Dear Editor,
This is the tale of my journey as an active citizen, trying to save a community by boycotting a bad neighbour: Wal-Mart.
Congratulations SmartCentres and City of Richmond Council. You won! You now have your Wal-Mart, the first of its kind within our city limits. You’ve allowed your citizens to continue with the status quo as the highest consumer spenders per capita in Canada.
This development has been very personal for me, as I’ve spent more than three decades living in the West Cambie neighbourhood. From its infancy, SmartCentres succeeded by bullying my community to death. How does a community die? The people move away, abandoned houses go up in flames, trees are uprooted, the environment gets bulldozed, and sand becomes king of this once arable land.
The city even provided early compensation to the community by allocating 12 acres for an adjacent natural park. Shockingly, after the Wal-Mart approval, the park was completely rezoned for housing.
I’ve attended more than 60 city council meetings, and made many presentations on this issue. Numerous times the SmartCentres staff (albeit not under oath) misrepresented their social responsibility commitments. They had no intent to protect any of the existing natural qualities of the designated environmentally sensitive area they have now built upon.
Wal-Mart has done nothing to benefit our society, or improve the lives of our residents, and its arrival has detrimental implications for our local businesses and overall health as a community.
Wal-Mart is the largest global corporation. They have a devastating impact on the cultural landscape of communities all over the world. We are conscious social beings that have a choice. Ask yourself: does shopping at Wal-Mart support my community? You can choose to feed this billionaire beast of a bad neighbour, or you can support your local retailers, your family and friends, and your neighbourhood.
Michael Wolfe
A Richmond teacher and environmentalist
(Editor’s Note: Wal-Mart Inc. markets its stores as Walmart.)
