Editor, The News:
I will never forget the time that I travelled to Guyana with my high school friends on a work/relief trip, where we spent most of our time in a remote village called La Luni to help build a modest cinder-block building that could be used for whatever the village had in mind for it, including a school.
Our time in La Luni was punctuated by sweltering labour in the humid midday heat, identifiable chicken parts in the soup, and soccer with the local kids in knee-high grasses. And the odd tarantula roaming about the kitchen.
For a two-day break, we went to Georgetown – the big city. The first thing that we did when we arrived was to head straight for the beach.
When we arrived much to our chagrin, we were met with an imposing and abrupt drop off and vast retaining walls, flaring out in either direction for as far as the eye could see.
No beach, nor sand in sight.
No bleached white sand – the kind that’s hard to hold very long in your cupped hands.
We later learned that decades earlier, the government had sold Georgetown’s sands to places like Hawaii, so it gives you an idea of the sort quality of sand they once had.
And it took a heavy toll on local tourism, which likely followed the sands.
To me, it stands as a powerful testament to the perils of short-term thinking, which I cannot help but relate closer to home.
After having put so much thought into what lot sizes would be suitable for the north Albion area, and yet still make the lot sizes more saleable in the current market, the district is poised to repeat the same mistakes made in other parts of Albion – squeezing the lush and open life right out of it, all in a transparently desperate bid to raise funds for amenities.
Those amenities had better be pretty spectacular to rival the beaches of Georgetown, or the natural paradise that we all live in.
How can it possibly be worth it?
How can we sell off what not one of us could ever reproduce?
J. Craig Ruthven
Maple Ridge