Today's letters: Bad planning by Ottawa in Stittsville and at Bowesville station

Health and Medical news

Tuesday, Sept. 17: Neither the Stittsville development nor the Bowesville site take into account families’ actual transit needs, a reader says. You can write to us too, at letters@ottawacitizen.com

Published Sep 17, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 3 minute read

Concept renderings for apartment buildings at 6310 and 6320 Hazeldean Rd., Stittsville. The controversial proposal was approved by Ottawa’s planning and housing committee on Sept., 11. Photo by DevmontTwo examples of bad city planning

Re: Why Ottawa built an LRT station in the middle of nowhere; and Stittsville’s first highrise project approved — including a 21-storey tower, Sept 16.

Saturday’s Citizen is a study in contrasts regarding transit and housing. One story, about the Bowesville LRT station and large parking lot (an oxymoron if ever there was one), points out a lack of housing development, while the story on the high rise development in Stittsville reports citizen concerns because of an absence of continuous sidewalks and cycle paths, with worries of traffic congestion.

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Neither the Stittsville development nor the Bowesville site take into account the fact that families would still require a vehicle or two on top of transit passes for each family member to use the systems we have to move people in a climate-protective way. It is just too expensive.

In Stittsville, unless bus service is vastly improved and close to the proposed development, people would still require a vehicle to access essential services.

At the Bowesville site, unless housing (not houses) is constructed within walking distance of the LRT station, people would still require a personal vehicle which would be stored unused on the parking lot, paid by taxpayers, and would contribute to destruction of the immediate environment. Unless some essential services are built within a 15-minute walk of the Bowesville station, in essence creating a small village, the whole concept will add folly to the failure of city planning.

Carolyn Herbert, Nepean

No need to release Nazi names

Re: Group fights to shield names of Nazis, Sept. 14.

Although I am the child of Holocaust survivors and the grandson of a woman who died in a Nazi concentration camp, I do not think that the names of the Ukrainian Nazi supporters who came to Canada should be published. Many of those immigrants are dead; the survivors are probably very old and feeble. There is nothing to be gained by punishing their families. Those who know anything about their ancestors’ Second World War activities will have heard whitewashed stories that portray their ancestors as heroic resistance fighters. Why hurt them?

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However, it is very important that the stories of those believed to be Nazi supporters be made known. Library and Archives Canada should commission a group of authors to investigate these people and prepare a book of anonymized chapters about them. Canadians need to know what they did, why they did it, how they were able to come to Canada and what they did after they got here. We should know how many returned, either to the Soviet Union or to Ukraine after it became independent. We should also know what happened to Nazi supporters who did not come to Canada but remained in Ukraine.

Any crimes that Ukrainian immigrants committed happened when the Second World War was raging, with Ukrainians fighting on both sides. That war is long over and its many victims are gone but there is another war raging in Ukraine today and, once again, Ukrainians are fighting on both sides. Once again, Germany and its allies are on one side while Russians are on the other. Once again, innocent people are suffering and dying while their homes and infrastructure are being destroyed.

It is too late to do anything useful about the crimes of the past but, if we study those crimes and the people who committed them, we may learn how to stop today’s war and prevent future ones. Naming past perpetrators will accomplish nothing, but explaining what happened can help to bring peace in the future.

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Dave Parnas, Ottawa

Refusal to name Nazis is incredible

It is incredible to me that in 2024, the Canadian government, through Library and Archives Canada, would consult the perpetrators and not the victims of Nazism. So the Holocaust survivors are left out of consultation regarding the release of names of potential Nazi collaborators. But some in the Ukrainian community get to weigh in and some want to quash releasing those names, because of potential embarrassment.

Tell that to my parents: my mother, a survivor of Auschwitz and my father, who lost half his family to the Nazis. Tell that to my sister and me, who grew up with no grandparents and almost no family. If that is not contemporary antisemitism, I don’t know what to call it. I am angry.

Monica Rosenthal, Ottawa

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