Canadian flags flap in the wind during Canada Day festivities in Vancouver on Tuesday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Mastering it
Re “Tattoo artist helps cancer survivors heal” (July 2): Back in 1969, I briefly dated a lovely 18-year-old lady. We both married other people in 1973 (and are still both with those same partners), but we’ve always kept in touch – Canada Post for years, e-mails every week or so for the past few decades.
About 25 years ago, I got a note from her: “The Ladies have a problem.” Breast cancer! She’s alive and healthy today, thankfully, but I still remember as if it were yesterday when I got a later e-mail, after her treatments and surgery, that she’d looked down after the operation and burst into tears because she still had her nipples.
Lord!
I intend to steal your article (i.e., copy and paste) and forward it to her. But for the first time ever, I would also like to be able to send her the comments, as the bulk of them equal the quality of Pippa Norman’s original article. And the sensitivity!
Actually, I’m going to print the whole thing off and scan it, just to share both the very human article and the very human responses.
Thanks for this piece!
Doug James Calgary
Secret Canada
Re “The toll of Canada’s ER closure crisis” (July 5): The now continuous closures of mostly rural emergency departments is a rather damning indictment of a failure to plan effectively for our collective national future.
The authors suggest that COVID-related burnout is a major contributor to the current mess. It is more than that.
While most of these closures are due to nursing shortages – a reflection of government failure to respectfully negotiate with our nursing colleagues – the other issue is a wholly predictable lack of emergency physicians.
In 2016, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians identified a potential shortfall of 1,500 emergency physicians by 2025. The study, highlighting our concerns, was distributed to every provincial government for consideration and preventative action.
Absolutely nothing was done to prevent the anticipated shortage, and here we are – closed ERs and patients placed at unnecessary risk.
A national disgrace.
Alan Drummond, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Perth, Ont.
Mission accomplished
Re “Mission: Impossible theme composer Lalo Schifrin dies at 93″ (Arts, June 26): I am surprised that in the excellent obituary of composer Lalo Schifrin, specifically in the several mentions of his Mission: Impossible theme and its “dum-dum DUM DUM dum-dum DUM DUM” motif, no one mentioned the fact the composer merely used Morse code for M – two dashes – and I – two dots – as the basis for his composition! He once said in an interview that the theme basically wrote itself!
Eoin Kenny Edmonton
A greater leap forward
Re “Dalai Lama sets out rules for succession” (July 3): Chinese Communist Party officials insist that after the Dalai Lama’s death only they may identify his reincarnation and that this transmigration of the soul must comply with Chinese rules and regulations. I always thought the Communist party controlled the means of production, not the means of reincarnation.
Brian Caaines Ottawa
The Maple Leaf forever
Re “This Canada Day, we reclaimed our flag” (Opinion, July 1): Gary Mason’s column perpetuates the false narrative that Canadian pride in the country’s flag suffered primarily because the 2022 trucker’s convoy appropriated it for their protests.
However, long before that event, in June, 2020, The Chronicle Herald and other newspapers in Atlantic Canada’s SaltWire chain published front-page apologies for daring to print a full-page flag inside for Canada Day. And in 2021, then-Prime-Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the flag to be lowered to half-mast on federal buildings for nearly six months in remembrance of the Indigenous residential school students who did not return to their families. These were hardly votes of support for other Canadians who wanted to proudly fly the Maple Leaf.
Those dastardly right-wing truckers had a lot of support from supposed progressives in making Canadians ashamed of their country and its symbols. Reclaiming our flag was a bigger job than Mason suggests. While I rejoice in the unabashed patriotism of our new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, we should not – and do not – require licence from our political leaders or commentariat to celebrate this truly remarkable country.
John Roe Kitchener, Ont.
Once more unto the breach
Re “Killing the DST makes Canada look weak” (Opinion, July 1): Prime Minister Mark Carney saved us billions in this negotiation. He cancelled the digital services tax after the U.S. Congress killed the proposed revenge tax that would have increased the withholding tax on U.S. investment income for Canadians and other foreign investors. Mr. Carney’s move was consistent with the G7 meeting, in which the U.S. was exempted from the global minimum corporate tax and Washington agreed to scrap the revenge tax. So Canadian investors, including our pension funds, will save billions of dollars. Letting President Donald Trump think we caved, instead of declaring that we and the world won on a net basis, is a smart negotiation tactic. I’ll take money in my pocket over ego any time.
Howard J. Feldman Toronto
Grin, and they will bear it
Re “U.S. House passes megabill to implement Trump’s agenda” (July 4): This reader cannot understand how the people in the photo on the bottom of Page A4 in the July 4, 2025, Ontario edition of The Globe and Mail can smile when they just condemned 12 million Americans to lose health care and 4.7 million people to lose food stamps.
The four people who made up the difference to put the bill over the top should look themselves in the mirror.
Ken Wagner Thornhill, Ont.
Among all the horrors of this piece of legislation (cutting social supports for the poorest, massively increasing funds to persecute and incarcerate immigrants in camps, etc.), maybe the most enduringly devastating effects come from the gutting of all recent efforts to fight climate change. Already we are witnessing the enormous suffering and cost of climate-related disasters. Yet the greed and callousness of special interests may bring us to irreversible decline and the collapse of human existence. Do all the people who voted for this bill not have children?
Stephan Ragaz
The rule of law
Re “Suddenly, MPs are behaving like grownups” (Editorial, July 4): Yes, it’s good to see MPs behaving like grownups, and good to think cabinet will give priority to Canada’s economic development, including fast-tracking energy and infrastructure projects.
But no, we have seen too much of the consequences of “letting the market” have free rein to damage our environment and social structures. Intelligent regulations will still be very much needed.
Nicholas Tracy Fredericton
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