Not for the first time in Richmond's history, the protracted - and sometimes heated - debate on the amount of English on Chinese-only signs reared its head over the last week.
There have been several failed attempts over the years to push the city into investigating the need to police the lack of English on business signs in Richmond.
It's a practise that irks, and often angers, a growing number of Richmond residents who don't speak Cantonese or Mandarin and who feel excluded in their own backyard.
This time, two local ladies, both longtime Richmondites, arrived at city hall to state their case, armed with a 1,000-signature petition calling for city council to probe the issue. So, can all of the people who put pen to paper be wrong? Can they all be xenophobes, or dare we say the "R" word?
Coun. Evelina Halsey-Brandt, herself an immigrant of Serbian-Croatian roots, shot down any move to investigate the issue, saying she spent her childhood living in a Slavic community in Canada, with little or no English spoken or used.
Being able to continue using her native tongue helped Halsey-Brandt and her family integrate at their own, comfortable pace, she said.
But when you have one of her colleagues, Coun. Chak Au, an immigrant from Hong Kong, and two leading members of the Chinese community in Richmond all saying there could be something there - then surely it's incumbent on council to look into it at the very least.
Who knows, perhaps if city staff had been tasked to probe further, they might have found just a small percentage of all signage in Richmond is "exclusive" to Chinese-speaking residents.
At least then, city council could say, "Hey, we've had a look, but there's nothing to see here," and we can all go home for tea (English or bubble).
Such a move would have put the issue to bed - at least for a longer time than it will surely take before this perennial thorn in Richmond's side pricks once more into the city's supposedly diverse and culturally harmonious social balloon.
