the Richmond library and the size of houses being built on the ALR is nothing less than a joke.
Richmond News
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If Richmond was in the dictionary, it’s a good bet that the “lived-in” features of veteran city councillor and Steveston farmer Harold Steves would be prominent. In 1968, Steves was elected to Richmond city council as a candidate of the Richmond Anti-Pollution Association, campaigning for sewage treatment and against the industrialization of the Fraser River and adjacent farmland. Sturgeon Banks was an industrial reserve, and a super-tanker oil port was being planned for Garry Point. He helped stop the super-tankers, made Garry Point into a park, and built a public trail along the west dyke. From 1972 to 1975, he served as a Richmond MLA and helped bring in the Agricultural Land Reserve. Back on city council, he helped save the Terra Nova farmlands, the Highway to Heaven back-lands and Garden City Lands, as well as preserving the London Farm, Gulf of Georgia Cannery and Britannia Shipyard heritage sites. Steves taught at four Richmond schools and still operates the farm, owned by his family since 1877, along with wife Kathy, his children and grandchildren. He grows heirloom vegetable seed sand raises chickens and Belted Galloway cows.

Dear Editor,

Reading about Harold Steves’ comments regarding the kicking incident at the Richmond library and the size of houses being built on the ALR is nothing less than a joke.

Have they (meaning all cultures) become so sensitive and politically correct that the facts about any topic become a racial issue?

Let’s reverse recent news stories for a moment. If the victim kicked had been Asian and the young man that kicked her was Caucasian, would the story have vanished so quickly?

Would it have been considered a possible hate crime? Or the recent assault of a man in Ontario by three thugs of South Asian ethnicity from B.C. be called a potential hate crime had the circumstances been reversed?

Perhaps the facts are facts and multiculturalism is a convenient term used by every culture and colour, with the exception of white people, who appear to be excluded when it comes to free speech and any racial reality comment.

After all, demographic statistics prove and suggest that white people are, and will become, the minority group within Greater Vancouver in the next 10 years.

Steves said the truth and he should not have been put in a media or cultural position to apologize. Facts are facts and Steves disclosed the facts.

Bruce MacLeod

Richmond