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Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

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Sharing the roads can be fraught with danger for pedestrians and cyclists alike.J.P. Moczulski/The Canadian Press

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Taming traffic’s terrors

Re Montreal Mulls Adopting Separate Traffic Laws For Cyclists (March 15): As Montreal considers adopting the “Idaho stop” for cyclists (“cyclists must slow enough at a stop sign to be sure it is safe before proceeding”), critics protest that the law should apply equally to both cars and cyclists.

As William Blake put it, “One law for the lion and ox is oppression.” And in fact the law already makes distinctions for different types of vehicles, for example, restrictions for large trucks or reserved lanes for high-occupancy cars. Surely the relevant principle here is to facilitate the optimum flow of all road traffic, allowing for the many different forms it takes, which includes making bicycle traffic a safe and attractive option.

Andrew Leith Macrae, Toronto

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I’m way more afraid of bicycles than cars. It took me months to recover from a shattered elbow after being sent flying by a cyclist who raced past a car and knocked me down. Only extreme wariness (pain does that!) saved me from a similar fate in Toronto. It’s bad enough without giving cyclists more ways to terrify pedestrians.

Yvonne Pelletier, Montreal

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Re Pedestrian Deaths Won’t End By Pandering To Drivers (March 12): Most everyone would agree pedestrian deaths are an abomination. However, reshaping urban space to focus on walking, cycling and transit as the Netherlands has done ignores a big difference between cities like Amsterdam and Toronto – size.

Amsterdam is 64 square miles; Toronto is four times bigger at 243 square miles. Too many people have to travel too far to walk, cycle or take (our woefully inadequate) public transit.

Pedestrian safety could be immediately enhanced by lowering and enforcing speed limits, and clamping down through the implementation of cameras on drivers running red lights, and banning right turns on red lights.

Bill Rutsey Toronto

For NDP, optics matter

Re Jagmeet Singh Issues Condemnation Of Terrorist Acts Amid Rally Controversy (online, March 14): If the New Democratic Party in Ottawa hopes to make gains as a result of the very negative press the provincial and federal Liberal and Conservative parties have been getting recently, it has a job to do, and it must be done now.

Optics mean a great deal in politics. Whatever his motivation was for attending, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has demonstrated a total lack of common sense regarding his participation in Sikh rallies, and needs to go. Now.

Peter A. Lewis-Watts, Barrie, Ont.

No easy way to do it

Although a clergy person, I am a “layman” in agricultural policies and practices, but with a deep concern for these issues. This stems from my early life on a family farm, and numerous discussions over the years with rural folks here and in New Zealand.

I would change your editorial – End Supply Management, But Do It Right (March 12) – and letter writer Bruce Muirhead’s reply, “there is no right way to end supply management’” (No Right Way, March 13) to suggest that “there is no easy way to make necessary changes in present protections and policies for certain producers in Canada, but we must try.”

My reasoning, if there is anything we in the churches have to offer, is that change is never easy, but also that not to change is to opt out of movements for justice and truth.

I would urge leaders of agricultural science and practice to join governments to effect necessary reforms and just changes we can make, in fairness, when we can – or more drastic changes will come to us from the wider trade community.

Bob Shorten, Burlington, Ont.

The lesson here

Re Few Lessons To Be Gleaned From Penn. Race (March 15): David Shribman argues that the election of Democrat Conor Lamb in a Republican stronghold that Donald Trump easily won in 2016 means almost nothing. I’d beg to differ.

After spending about $50 per voter on negative Lamb ads, after having Mr. Trump and family members campaign for Republican Rick Saccone, after initiating tax cuts and tariffs that one might expect would appeal to an industrial part of America, the GOP still lost the congressional race.

The lesson here is that if the Democrats get energized, Mr. Trump will be a one-term president.

David Enns, Cornwall, Ont.

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David Shribman plays down the significance of the upset victory by Democratic candidate Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania. He says special elections aren’t important, no one remembers them after a few weeks. I beg to differ.

People will long remember the recent special election in Alabama where Democrat Doug Jones defeated the Republican to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney-General Jeff Sessions. Before the special election, a Democratic senator from Alabama was almost unimaginable. Similarly, Mr. Lamb’s win in Pennsylvania is one for the history books.

The Republicans threw everything they had into the race but it wasn’t enough – and this in a district that was so gerrymandered, it was declared illegal by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and will no longer exist by the November midterms.

Manuel Matas, Winnipeg

Royal snub?

Re Belgian Royalty Visit Canada (March 14): Shame on Justin Trudeau for snubbing the visiting King and Queen of the Belgians.

Quite apart from Belgium’s role as a trading partner in CETA, Belgium is also the final resting place of thousands of Canadians who served in the First World War. Does Mr. Trudeau know where and why In Flanders Fields was written? The Belgians continue to remember and honour the service and sacrifice of our fallen at Menin Gate in Ypres. Could our PM not have taken a few hours out of his “busy” week to let them know Canadians remember, too?

Vera Tomkins, Toronto

Master of the cosmos

British theoretical physicist-cum-world renowned scientist Stephen Hawking once famously said “I fit the part of a disabled genius. At least, I’m disabled …” (A Mind That Spanned The Universe, March 15). The world, however, knew him as a highly “able” genius. Confined to a wheelchair, he was astronomically unrestrained in his scientific endeavours, which literally astonished the global scientific community.

May the master of the cosmos rest in peace.

Lalaji Banarasi, Winnipeg

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Even though Stephen Hawking didn’t believe in the afterlife, I like to think he’s arrived just in time to join a weekly poker game with Galileo, Newton and Einstein. And I bet the stakes are astronomical!

Chris Clark, Uxbridge, Ont.

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