HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-09-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2015. PAGE 5.
Afew words about Walter Palmer. Don’t
recognize the name? Funny. Just a few
weeks ago he was one of the most
famous people on the planet – right up there
with Donald the Trumpet, Bill Cosby and Gian
Gowhatsisname.
How about if I say ‘Minnesota’? Still
nothing? How about if I add ‘dentist’?
Now it’s coming back. Walter Palmer, the
Minnesota dentist who earned his 15 minutes
of infamy by skulking in the grass of the
African veldt – at night – while his guides
lured a 17-year-old male lion out of a wildlife
refuge and into the range of Walter’s crossbow.
Hopefully Walter is more adept at crowns,
fillings and implants than he is at archery. The
lion he shot was dispatched by gunshot nearly
two days after the Great White Hunter
wounded him.
Unluckily for Walter, the lion he killed was
famous. He was Cecil, a Zimbabwean icon and
PR magnet for visitors to Hwange National
Park.
What subsequently happened to the
maladroit Miinnesota mouth jockey turned out
to be almost as grisly as the end he inflicted on
Cecil. Walter Palmer became a walking pariah.
Within hours Palmer morphed from an
anonymous nimrod with delusions of
adequacy into one of the most reviled creatures
on the planet.
Editorials in a dozen languages scorned him;
the Zimbabwe government called for his
arrest. The internet lit up with outrage and
invective. A few commentators suggested
Palmer be hunted down, shot, skinned and
decapitated as was Cecil.
Palmer was effectively vaporized. He closed
his dental practice. He shut down his website.
He vanished from the world stage.
And the rest of us kind of... enjoyed it.
It’s called schadenfreude – a German word
that has no English equivalent. Schadenfreude
is that wee frisson of righteous glee we feel at
another’s misfortune – even a chump like
Walter Palmer.
The truth is, we didn’t have to import an
American trophy hunter to be outraged.
Canada has plenty of home-grown clowns who
get their kicks by baiting large animals and
killing them for their hides or their antlers.
Or their heads. Take Clayton Stoner. Mister
Stoner earns about $3 million a season
patrolling the blue line for the Anaheim Ducks.
In the off-season he likes to hunt. A couple of
years ago he shot a grizzly in British
Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. It wasn’t
hard. The bear he killed was used to humans,
affectionately known to the locals as Cheeky.
Stoner took some selfies of himself with
the dead bear. Well, the dead bear’s head,
actually. Stoner chopped off the head and paws
and left the rest of the carcass to rot in the
bush.
Hey, no biggie. The B.C. Government allows
for a “harvest” of about 350 grizzlies a year.
Brings money into the province, they say.
Blood money. And not much money at that.
Maclean’s magazine reports that in 2013, a
mere 67 trophy hunters ponied up money for
the privilege of slaughtering a West Coast
grizzly. In the same period a single B.C. lodge
attracted 2,300 tourists who also wanted to
shoot grizzlies – but only with their cameras.
Sixty-seven Chuck Norris wannabes versus
2,300 shutterbugs. Rifles with telescopic
sights versus cameras with telephoto lenses.
You do the math. And the morality.
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
There is a high probability that I’ve
already tackled this issue at least once
in my columns before but it would
appear that I have to do it again: anonymity is
no one’s friend.
Hiding behind an anonymous letter or
an anonymous report is not going to help
anyone accomplish anything. (Except for
Crime Stoppers. Crime Stoppers will pay
you for anonymous tips... so, I guess there’s
that.)
Whether it’s through council meetings at
the various municipalities or county level,
the editorial department at The Citizen is
told countless times that a “ratepayer” has
complained about an issue, or we receive
unsigned letters and it makes it nearly
impossible to follow up.
Like the privacy rules that make it difficult
for us to find and congratulate deserving
students, hiding behind a veil of anonymity
makes it so we, as reporters, can’t follow up
with you and it’s rare that a letter or complaint
has all the information necessary to track down
the issue.
When, for example, a councillor says that
someone is complaining about garbage
pickup, there needs to be a lot of context
before we can fully explore the issue.
Garbage collection, especially in
municipalities with both urban and rural
components, is significantly different than an
issue like taxes which are applied without
prejudice to an entire area (and often times
applied far too often and too much, but that’s a
story for another day).
In North Huron, for example, garbage
collection is tiered. Collection in Blyth,
Belgrave and Wingham is different than East
Wawanosh, so to know what a person is
complaining about, we need to know what part
of the municipality that person calls home.
A councillor reporting on a citizen
complaining about wild animals in a village
also needs context. Does the person live next
to some natural or man-made feature that
might explain the problem? Are they next to
the river? Are they near the business core? Are
they at the end of a dead-end street near
farming operations?
This kind of information is paramount when
writing about an issue.
The other side of that coin is if this
information is being withheld from the press
when we’re writing about council’s decisions,
it’s also not being provided to the councillors.
They can’t be expected to make to make
decisions without having all the facts.
Anonymous letters are more than just a
problem for me, however: they are a definite
pet peeve.
If you feel strongly enough about an issue
that you take the time to write (or type) a letter,
find an envelope and write an address on it and
then spend the money to send us the letter, or,
if you feel strongly enough to type an e-mail
out and send it, make sure you accompany it
with who you are.
The reasons for this go from the basic (such
as I can’t take anonymous complaints
seriously because, if you’re hiding who you
are, you obviously don’t feel strongly enough
about the issue to take action) to the more
advanced (we literally can’t act on this because
we have no idea where this person is from,
what the situation around their property is and
how we can get in contact with them to further
research the story).
The internet has bred an entire generation of
people who are more than happy belittling,
criticizing or mocking people behind the
anonymity provided by a user-decided
moniker and, unfortunately, that seems to be
spilling out into the real world more and more
often.
If you see someone doing something you
disagree with, it isn’t enough to pen an
anonymous letter and hope that someone else
will solve the problem for you. You need to put
your name to the letter and prove that you
believe strongly enough in what you are
writing to have someone contact you about it
and work towards uncovering the problem.
As far as reports to council goes, I know that
it is often on the councillor to report all the
pertinent information and, often times, that
doesn’t happen. If you want council to take
action, if you want me to report on your plight,
make sure that councillors know they can use
your name and reference your particular
context for the issue, otherwise, it likely won’t
receive the coverage necessary.
Better yet, don’t go through councillors.
Go to your local council yourself and bring
the issue to them.
Get in contact with the municipality prior to
the deadline for the agenda and ask to be made
a deputation, since many municipalities are
doing away with the open forum portions of
their meeting.
Tell them you have an issue you want
brought to light and you feel strongly enough
about it to approach council and publically let
it be known that things are wrong.
I know, this may not always be an option
since council meets on the same day, in the
same location (often, unfortunately, at the
extreme ends of municipalities) at the same
time. If you work on Monday nights, for
example, you can’t go to a council meeting in
North Huron. If Tuesdays are a busy night for
you, you probably can’t get to Morris-
Turnberry (and those are just the ones I cover).
However, if you feel strongly enough about
an issue, I’m betting there are others who feel
strongly about it that you could rely on to
deliver your message for you.
Sitting behind the security of a typewriter,
pen or computer and throwing stones about an
issue is a cowardly way of dealing with it, so
step up and be known.
If, however, you don’t feel you can do that,
then maybe the problem isn’t as big as you
think it is.
That’s a decision I have to make every week
when I write this column: Is what I want to
write about something that I want attributed to
my name? I have to say, every week, yes, I
believe strongly enough about what I’m
writing about that I will put it under my name
and my picture.
So ditch the anonymity. It isn’t helping
anyone and just leaving a bunch of questions
instead of answers.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Physical change
In recent weeks, it has been reassuring to
see people bettering their communities, as
well as themselves, through a number of
initiatives aimed at economic, as well as
physical wellness. And both of these events
just so happen to be in Brussels.
Last week, of course, there was the swim
relay at the Brussels Pool. A number of local
firefighters took to the pool and swam 300 laps
to help raise money for a new compressor for
the fire department.
While over $5,000 was raised for the new
compressor, which firefighters have told me is
an extremely necessary piece of equipment at
the hall (far from a luxury item), the actual
swimming has to be regarded as one of the
major take-aways from the whole event.
Like I said, the group of dedicated, volunteer
firefighters is now within $2,500 of their goal
thanks to the fundraiser, but it couldn’t have
been all bad to do all that swimming.
If you asked firefighters while they were
swimming their respective laps, or perhaps the
next day, when the thrill of achievement gave
way to the sore muscle hangover that comes
post-achievement, they might not have agreed.
But looking back, they were active and they
did something positive for their group (and the
community at large).
The Brussels Leo Club is in the same boat.
Just ahead of the opening of the 154th Brussels
Fall Fair, this dedicated group of young people
will cut the ribbon on a new sports pad – the
club’s first major project since the Leos were
resurrected in 2013.
The sports pad, which has been financed in
part by a grant from Libro Credit Union, as
well as contributions from local bodies like the
Brussels Optimists, the Brussels Branch of the
Royal Canadian Legion and the Brussels
Community Development Trust, among
others, represents much more than an entity the
Leos can put their name on.
It’s not a statue or a plaque or something else
that will just collect dust (or, in the case of a
statue, bird poop), the sports pad is something
that promotes a healthy lifestyle. It is
somewhere that the young people of Brussels
can go and have fun with their friends in a way
that gets them off the couch and outside – a
part of the world that I’m finding inspires fear
in the hearts of some young people more and
more these days.
This was, of course, the aim of the Leos
when I first spoke to club president Sean
Mitchell about the project. He said that the
club and its sponsors wanted to provide a place
where young people could spend time in a
healthy way.
Thanks to the efforts of that club, whether it
was grinding away on Saturdays collecting
bottles throughout the village or standing over
a hot barbecue on an even hotter day (alright,
not really – but close) at the Brussels Farmers’
Market, the Leos worked hard to bring the
sports pad to the community. And their efforts
should hopefully lead to a healthier collection
of young people in the community.
When I rode in the Ride to Conquer Cancer
earlier this year, I found physical activity was a
great way to raise money for a worthy cause.
More often than not, a donation to me (for the
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) was
accompanied with a comment along the lines
of “well, at least I don’t have to ride a bike for
200 kilometres.”
If being physical is what it takes to raise
money for a worthy cause, I say be physical. It
pays off in two ways: a better community and
a better life. Don’t hold back and be sure to
challenge yourself like Brussels has.
Other Views
Shooting animals? Use a camera
Anonymity is not your friend folks