A mural of Saint Javelin – the Virgin Mary with an anti-tank missile launcher – has stood on this residential building in Kyiv since the spring of 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
Modern icon
Re “‘Saint Javelin’ becomes a striking and lucrative icon of Ukraine’s resistance” (Sept. 30): It’s becoming increasingly hard to be an atheist in today’s chaotic world.
To hold a belief that is unwavering, yet to respect that, for the most part, the rest of the world feels differently. To remain agonizingly non-judgmental when political objectives are shaped by religious pressures; when God-fearing people die at the hands of people fearing a different version of the same God.
Now I learn that an image of the Virgin Mary cradling an anti-tank missile has become not just a Ukrainian icon, but a powerful “spiritual connection” to their “protector.” Although my personal belief remains unshaken, I think I understand.
Jack Holland Toronto
What’s the plan?
Re “Alberta’s mad plan to break up the CPP, and why it (deliberately) misses the point” (Opinion, Aug. 30): Why does an Alberta pension plan look so appealing to Albertans? They see that the Canada Pension Plan discriminates against wealthy Canadians, and Alberta is richly endowed with wealthy people.
Canada has become increasingly socialist. Income-tax rates have become more progressive. Income-tested social benefits have proliferated.
Many Canadians also take the view that natural resources are wealth of which they are entitled to partake, just as if those resources were monetary. The federal government contends that it has a right to curtail oil production everywhere in Canada, if that will help Canada meet its emissions targets.
Premier Danielle Smith is saying that Canada can apply socialism to expropriate some of Alberta’s monetary wealth, but Canada is not entitled to kill the hydrocarbon goose that lays the golden eggs. The rest of Canada does not agree that Albertans should be allowed to favour other Albertans over other Canadians.
Patrick Cowan Toronto
“This whiny, crabby, godforsaken country” – how about a finger-pointing, divided, pigs-at-the-trough citizenry that has lost a sense of national purpose in the face of a breakdown in the world order?
I was born and raised in Cape Breton. Like many of my generation, I had to leave for work. This provided the opportunity to live in Western Canada, Toronto and abroad for many years. For the past 30 years, I have called Ottawa my home.
From such a perspective, I can say that columnist Andrew Coyne’s description of Canada was not as harsh as it could have been.
Bruce McDonald Ottawa
No way out
Re “Alberta looking to Ontario for an ally on electricity regulations” (Sept. 30): An electricity system like Ontario’s – which relies on nuclear power, a technology associated with hazardous upstream and downstream waste, for 60 per cent of its output – should hardly be described as “clean.”
Ontario’s system is on track to become more carbon-intensive as its reliance on natural-gas-fired generation is planned to increase dramatically over the next two decades. That may make the province a potential ally of Alberta in its fight over proposed Clean Electricity Regulations, but neither look to have much to stand on as examples of environmentally or economically sustainable pathways to decarbonization.
Mark Winfield Co-chair, Sustainable Energy Initiative, faculty of environmental and urban change, York University; Toronto
Past policy
Re “How Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberals grabbed reserve lands in the Prairie west” (Opinion, Sept. 30): Surrendering reserve land was an example of public policy informed by 19th-century anthropological thought.
The doctrine of the vanishing race accepted the disappearance of Indigenous people as inevitable. Thus, reserves were regarded as waystations on the road to extinction.
As the population of Indigenous people on a specific reserve declined, the government responded by surrendering that surplus land. When the 1921 census revealed a growing Indigenous population, the federal government finally abandoned this policy.
Part of its legacy is the specific land claim underlying the Blackfoot settlement.
Eldon Yellowhorn Professor, Indigenous studies, Simon Fraser University; Burnaby, B.C.
Justice for all
Re “From ‘tough on crime’ to a new transformative vision for Canada’s justice system” (Opinion, Sept. 30): I recently visited Kingston Penitentiary. I was left appropriately depressed.
The institution was closed in 2013. Were six-by-eight-foot cells with no windows in any way restorative for inmates? The punishment doesn’t fit the crime; what we don’t transform, we transmit.
We are morally culpable in ensuring inmates can be restored to better humanity both inside and outside the system. It is an issue where we have chosen to lock the door and throw away the keys.
It makes economic and societal sense to find better ways of solving crime. Fear and hate should not be the answer. Addressing root causes is always harder work.
Transformation supports everyone. Sadly, it is often the least of our concerns.
John Pentland Reverend, Hillhurst United Church; Calgary
Pain points
Re “What my stupid bad back taught me about chronic pain” (Opinion, Sept. 30): There is also the landmark 1965 publication from Canadian research psychologist Ronald Melzack and British neuroscientist Patrick Wall. In it they outlined the gate control theory of pain, which first describes the biopsychosocial interactions in the pain experience.
Their groundbreaking research fuelled a plethora of research and multidisciplinary chronic pain treatment programs, now considered the foremost model for assisting these patients. Unfortunately, waiting lists are long and the first line of the medical system is the family doctor, who is often unable to manage complex cases in everyday practice.
The dominance of the pharmacological approach to health care has limited the potential for multidisciplinary interventions, and contributes to the frustrating experiences and unfortunate statistics of chronic pain.
Mary Mahon PhD, R.Psych; Calgary
Research relating structure and pain is a snapshot. Disc issues are a process of injury and healing, for which pain is directly related.
Emerging neuroscience reveals a variety of biomarkers and ways that nerves for pain (nociceptors) can be activated and information altered. These can include stress hormones, neuroinflammation and communication or action issues with supportive glial cells. Essentially there can be dysfunctional nociception not seen by standard tests, which helps to explain why pain persists.
Resolution of chronic pain should be biologically based and targeted specifically to those mechanisms. Until then, it’s important that treatment from a biopsychosocial perspective doesn’t conflate treatment of the person and their situation (stressors, work issues, mental health) with treatment of their pain.
Monica Noy MRSc, Toronto
I have degenerative discs. While not a cure, swimming every day for an hour at least makes the pain more tolerable.
Gary William O’Brien Ottawa
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