YOUR LETTERS Reader recalls Serenade to the Big Bird

In the summer of 1944, a young military aviator named Bert Stiles was based in England, where he wrote his memoirs in a book titled Serenade to the Big Bird. In his book, Bert noted the deplorable physical condition of a school near his airdrome. He described it as a “dirty little schoolhouse, but no dirtier and no more inadequate than thousands of others in Canada... Schools should be the cleanest, prettiest, best-built, most carefully planned and put-together buildings of a society... Schools should be better built and kept up better than banks, because there is a whole lot more wealth in them.”

Bert Stiles was 23 years old when he was killed in action in November of 1944. His book won several literary awards. It has been re-issued periodically, most recently in 1998.

The schools in British Columbia should be the safest buildings in our province. Instead, our schools are among the most dangerous places we can possibly put our children during a seismic event. Most seismologists agree that earthquakes don’t kill people. Buildings that collapse during earthquakes kill people.

Madhab Mathema, the former senior Human Settlements Advisor for Human Settlements (HABITAT) may have summed the subject matter best when he stated: “when an earthquake destroys schools, it takes away the children’s future – and with it, the future of the country itself.”

Personally, I believe Bert Stiles was right. Schools should be the cleanest, prettiest, best-built buildings in our societies. We can afford those buildings, it’s all a matter of priority. Our children, our future, depend on it. — Ron Manning,

Prince George people again. Beyak has been spreading untrue and damaging falsehoods about indigenous people.

Her suggestion that indigenous people give up their status smacks of white privilege and ignorance about the rights of indigenous people in this country.

Perhaps also of fear of being brought to task for years of injustice, illegally gained land, and illegally gained “white” rights.

Ignorance and racism of this kind do not belong in any political party. If the Conservatives want to prove they are inclusive, they need to boot Beyak from caucus immediately.

Beyak’s ongoing claims that residential schools “did some good” are hurtful to thousands of residential school survivors and their families.

Thousands of indigenous youth died and/or were abused in residential schools, as has been well documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I hate to see the government funding such hatred and lies. Can’t we spend our money more effectively than on her salary?

— Linda Wijcik, Fraser Lake