To The Editor,

It’s a brand new year. We continue to plow through life like a bull in a china shop. For some reason, we humans don’t like to remember our past. If we did, maybe we wouldn’t step in the same crap all the time.

How about a few human events over the last 100 years? Hiroshima, the U.S. was a little angry. Chernoble, oops. Hiroshima, another little accident. The Holocaust, Rowandan Genocide, slavery – which continued for hundreds of years and still continues to this day in different facets around the world.

In the past, certain factions have tried to take over the world. The Romans. Hitler gave it a try but then he bumped into Russia and that was the end of that. Then the Brits with the monarchy, they were really all over the place – Africa, Barbados, Bahamas, Australia, India, South America, Canada. But along with their conquering, they also brought slavery and a whole lot of other nasty things. Commonwealth my butt. Now it’s China’s turn to try and own the whole enchilada. I hope they don’t make it.

Let’s look at our past. All of us white Europeans crossed the ocean to this new world – greeted at her shores by the original owners of this country who helped us Europeans learn to cope in a new land. How do we return the kindness? We allow them to join the fight to save this country; many die. Are they ever recognized for their contribution and bravery in saving this land? Never, they are totally screwed out of their land by smooth-talking, sleazy Canadian politicians and signed treaties that are totally useless and not worth the paper they are written on. If that wasn’t enough, their lives were changed completely by residential schools – our government at work along with the church.

I want you readers to take the time right now and try to imagine your son or daughter just turned five or six and people you don’t know come into your house and take your children away from you in cattle cars and you don’t know where they are being taken. Can you wrap your head around that? How would that make you feel? After failing to stop the Canadian government from doing it, you learn years later these young innocent children were being beaten, raped and murdered, after the church tried to cleanse them of their natural ways, cut their hair, changed their names and forcibly tried to assimilate them into our white European way of life. And while all this was happening their mothers and older sisters were being sterilized while being in the hospital for small surgeries without their consent or knowledge. They’re still being treated like third class citizens to this day.

Another part of our past in this area was too much clear-cutting. One hundred years ago – documented by South Nation Conservation – that had caused severe droughts, flooding and erosion. Will history repeat itself? Why shouldn’t it? Severe clear-cutting does change local weather patterns in a big way. I guess we’ll just wait and see.

Another threat to our forests is people with a lot of money needing a tax right-off. So they buy some land and destroy the forest. Wildlife habitat gone, ecosystems decimated – all so they can pay less taxes and have a hobby killing a planet. People with a lot of cash but just no class.

So our planet isn’t looking too good. A pandemic, 17 per cent of the population not wanting to vaccinate or mask, our hospitals bursting at the seams, climate change coming on like a freight train and in that regard I truly believe the governments around the world realize we can’t stop what we’ve started. It’s just too big a problem, but they don’t want to cause a panic by informing everyone.

Our future. Our premier, Doug Ford, is afraid of losing his job so he wants to start mining for lithium and cobalt in northern Ontario. It will not only destroy the land, what about the sludge from the mining? What are you going to do with it? Put it in our rivers and lakes.

He also wants to build electric cars here. What about when the batteries die, Doug? You can’t recycle them. What’s gonna happen? Oh, I know, you’ll put them in barrels and dump them in the ocean, so they can snuggle to the thousands of barrels of radioactive waste we’ve been dumping for decades. Good idea Doug.

Kyoto Accord, Paris, Glasgow – photo shoots that’s all they were, complete with empty promises. I recently saw a choir on TV, all standing straight, all holding the book that contains the words to what they have to sing. The big thing ? They were all on the same page. Until we all do the same concerning the pandemic – and especially climate change – we will achieve nothing, and the children will get the brunt of stupidity, greed and arrogance.

We’re not out of the woods yet. We never will be. We’re just out of trees.

Good luck, Happy New Year?

Andy Perreault, Vankleek Hill