You go, girls!
Has anyone noticed that most of Canada's gold medals have been won by women? In fact, most of Canada's medals have been won by women. So how come your big front-page photo shows fans at a men's hockey game? Helllooo!
Barbara McGeough, Vancouver
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And the gold medal for misogyny is awarded to - you. Four medals won by women result in a small strip of pictures across the top of your front page. The ever-indulged NHL players win a quarter-final game and the photo fills half a page.
Pennie Jevnikar, London, Ont.
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Yes, the Canadian men's hockey win over the Russians was something to celebrate. But it's shameful - if predictable - that you chose to focus on a group of well-paid professional athletes moonlighting on their national team rather than on triumphant Olympian women. No wonder we can't wrap our heads around the long-term value of programs such as Own the Podium when we act as though hockey is the only thing that matters.
Lara Mills, Ottawa
The aboriginal podium
While it was refreshing to see female Canadian athletes take their place amongst the world's elite on "Women's Wednesday," there remains a notable absence on the podium - first nations athletes. For all the progress women have made in sports, the same cannot be said about members of our first nations.
But things are changing. An aboriginal conference on sports was held in conjunction with the opening of the Vancouver Olympics. Clara Hughes, the flag-bearer at the opening ceremonies, has acknowledged the absence of aboriginals in sports and has committed to working with first nations groups to overcome this. Unfortunately, none of the steps will work until Canadians begin to fund and respect indigenous first nations sports.
Lacrosse, canoeing and kayaking barely exist in secondary school curriculums. At the postsecondary level, these sports are given even shorter shrift. Aboriginals who beat the odds and make it to university are faced with further stigma by having their sports marginalized. Meantime, European sports such as Nordic skiing, curling, soccer, field hockey, volleyball, rowing, water polo and squash receive funding.
Rod Payne, Edmonton
A sweeping history
In How Nipplegate And The Olympics Coverage Are Connected (Review, Feb. 24), John Doyle asks the TV pundits to take five minutes to explain the rules of curling. It can take less time than that.
Generally, the game is more or less the same as when two Paleolithic men, bored out of their skulls with cave-dwelling, competed to establish who could throw a rock closest to a target. So that the contest wouldn't extend into the Mesolithic era, they limited how many rocks you could throw. In the winter, they continued their game by sliding the rocks on nearby ice. Thus was formed the Canadian Curling Association.
They found that the rocks slide better if there are no obstacles on the ice. So they invented the brush. It was only later that the brush was used for personal hygiene.
Early man believed there was a spirit in all natural things and so, in addition to brushing, they begged the rocks to do their bidding by yelling at them. This quaint element of the game is still with us today.
In modern curling, the brushes are no longer hairy things. If you sweep in front of the rock, it travels farther; but if you sweep behind the rock, it doesn't slow down. Body-checking is no longer allowed.
I hope this makes things clear.
Allen Strike, Port Hope, Ont.
The right to die
Margaret Somerville ( The Right Not To Die - letter, Feb. 25) seems uncertain as to whether competent adult Canadians have a legal right to die. She should know that suicide was decriminalized in Canada in 1972.
Thus, Yanisa Fonteece ( Judge To Decide Fate Of Husband In Wife's Suicide - Feb. 24), unless she was mentally incompetent, had a right to decide her life was no longer worth living, and no one else, including her husband, had a legal right to stop her unless they reasonably believed she was mentally ill or otherwise incompetent.
If Ms. Fonteece had been brought to hospital after attempting suicide and judged legally competent, then any health-care professional who forced life-saving treatment on her would be committing a criminal assault.
Arthur Schafer, director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba
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As a part-time resident of Thunder Bay, I'm well-versed in the Fonteece tragedy. And as a one-time lawyer, I strongly disagree with Margaret Somerville's assessment that there's a duty to prevent someone from committing suicide because, otherwise, "people who have attempted suicide and are brought to hospital must not be treated but allowed to die." If that person is brought to hospital conscious and lucid and not mentally incompetent, and they refuse treatment, they must be allowed to die. No doctor will be prosecuted for disregarding their expressed wish.
Andrew Martin, Toronto
Over the top
As a former archivist with Library and Archives Canada, I am saddened - but not surprised - with the news that it's cutting its popular First World War educational program ( First World War Workshops Soon To Be History - Feb. 25). Budget woes - Library and Archives Canada, shamefully, has never been adequately funded by the federal government - no doubt played a role in this decision. But that's probably not the only reason.
For years, customer service to the public has been under attack at LAC from those who advocate "records management" rather than true interaction with LAC's public clients. Service hours have been cut, and I can attest, having visited almost 150 archives on three continents, that LAC's service to the public is among the very worst I have seen.
The claim that clients will be able to consult digitized records, instead, is a red herring. Digitization is expensive and time-consuming, and the vast majority of textual records held by LAC will never be digitized - there is simply too much paper.
That LAC would cut a successful program designed to teach kids about our national history tells me two things: Management has learned no lessons from past mistakes, and LAC badly needs lessons in good public-relations strategies. I shall not hold my breath.
Galen Perras, associate professor of history, University of Ottawa
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Andrew Cohen, president of the Historica-Dominion Institute, says his organization supports a state funeral for Canada's last known First World War veteran, John Babcock ( The Babcock Pledge - letter, Feb. 25), so Canadians "might have a better understanding of what [that war]was, in all its horror, and what it meant to us as a nation."
In principle, no one could object to these worthy goals. In practice, however, it sounds as though Mr. Cohen subscribes to the myth of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where, so nationalist historians maintain, Canada was forged as a nation.
The First World War was a senseless slaughter that cost roughly 65,000 Canadians their lives. Nationalism was a key cause of this tragedy; any attempt to imbue the Great War with nationalist mythology is offensive to the memory of its millions of victims, historically inaccurate, and totally misses the point. John Babcock apparently understood the lessons of that war: We should heed them.
Geoff Read, assistant professor of history, Huron University College, London, Ont.
Yes, let's review African aid
Brett House and Désirée McGraw ( Our Shaky Hand On African Aid - Feb. 23) question Canada's decision to put a freeze on increased aid to Africa. I suggest they read the book Dead Aid, by the Zambian-born Dambisa Moyo. With a doctorate in economics from Oxford, Ms. Moyo argues that the $1-trillion in development aid sent to Africa in the past 50 years has made Africans worse off, instead of better.
Greater accountability, therefore, seems to be highly commendable before more money is wasted.
Tom Chambers, North Bay, Ont.
Story climbing
Russell Smith's article on the insatiable demand for advice on how to become a novelist ( What's Wrong With This Paradox? - Review, Feb. 25) reminded me of a story involving the great Canadian rock climber Hugh Burton, who, in his early 20s, had already pioneered several new routes up El Capitan's huge vertical face in Yosemite. When a young climber asked him the best way to bag a new ascent, Hugh told him to experiment on shorter routes first, then graduate to feats on big walls.
At this, the young climber scoffed, noting that Hugh's first new ascent had been on a big wall. To which Hugh replied: "Yes, but I didn't have to ask anyone how to do it."
Luc Bouchet, Calgary
Heart of the matter
Canadian cardiologists are put out that Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams went to the U.S. for an operation on his heart ( Doctors Feel Snubbed - Feb. 24). Perhaps Mr. Williams should voluntarily undergo more surgeries and spread his custom among the pouting doctors.
Marjorie Doyle, St. John's