Submitted by Rod Retzlaff
My wife and I recently took a drive to Creston over the Kootenay Pass and returned via the Kootenay Lake Ferry. The goal was to check out the birds at the Creston Valley Wildlife Center, eat lunch, and enjoy a little road trip, to relieve the COVID tedium.
On the way over the pass we were passed by a couple of Alberta vehicles. Well, you could hardly blame them, since I was traveling only a couple of kilometres above the 100 km/h speed limit, clearly another 20 km/h were required, their tail lights fading over the horizon very quickly. Now, I didn’t see a lot of Alberta plates on the oncoming vehicles, but there were several sporting no license plates, including a mega-size pickup towing a mega-size boat, whose driver clearly considered the speed limit just a suggestion.
READ: Four new COVID cases in Castlegar last week
Many of the vehicles on our ferry sailing were also bearing Alberta license plates. It appears to me that our visiting neighbours from the east have no respect for license plates, speed limits, the people living close to the highway who have to put up with speeding traffic, roadside wildlife, or the environment, and no fear of being stopped by the police since police have been largely deployed to hand out punishing fines to British Columbians who dare to travel west from the Interior to the Coast.
The Eastern Maritime provinces have done a good job protecting their people by closing their provincial borders to unnecessary travel, stopping travellers at the border.
Premier Horgan wants to protect British Columbians too, but most of his supporters live in the Lower Mainland, so instead of stopping inter-provincial travel at the actual border, he decides to wait until they get to Hope to stop them. Anyone living beyond Hope, is expected to accept wide open access by Albertans, the most COVID rich of all Canadians. Having effectively confined the diseased interlopers to the east of Hope he then must stop B.C. residents from traveling to their own coast, limiting our provincial travel.
Wake up Katrine and Brittny — you were elected to keep us safe, how about doing your job. It’s time to tell the tyrant to stop all unnecessary inter-provincial travel. Provincial travel should be the last to go.
Rod Retzlaff
Glade, B.C.
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