Waterloo Region Record from Kitchener, Ontario, Canada • 6

MONDAY March 16 1998 EDITORIALS LETTERS The Kitchener Waterloo Record 225 airway Road Kitchener Ontario N2G4E5 A division os Southam Inc PUBLISHER Wayne MacDonald EDITOR David Bailey MANAGING EDITOR Don McCurdy EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR John Roe A6 THE RECORD Kitchener Ontario EDITORIALS End human pain but not human life To see the cruel and immoral reality of assisted suicide look into the cold craggy face of Dr Maurice Genereux and shiver Confronted by a fit young man who feared be coming ill the Toronto physician forgot his training ig nored the law and offered the patient neither cure nor relief from pain but certain death in the form of sleeping pills or this Genereux was rightly convicted of aiding a suicide and last week stripped of his licence to practise medicine But own doctor death should not be for gotten in the intending debate on how health care workers should The Senate should move very slowly in reviewing how Health workers can deal with deal with dying patients dying patients Senate is ready to wade into this quagmire In part this is a response to the case of Dr Nancy Morrison who was charged with first degree mur der after the death of a cancer patient in Nova Scotia Charges were dropped against her because there enough evidence for a trial Hospital records however indi cate Morrison gave a potentially lethal injection of potassi um chloride to the patient immediately before he died To those who for compassionate reasons want the state to spare people needless suffering Morrison was a martyr in the making After all her patient was dying heavily sedated and had been taken off life support So why not allow doc tors to just sort of speed things up? doctors know best? we put suffering animals out of their misery? But wait If the state allows a doctor to kill and that is what euthanize means a patient who is unconscious and has Mmv Ki Nws sw fcr WM CO 26 2028 "mi Quebec INALLY SEWM?" iv rM not agreed to such action what does it tell Genereux? After all he only complied with a wishes The man Genereux helped commit suicide was young and still healthy but had just tested HIV positive He hated the idea of developing AIDS and suffering pain Despairing he turned to a doctor to Genereux The response was un derstandable response was wrong Instead trying to help ease the depression he prescribed sleeping pills which the man swallowed with fatal results The question then for the senators and all others who want to change the law is how do you limit doctor assisted death once you allow it? Once you open the Box of state assisted and sanctioned killing in cases which seem benign how do you keep the demons from pouring out and engulfing us all or more likely the poor the disabled the distraught? The Senate and Canadian society should move slowly and avoid tampering with age old values Let us prize the good ness of life with all its trials over a so called Let us put more resources into hospice care into publicizing and perfecting pain relief And let us recall the Hippocratic oath by which many doctors still swear do no The federal government spend money on projects just because a new millennium is about to start Canada doesn need millennium projects Stop the calendar from turning to another year! We got into 1999 let alone 2000 and already the overburdened always patient Canadian taxpayers must be wishing they could stay in 1998 for a long time With the deficit now defeated the Liberal government has decided to toss money away by spending $160 million over three years to help Canadians celebrate the start of a new millennium A Millennium Bureau has been established and it will help us all know about the new millennium Perhaps the government realize that Canadians are a bright people whose ancestors have known about this coming date with destiny for almost 2000 years Speaking about the initiative Prime Minis ter Jean Chretien said millennium will be an oppor tunity to reflect on how our country and our world have arrived at this moment in The prime minister is right in so far as what he said going to do a lot of reflecting as Jan 1 2000 comes closer But we need $160 million to do that As Chretien surely knows people these days need a nickel let alone $160 million to prompt them to start reflecting Sure ly every politician in the country knows that the supply of advice for the next millennium is greater than the demand To be sure some of the individual projects financed by the millennium fund are worthy of support But the point is that a project such as the completion of the Trans Canada hiking trail should be supported because of its own intrin sic merits not because a new millennium has arrived LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Kurdish victims saluted March 16 1988 was one of the saddest days in Kurdish history Thousands of Kurds fell silent forever in the town of Halabja The cause: Sad dam use of chemical weapons This action put regime squarely within the definition of genocide The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide defines genocide as committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national ethnic racial or re ligious The Genocide Convention has no enforcement mechanism and governments have been reluctant to press for it Nowhere in the world can you find a distinct ethnic group its language and culture thou sands of years old so systematically persecut WCI gets black eye I feel that the manner in which the Record has reported on the stabbing incident at WCI has unjustly given my school a black eye Record staff have virtually ig nored one half of the story and shamefully gone so far as to por tray the descriptions of a select few students one of whom does not even go to WCI as absolute truth Articles imply the students' reluctance to speak to the me dia and the suggestion thereof is a negative thing I see it as the honorable and far more respectful course of action There will certainly be heavy investigations at WCI so there is no need to provide igno rant and often false statements to the public I cherish every day I am gien the privilege of attending WCI for it is giving me what I consid er to be a safe healthy opportu nity to participate in extra cur ricular activities and challenge myself academically Greg John Waterloo Warriors superb I wish to take this opportuni ty to pay tribute to coach Tom Kieswetter captains Mano Wat ed by Persian and Turkish regimes To be a Kurd today is to be the object of geno cide and destruction Saddam and his agents should be tried by an international tribunal under the Genocide Convention and under criteria set out by the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1946 for crimes against humanity We salute the victims of Halabja and victims of the world who paid with their lives for the struggle to continue securing freedom and hu man rights Hishyar Abuzeyit Member of the National Association of the Kurdish Community in Canada Kitchener sa and Mark Eys and the Water loo Warriors basketball team not only for a fantastic victory on March 7 but for an entire season of terrific basketball Anyone fortunate enough to take in the OUAA West champi onship would agree the basket ball was outstanding In an age where there is so much wrong with professional sports it is refreshing to see athletes play so unselfishly and energetically Canadian university sports is another of best kept secrets You could attend 200 Raptors games and you would come close to matching the intensity and the excitement generated at the champion ship Tim O'Connor Elmira Elmiralacks service I am amazed that Elmira resi dents up in arms about their ambulance service They seem to be more concerned about their sewers closest ambulance is stationed in Waterloo at the corner of King and Columbia streets If your mother or grandfa ther has a heart attack and lives in Elmira or farther out on a farm better hope that someone there knows CPR be cause it will take the ambulance 15 to 20 minutes to get to Elmi ra If that ambulance is busy the next closest one is stationed on Charles Street near Ottawa Street I would hate to think how long that one would take espe cially this summer when the Ot tawa Street bridge is closed Citizens in the northern parts of our region must stand up and demand better ambulance service from their community now that it has been down loaded from the province Judy Van Houwelingen Waterloo Not a good deal When the Mike Harris Con servatives were elected they loudly proclaimed Ontario to be open for business Archie McLean the CEO of Maple Leaf must have been lis tening In the recent strike ac tion at Maple Leaf a slim major ity of votes were won with a cash offer to allow the company to reduce wages and benefits by 40 per cent One can only hope that the currently profitable company will give some of its future prof its to food banks I am certain some of their em ployees will find it necessary to use the services of the food banks in the near future Raymond Hart Kitchener House has Waterloo connection The fate of the 124 year old Sonneck House is again hang ing in the balance Kitchener council has refused the present request for a demolition permit and the 180 day reprieve hopefully will al low someone to purchase this once wonderful historic home 1 applaud the effort being made to retain this significant her itage landmark Perhaps some do not realize that there is a Waterloo connec tion to Sonneck House Louis Breithaupt had the home built in 1874 for his Louis Jacob who in 1881 married Emma Devitt Emma was the daughter of Benjamin Devitt and grand daughter of Barnabas Devitt who was the adopted son of Abraham Erb the founder of Waterloo The various Devitt families were influential in the development of early Waterloo Louis and Emma Brei thaupt had six children includ ing Louis Orville Breithaupt the distinguished politician and lieutenant governor of Ontario Ellis Little Waterloo Stand behind Gilpin I would like to respond to William March 3 letter about the Menno Singers I was a member of the mass choir that performed the Messi ah conducted by Wayne Gilpin and am in the new Celebration Chorale He is an excellent con ductor The choir stood behind Gilpin 100 per cent Whatever the dispute be tween Larry Hoffman and Gilpin it has nothing to do with the choir that is now rehears ing The community will decide whether it wishes to attend this upcoming concert and not be in fluenced by a few disgruntled individuals Betty Beriet Warring parents should have a policy Kitchener WRITE TO US rank Etherington wrote an interesting column SECOND March 7 Keep These Cases Out Of The Courts Al OPINION about the best inter JOHN THEIS ii 1 Living in a bad marriage in 1950? Endure it Your kids need al mother who denied the partners is totaUy obvious father access to their Clearly none of this has any 1 8 They also refrain from criti cizing the other parent to the child they refuse to send mes sages cbpovidiiy tuugii uuvo yv the other parent through their daughter (only when the daugh chUdren ter was ill) In short they both work hard The father went to the courts to keep their children from get and the mother was jailed for ting stuck in the old psychology repeatedly violating the access cal space between them agreement The case which Etherington The politics of the situation thing to do with the best inter ests of the child Imagine the confusion of the young daughter whose mother went to jail So why reason take over in these situations and al low divorced parents to consid er the needs of their children rather than be dictated by the emotions of their past relation ship? I think it is important to look beyond the individuals to see an explanation and a way to be helpfhl It is too simplistic to suggest that either or both of the di vorced warring partners is to tally responsible Three generations ago the so ciocultural wisdom was aboutdoing for children The collectivity of the family was Cited and which was in the fairly leap off the page The on more important than the needs newspapers involved a custodi 1 going battle between the ex of the Individual though I agree with much of what he wrote especially that the courts are not the places where contentious is sues about child custody are best resolved I think more needs to be said What Etherington said about needs foremost and nego what derails parenting of chil Hate with their ex spouses dren in contentious white divorces is often correct ests that is the niter through which interactions go is the emotion of the faUed marriage Good effective psychological and social mediation is the way to go and it would be positive if there were more recommenda tions for this service by the courts rather than a custodial assessment I am encouraged by the cou ples with whom I have worked who despite the emotional? of their relation ship are able to put their chil 6 "rf AM 'M WW you to do that In the '90s the collectivity has been passed by the press to sat isfy individual needs Many readers of the Record will be familiar with the radio voice of Dr Laura "My child's Her message is an important one: your children bite the I understand her to be saying that child focus in fami lies is essential It is a mistake to structure this issue as either or either my best interest or my best interest In this relentless battle with my ex spouse It needs to be too late to advocate this when the ex couple appear before the judge The solution? Prevention is best done through public educa tion John Theis of Waterloo is a family consultant We welcome topical letters that Include name address and phone numbers for verification All copy Is edited for clarity style and length Writers general ly are limited to 200 words and one submission In 60 days Short letters have more Impact We de cline announcements poetry open letters consumer com plaints congratulations and thank you notes The Record contacts only those people whose letters or Second Opinions have been cho sen for publication Please write: The Editor The Record 22S airway Road Kitch ener N2Q AES fax: 894 3829 mall: recordlettersO southern ca or more Information call 894 2231 ext 610 Copyright In letters and other materials accepted for publica Hon remains with the author but the publisher and Its licensees may freely reproduce them In print electronic or other forms a EDITORIALS WRITE TO US.