Re: Trash in doorways leave merchants fuming (News, Oct. 17) and People over pet animals (Opinion, Oct. 17)
It is all about the famous human characteristics of the ‘Selfish Gene’. We say, and the politicians say, that we care about certain areas of downtown Victoria and to a certain extent we do, but at the same time we don’t.
For instance, I live and work in the famous Pandora 900 block and for years fought city council and the police to normalize my block, and I must say there has been a great improvement in the last two years.
When the Rock Bay homeless shelter opened, half the drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes moved down there to terrorize the local inhabitants.
The Selfish Gene reared its head and I was pleased it was no longer in my backyard. Notice I did not mention the ordinary homeless or mentally sick who are in quite a different category.
We do have a serious problem downtown and nobody wants to deal with it.
Before Rock Bay opened Our Place Society was feeding X numbers of individuals. That number has not gone down but has increased after the opening of Rock Bay. That tells us that hundreds of individuals are coming from the other provinces, as they see it as a Garden of Eden.
So, what do we care about in Victoria? Well there are the rabbits at the University of Victoria. There are the hundreds of Bambis ruining our precious gardens, and God help anyone that is cruel to a dog unless it has relatives in West Africa.
Anthony Mathews, Victoria