Editor:
Re: We’re densely building our future, March 18 letters.
The eight “I don’t get” and two “I won’t get” in this letter to the editor is a telling endorsement of someone caught in the grasp of the past.
Whether we like it or not, change is the future. Hiding from change can not be found looking to the past.
Of course, the Semiahmoo Peninsula was different in the 1950s; so was the world. Populations and global mobility have changed considerably.
We now speak of a global community and we need to understand that the makeup, population base and infrastructure of our community is changing.
When families moved to the Semiahmoo Peninsula back in the ’50s, whether they realized it or not, they contributed to change and perhaps someone then, maybe even the resident native community, said, “I don’t get it” when speaking of the change they saw.
At one time, immigration to Canada was predominantly from the European community, and derogatory terminology like “white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant” was bandied about. Now, we have immigration from the global community which we now, in our proud Canadianism, call multiculturalism. We now have many diverse peoples of different ethnic origins, with different cultural practices and different religions.
Yes, we have changed, and we need to ‘get it’ that change is inevitable.
As an example, when the country with the largest population in the world sees your pristine neighbourhood as an ideal place to live, work or invest and have the means and the freedom to move there, then change it will.
Even Immigration Canada, in its latest brochures, encourages those with age-old differences and hatreds from their home countries, to leave those differences behind. Those issues do not bring positive change, and Canada recognizes that.
It does not matter what background you come from, we all contribute to change, whether we move to a new community, buy the latest gadget of demand the newest technology.
So, let us all reflect on the positive side of change, for the other side can only lead to a negative place, in the longer term, where none of us would care to go.
L.N. Giles, Surrey
