Letters to the editor, Dec. 9: ‘I thought Wayne Gretzky had run out of ways to embarrass himself’

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Growing pains

Re “Oil options” (Letters, Dec. 5): A letter-writer doesn’t seem to understand we are facing a climate crisis that, if not slowed, will decimate habitats, drive species extinction, flood coastal cities, force climate refugees across the globe and cause more destructive wildfires all over our country.

Perhaps expanding the industrial sector that caused all this in the first place isn’t the best idea. To put it in economic terms: A pipeline would have short-term benefits, but we shouldn’t add gas to a fire with devastating long-term impacts.

The goals of economic growth should improve quality of life for citizens. The accelerationist philosophy of economic growth for its own sake is what landed us in this mess in the first place.

Let’s step back from the precipice and, instead of constantly chasing higher GDP, ask ourselves what we actually want to be as a country, then set about achieving it in a safe and ecologically sustainable way.

Iain McInnes Ottawa

Church and state

Re “Anti-hate bill faces hurdle after heated dispute over proposal to end religious exemption” (Dec. 5): It’s rare that I agree with the Bloc Québécois, however I think it is clearly correct to propose removing a religious exemption to Canada’s hate-speech law. Leaving an exemption in place gives people a way to say the vilest things with no consequences.

The separation of church and state is a sound principle. Many countries, including our neighbour to the south, have forgotten this, with sad consequences apparent.

So let’s stop trying to appease religions and act as the secular country we are.

Peter Hambly Hanover, Ont.

Canadians, and the leaders of every mainstream and fringe religious denomination, are no doubt sitting on the edge of their seats awaiting the outcome of debate that will finally determine whether their faith-based hate speech is legal or not.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, Sufis, voodooists, etc. (you get the idea), who may have expected their denominational leaders and core faith texts to demonstrate how to act in appropriate ways when it comes to hating their fellow men and women, can now take solace that Canada will finally provide them with guidance to live their best lives.

What’s next? Whether wearing religious symbols should be allowed in public? Oh wait, that’s already been settled.

Howard Brunt North Saanich, B.C.

Test the water

Re “More prostate cancer cases diagnosed at Stage 4 in recent years, study finds” (Dec. 2): The Canadian task force began recommending against screening in 2014. Since then, Stage 4 disease has increased by 50 to 65 per cent in men over 50. Yet in the 1990s, widespread testing resulted in a significant decrease in cancer mortality rates.

Over a 40-year career in family medicine, I witnessed friends, colleagues and many patients dealing with this disease that has caused the deaths of nearly 149,000 men in Canada between 1984 and 2021. Every screening test can result in overdiagnosis and overtreatment, yet it seems to only be raised as an issue for this disease.

Let’s end the charade and make prostate-specific antigen tests part of preventive medical screening alongside pap tests, colon cancer screening and mammography.

Val Rachlis MD, Toronto

Much population screening in medicine is controversial. The prostate-specific antigen test was discovered by Richard Albin, who later condemned its use for mass screening.

As the Canadian Cancer Society indicates, only about 25 per cent of abnormal PSA results are due to cancer. False positives can lead to unnecessary biopsies, anxiety and aggressive treatment of low-grade disease with the associated risks.

The Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination concluded in 2014 that if 1,000 men aged 55 to 69 years were screened over 13 years, one man would avoid death from prostate cancer. Given the misery associated with false positives, and the medical costs, is PSA really suited to mass screening?

After the study published recently in Current Oncology, it may be time to re-examine the issue. But until then, promotion of PSA screening without recognition of the complexity involved should be avoided.

Don Langille MD (retired), Halifax

Grate one

Re “Gretzky gave us a spectacle of meme-able proportions at the World Cup draw” (Sports, Dec. 6): I thought Wayne Gretzky had run out of ways to embarrass himself, mostly through his obsequious pandering to Donald Trump. However he then tried to read the names of places he could not be bothered to learn to pronounce, before a global audience. He had one job.

But why did the athlete representing Canada for the World Cup draw have to be Mr. Gretzky? How about Christine Sinclair, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Clara Hughes? Why was it a hockey player who retired decades ago and who has so clearly abandoned Canada?

Are we really such a godforsaken, hockey-ridden country?

Andrew Graham Toronto

Stand tall

Re “Frank Gehry, legendary architect of some of world’s most iconic buildings, dies at 96″ (Dec. 6): I first encountered Frank Gehry’s work at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minn.

Completed in 1993 and clad in stainless steel panels, it was something of a harbinger of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, albeit on a smaller scale. When I was there, I bought a flipbook of his sketches of the museum. It was called They told me not to build another brick lump.

Writing in your newspaper (“A monumental moment” – Nov. 8, 2008), then-architecture critic Lisa Rochon said Mr. Gehry’s transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario was “architecture that will illuminate long into the future.” Indeed – and no brick lumps there, either.

Nigel Brachi Edmonton

I have visited many of Frank Gehry’s projects around the world and, 30 years ago, worked briefly in his office for a publisher trying to do a complete works anthology.

The number of iterative models his studio would complete was breathtaking. There was a massive annex filled with dozens of variations of miniature Guggenheim Museum Bilbaos.

But as a junior architect told me, Mr. Gehry’s drive and ambition were not to be trifled with, and his internal critiques were withering and scary. (As awestruck as I have been by his exteriors, his interiors I always found clunky and nearly claustrophobic.)

His obsessive, personal, daring explorations in sculptural form, however, will not be his legacy. The enduring lessons he will leave include his ability to reinvent himself, his use of materials (chain-link, plywood, corrugated metal, cardboard, titanium) and his puncturing of minimal modernism’s cold austerity with provocative, joyous deconstructivism.

Nigel Smith Toronto

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters to 150 words or fewer. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com