VOICE OF THE PEOPLE Honour the international volunteers who help to improve the lives of others

Today, International Volunteer Day, close to 3,000 Canadian volunteers will wake up far from their homes in foreign lands and set off on another day of discovery and challenge. They will be confronted with hardship in regions where conflict, disease or natural disasters make life difficult. They may also find occasion to celebrate the small steps of progress and improvement in the lives of their host community members.

I have been fortunate to participate in three volunteer assignments with the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO), in Krygyzstan and Jamaica. These experiences have enriched my life and I know the lives of those I worked with. The many volunteers with whom I have spoken all agree that we take more away from these assignments than we leave behind. I continue to cherish the friendships I formed when on assignment.

Over the past 40 years, more than 75,000 Canadians have volunteered abroad, sharing and learning with millions of people striving to better their lives. The extraordinary people who decide to volunteer overseas make a valuable contribution abroad and in Canada. Today, let’s all celebrate them for living their passion, making an impact, fostering change. LISA DUPREY

Vancouver aside to honour premiers and prime ministers.

Trudeau’s question “Why should I sell the Canadian farmers’ wheat?” was in the context of a longer comment in which he answered his own question, but is rarely remembered as such.

The motorcycle incident in the 1940s was nothing more than a gag by a bunch of university students to wear pre-First World War Prussian uniforms and ride around town — hardly a show of support for the Nazis of the day.

The federal government’s 1980 National Energy Program had three main objectives: to boost Canadian ownership in the oil industry, to make the country a self-sufficient oil producer and to increase the federal share of energy revenue. That doesn’t sound unreasonable, really.

Finally, wasn’t his Salmon Arm salute in response to protesters throwing rocks at the train car he and his children were travelling in?

I have lived in B. C. for 36 years and know many other people from this province quite liked what he did for Canada. Maybe, it is time for us to be part of honouring the history of Canada, rather than continuing to stew in its imagined failings. MATTHEW LOGAN

Surrey

Bountiful principal says his

students make the grade

Re: Graduates a rarity at this school, Daphne Bramham, Nov. 18

Daphne Bramham writes that our school, Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School, had an “astounding” dropout rate from 2001 to 2004. But she has already reported the reason for it: In 2002, 50 per cent of our students withdrew over religious differences and began their own school, Mormon Hills. Of the 21 students in our school in 2001, 12 withdrew outright, and one returned to school in the U.S., leaving a total of eight. Six of them wrote the exams in question and two were either absent or granted approval not to write. The facts are not nearly so dramatic as Bramham presented them, are they?

As for the number of Grade 10 students who wrote exams: Because of our small size and limited teaching resources, we group all Grade 9 and 10 students for Socials and Science every year. One year, they all take Socials 9 and Science 9, the next year they all take Socials 10 and Science 10. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that every other year there will be no students writing the provincial Science 10 exam.

About 90 per cent of our students who wrote all government exams last year met or exceeded the learning expectations.

MERRILL PALMER

Principal Bountiful Elementary-Secondary

School, Lister