Time to give Hoekstra the heave-ho | Letters to the Editor

Pete Hoekstra, U.S. ambassador to Canada Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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Time to give Hoekstra the heave-ho

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It is time for Prime Minister Mark Carney to exercise his prerogative and declare one of our ambassadors from a foreign nation PNG, or persona non grata. A special case declaration reserved for foreign envoys who are no longer welcome.

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Canada can let the U.S. know it will entertain the idea of another ambassador if Mr. Hoekstra personally delivers the candidate to Ottawa, along with a letter of apology from the POTUS. Otherwise, we can do without.

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I could not believe the words “51st state” when they were first uttered. I do not believe the blatant, pugnacious and insulting language of this alleged diplomat, Hoekstra, and his puppet-master.

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Throw the bum out, as they say in American baseball.

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Only allow his return to our country if he has his tail between his legs, apology in hand and that insipid, smug grin removed from his face.

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Accept the replacement and letter, then throw Mr. Hoekstra out again.

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Peter J. Cowling, Arnprior

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A ‘curb trap’ on Bank Street for those in wheelchairs

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Unfortunately, a fairly new sidewalk (on the west side of Bank Street) going into Billings Bridge Shopping Centre has yet to be completed. Someone forgot the “curb cut”, making it a “curb trap” curtailing anyone with physical limitations to reach a visible crosswalk on the road.

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The city says, if there are lines on the road close to a sidewalk, responsibility for completion (curb cut) of said sidewalk is now with construction company working on the area.

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Salthill Capital Corporation has been doing construction work at the Billings Bridge mall.

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SCC suggested I use the opposite sidewalk of the driveway entrance into the mall, as it does have a curb cut.

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For now, I decided on the “lesser of two evils”. When motoring to the mall with my power wheelchair, I will enter into the driveway entrance, rolling south on the west side of Bank beside cars and beside the incomplete sidewalk.

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I choose this safer route as opposed to the more dangerous route of crossing the busy entrance/exit of the mall just to reach the other side.

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Yassemin Cohanim, Ottawa

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The complete Bytown A-section takeover was anything but

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I was belatedly given a copy of a recent Ottawa Citizen (Sept. 26) that included the story “The untold story of bytown’s birth“. It proudly announced, on Page A1, “in a complete A-section takeover … ” it was celebrating Ottawa’s bicentennial.

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Unfortunately, your composing and editorial staffs were perceptionally challenged in following through. Not counting the front page, section A was 15 pages. Of those 15, eight (A5, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 14 to 16 were not dedicated to your so-called “complete” takeover. Seven pages were full-page advertising and one was letters and editorial. An additional page-and-a-half (approximately half of pages A4, 10 and 13) was ads for a total of nine-and-a-half pages, fully 63.3 per cent of the 15 pages in question, that were not taken over by Randy Boswell’s story.