Editor:
Yesterday, I left my home for the first time in 10 days to go to the Metrotown library and then walked to the Tim Hortons less than a block away.
I wore a mask the whole time.
After leaving the library, a young couple passed me – he was wearing a mask, she was not. Not too far along, I passed a young man standing there – his mask was on his chin. Then there was another man on the corner with his mask pulled down to his chin. Then there was a mature woman crossing the street with her mask dangling from her right ear.
What have we become? A nation of wimps who aren’t prepared to put up with a little inconvenience for the common good?
During the Second World War, my family lived in Liverpool, the second-most heavily bombed city in Britain. During the day, my dad designed air force bases and at night he was a fire watcher going up a tower during air raids to see where the bombs had dropped and alerting the fire fighters. Everyone had black-out curtains on their windows and some nights were spent in the air raid shelters in the back yard.
Everyone ate the same rations. This went on for six years (and the rationing for even longer). My earliest memory when we came to Canada was being in my grandmother’s kitchen in New Westminster during the Fraser River flood in 1948 – the women were making sandwiches for the men (including my dad) who were filling sandbags down at the river banks. This is just what people did. And now we have people who can’t even be bothered to put on a mask or wear one properly to stop the spread of a virus. I think this is very sad.
Lorraine Shore, Burnaby
