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in your words
Letters to the editor
We welcome letters to the editor. They may be edited or rejected for length, clarity and taste. Maximum length: 250 words. E-mail to editorial@northword.ca, with photo attachment if available. Include name, address and daytime phone number for verification. Letters reflect the opinion of the writer and not that of Northword Magazine. Deadline for next issue: April 15, 2005.—
Thanks for sensitive approach
I just wanted to express my appreciation for the approach you took with the story in the spring issue about the nurse who died—around honouring her dignity, and in shedding clear light on the problem of prescription drug addiction.
I was addicted to benzodiazapines for 17 years and had a tremendous and protracted battle getting myself off a very high dose.
The stigmas attached to addiction serve to perpetuate ignorance and prevent open and honest discussion of this rampant issue, which ultimately hurts people, and even results in deaths such as the person’s in this story.
I support your efforts at bringing it out of the closet, and thank you for the care you took to avoid objectifying this woman who lost her battle.
Alison Kellagher, Boulder, CO
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Just a heartfelt note of encouragement to the good folks behind Northword Magazine.
I was lucky enough to pick up your spring edition while in Haida Gwaii recently, and stumbling onto a magazine that is well-designed, well-written, tells real stories of the North with authentic voices, and isn’t beholden to the pointy heads at CanWest or other media behemoths—well, it was quite a treat for a Vancouverite who gets precious little of the above.
It’s always good to know what Monty Bassett is thinking (“Dewatering the holy headwaters”); it was fun to read about my erstwhile colleague “Guru” in Heather Ramsay’s piece (“-007: A license to chill”); and thank-you for celebrating local heroes like Josette Wier in Larissa Ardis’s contribution “Activist causes industry to reconsider pine beetle strategy.”
I hope you guys last forever. Any plans to set up Southword? We could sure use you down here.
Ian Gill, President, Ecotrust Canada
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With all the hype, fear and legal issues surrounding Alcan’s power sales in B.C., we are missing a huge opportunity that these very power sales create.
Alcan’s water license allows them to funnel as much as 700 cubic metres of water per second through the Kemano generators.
This huge amount of clean, fresh water passes through the power plant to generate electricity to support Alcan’s Kitimat operation, and then into the Kemano River where it flows into the Gardner Canal and via a network of Channels into the Pacific Ocean.
Just like oil, demand for fresh water is rising rapidly. The outflow presents a viable and profitable business opportunity; collecting and bottling this resource is both socially and environmentally responsible and represents a good opportunity for Kitimat’s future economic growth.
At this moment in time, the price of a litre of bottled water is on par with the price of a litre of gasoline. And collecting this water is much less costly and leaves a much smaller footprint on the environment than drilling for oil.
Transporting water from a collection point at the mouth of the Kemano River connected to a feeder pipe upstream and shipping it by liquid cargo barge to a processing plant in Kitimat is not hard to accomplish, as much of the infrastructure is already in place.
We will be doing the community, the province and even the world a great service and improving Kitimat’s economic outlook in the process.
John Lowe, Kitimat
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