To the Editor:
Along the roads and in the newspapers there are signs and articles outlining the pros and cons of a national park without one hint of what we are talking about.
So, will someone clear the air and explain?
Do you want us to go back to nature, or do you want the place built to a fictitious idea of what each individual or group thinks the park should be?
Well, let’s look back a few years to the time when I first came to B.C. in 1939.
I drove through here then. It was a total desert with a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. A few irrigation ditches were on one side of the road and sage brush existed on the other.
The road was slippery wet with dead rattlesnakes, bull snakes and frogs who were trying to cross the road to the irrigated field on the other side.
The Great Northern railway was about to be abandoned, and there were no trees. All the trees you see now were planted by soldiers settling in the area following World War II.
Previously this land belonged to the First Nations. The big rock on the outside of town (Standing Rock) has historic writing of aboriginals from Greece (so the scientists say), but present day graffitti obliterates most of it now. That is a disgrace, but I talked to the scientists that marked the original writings with a white indestructible paint, now almost destroyed by graffitti.
Wilf Miller, Keremeos
