From The Editor – Feb 2022

As you will notice we are now in colour, a major change that I trust you will enjoy! Also unique to this month is an opportunity to support a local athlete headed to Beijing (Good luck Brooklyn!).

As a kid growing up, I hated Valentine’s Day as my mother made me give Valentine’s Day cards to all my classmates (including those I didn’t like). This exercise taught me the need to be accepting and inclusive of everyone, even those who were different. You see, my mother had a disability, and so, learning to accept people who were different was important to her.

Throughout my career I have had the privilege to work with people of differing ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as differing ideologies.

Over the past number of months there has been a significant push to vaccinate ourselves, with many arguments for and against. It has alarmed me that our Prime Minister, the one who has created laws around hate speech, has himself made accusatory statements of individuals that just simply aren’t true. On/or about December 29, 2021, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, stated on a public television broadcast in Quebec, that those who have not been vaccinated are very often “Misogynists and Racists”. He then stated that “They don’t believe in science/ progress”. Finally, Mr. Trudeau went on to make the statement “This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people?”

I personally made the choice to get vaccinated, but for individuals who have chosen not to, shouldn’t be labeled with such hateful and divisive language. Many of the individuals that have chosen to not vaccinate that I know are highly educated professionals and in no way have they ever demonstrated the characteristics labeled by the Prime Minister. In my mind, his comments crossed a line. More importantly, I think our society has crossed a line. This statement should have caused outrage. Instead, it has gone virtually unnoticed. Maybe it’s time to relook at how we’re managing COVID-19 and realize that we must find a solution that doesn’t label people we don’t understand as “misogynists”. If individuals who have worked the front line of COVID-19 are still choosing not to be vaccinated, that should be their choice, and we shouldn’t be treating them as a different class of citizen.

If only my mom could teach all of us what she endeavoured to teach me.

Last month I missed an important part of the Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association’s thank you article. I apologize for this oversight.

BCT raised $23, 507 in our recent 2021 BCT Online Auction. THANK YOU to everyone who donated, bid or ran errands. The extensive donor list is: