To the Editor:
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau and Premier Clarke: I write to respectfully advise that when you both congratulate President Elect Donald Trump on his successful bid to become one of the key leaders in the world you do not speak for me.
Each Remembrance Day I remind myself that half my Father's high school classmates were injured or died so that I and others could be free and equal. I watched two of them take twenty years to die from war and internment wounds and have an older cousin who never knew his Father, who died in the Battle of Britain. I therefore cannot extend any kind of congratulations to a soon to be global political leader who has extolled the virtues of groping a woman's genitals, and ask every British Columbian and Canadian man (and yourselves) to consider how long a female political leader would be found acceptable if she extolled the virtues of groping men by their genitals and pulling on their penis's against their will?
Further, as a small child I was told by an older uncle that my entire family had been placed on a death list (my last name is Shadrack) for purposes of extermination should the Nazis have successfully invaded England. Knowing that 50 million people eventually died during the struggle to end what started out as a simple acquiescence to a country's leader who believed in categorizing people by reason of their religion or race or country of origin, but who ended up systematically exterminating millions, I cannot accept as legitimate any leader who uses race, religion and country of origin as the basis for how we will treat each other and behave towards each other.
This is the twenty-first century, and through the United Nations Charter and other UN Agreements we are agreed that we are all equal now. Too many people have fought and died for those principles for me to turn a blind eye and look the other way. So I will simply ask who will join with me in standing alongside women, persons of colour, disability, those of different race, religion, sexual orientation, etc to ensure we do not go back down that path again?
Andy Shadrack
Kaslo, BC