Dear Editor, in response to Mr. Nairn’s Jumbo NIMBY letter, March 30th edition:

Perhaps Mr. Nairn should follow some of his own advice and limit his airing of dissatisfaction of NIMBYs, retirees, and wage earners of all descriptions to just one of the local papers, and thus leave room for others to air differing views, including other topics.

For those of us who keep track of what is happening and being said locally by scanning both local papers, we were twice confronted with the large dose of disrespect to all retirees and those of us who ‘just draw a pay check from someone else’.

His comments suggest these groups of folks don’t have the knowledge to form an opposing opinion on the JGR proposal, or shouldn’t have the gall to stand up and air this point of view.

I’m guessing that most retirees have a wealth of life experience to draw on to make an informed opinion, and the legion of folks who are not self-employed still contribute in every way to our local economy and should also have a voice in suggesting how our community develops.

For Pete’s sake John, the issue has dragged on for so many years, it’s not surprising that some of the more impassioned people write in to comment on various aspects of the proceedings more than a few times.

Maybe rather than tell people to ‘get off the soapbox’, one should expect the editors of the papers to decide if there are too many redundant sounding opinions to print them all.

On that note, someone might want to start to limit the published postings of a certain resident of Regina (formerly of Panorama), as I don’t think he has said anything new or interesting on the debate despite being a regular contributor to the opinion pages.

But here’s another opinion for you John; it just may be that your pro-Jumbo business-owner friends don’t actually know what’s best for the rest of us in the community with respect to development of large-scale projects like JGR.

Sure, business owners provide employment for others and thus may stimulate the local economy, but ‘more/bigger/better’ is not always the most sound community development policy.

Maybe in these days with spiralling global debt and an irrefutable contraction of natural habitats and species, it’s time we stop thinking that we need to have constant and increasing growth to survive.

Quite the opposite, very likely.

And finally, I can’t recall hearing any true NIMBY mentality views in opposition to the JGR.

I think people are not just opposed to having a second ski resort town spring up in OUR local backcountry/backyard, but that this wouldn’t be a good idea to be built in ANYONE’S backcountry, if it meant that crown-land ‘wilderness’ (such as it is)  would be used to develop a small town for the benefit of ski-lift dependant glacier skiers and business interests, but to the detriment of wildlife habitat.

Sincerely,

Joe Hildes

Windermere