In this Friday, April 6, 2018, file photo, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attend the U.K. team trials for the Invictus Games in Sydney in 2018.Frank Augstein/The Associated Press
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Today’s important pair
John Doyle’s evenly breathed news that Peter Mansbridge will be covering the wedding of Harry and Meghan means that some recording devices across Canada are getting their last-minute tune-ups as we speak (How To Watch The Royal Wedding Without Losing Your Mind, May 17).
If Pastor Mansbridge’s coverage is anything like his voicing of past Olympic Opening Ceremonies, Canadians should prepare for several hours of vapid – though sonorous – baritone calisthenics.
In North Korea and Iran and Jerusalem and Washington, the real world lurches on. In St. George’s Chapel, rose petals will strew the floor and amor vincit omnia.
Geoff Rytell, Toronto
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Sorry, this is all so confusing. Yanny and Laurel, Harry and Meghan – which is the important pair?
Bill Kummer, Newmarket, Ont.
Steal-the-deck diplomacy
Re How To Decipher North Korea’s Whiplash Diplomacy (May 17): David Welch’s masterly analysis provides us with three scenarios for understanding the high-stakes poker game going on between Washington and North Korea.
Within those three possibilities, the global security expert has revealed the identity (without pointing a finger) of the real bull in the China shop.
By appointing John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Donald Trump, with his inimitable flair for naming troublemakers to delicate tasks, has introduced a player into the poker game whose only strategy is stealing the dealer’s deck.
Fred Bild, Montreal
History’s judgment
Re Embassy Aftermath (May 17): A letter writer presented a Canada/Israel analogy and asked us to imagine how Canada would respond if its border were being breached and Canadians were being harmed and targeted by violent terrorists.
I think the more accurate Canadian analogy would be how we responded when we were met with resistance and were attacked by the Indigenous peoples whose lands we were overtaking.
History has judged our response as racist and genocidal. How will history judge Israel’s response?
Jim Purdy, Toronto
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A lettter writer asks how we would react if avowed terrorists attempted to breach our border and harm our citizens. Would we not defend ourselves?
A better imagine-it scenario would be the following: Canada annexes large parts of the land of a neighbouring people and forces them to live in crowded ghettos surrounded by barbed wire and fences. Whenever they protest, we cut off their supplies or, in serious situations, lob missiles into their streets. When they approach the fences in anger, we shoot them down with live ammunition.
Israel can expect little sympathy when its actions fly in the face of common humanity and common sense.
Nicholas Hudson, Vancouver
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Hamas is on social media saying “children and women make the best human shields.” Hamas also posts maps on social media to show Gazans the shortest routes to Israeli communities if they manage to breach the fence.
Hamas sends snipers among crowds, plants explosives on the fence, hurls Molotov cocktails over the fence and sends kites carrying burning fuel to set Israeli farms aflame. Most of the Gazans who died were not the ones protesting peacefully away from the fence; those trying to invade were doing so with the intent of killing Israelis.
Allan Cheskes, Toronto
An auto equation
Re Need A Deal On Autos? Remove Mexico From The Equation (Report on Business, May 17): Our country would be a net loser under this plan for tariff-free auto-sector trade between Canada and the United States, with a common tariff on Mexican vehicles and parts. Auto-sector job gains in Southern Ontario would be outweighed by Canadian consumers’ first paying higher prices and then seeing the quality of new vehicles stagnate as protected Canadian and American operations slipped behind the rest of the world.
A.A. Sayeed, Toronto
Put parents in the loop
Re Mental Health On Campus: What Is A Parent’s Right To Know? (May 15): Parents care most about a child, and are usually in the caring business for the long haul.
André Picard mentions the symptom of anosognosia in severe mental illnesses (that is, the inability to appreciate that one is ill), but states that “if they are competent, they can refuse help.”
When students do not appreciate that they are ill, it is imperative that the parents be contacted. It is a very delicate dance to get students, at the onset of a psychotic illness, prompt medical help, and therefore the parents must be in the loop. So-called confidentiality legislation and the right to so-called freedom of choice fail people with schizophrenia and allied conditions.
Patricia Forsdyke, Kingston
Hydro One’s timing, logic
Re Hydro One CEO Warns Political Threats Weigh On Business (Report on Business, May 17): Hydro One’s CEO states, “Timing for Hydro One is critical.” I guess timing is why the already overpaid chairman and the overvalued board members of Hydro One gave themselves huge raises just in time – ahead of the provincial election.
Matthew Scholtz, Tillsonburg, Ont.
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The proposed pay raise of $70,000 for the chair of Hydro One is surely a joke. It’s more than many Ontario households earn in a year. There’s no merit in it and certainly no acceptable logic behind it.
Way back in 1996, Aynsley Kellow, in his book Transforming Power: The Politics of Electrical Planning, wrote that Ontario Hydro was like an ocean liner: With its sheer size, it would be slow to change course – but with a change in captains and regulatory review, it could do so. He was referring to its nuclear expansion plans and not the remuneration system that was and continues to be in place with this monopoly. Clearly, no change has taken place that would put Hydro One into the world of common sense when it comes to compensation, including for its chair.
David Enns, Cornwall, Ont.
New (oil) math
New (oil) math
Re Oil (Ouch) Math (letters, May 16): Although New Math, as applied to the price of a barrel of oil vis-à-vis the price of gasoline at the pump, is somewhat complex, I think I can help your correspondent. It’s something like this: ID + CG = MP + AC where ID = Insatiable Demand, CG = Corporate Greed, MP = Massive Profits, and AC = Angry Canadians.
Not so hard, is it!
Peter A. Lewis-Watts, Barrie, Ont.