Editor:
You’d think we’d have learned, with many locals uprising, finding our voices in protest of Three Sisters Mountain Village’s forthcoming doubling of this delicate mountain town. Apparently not?
Thank you to Kari and Sean Meggs, for their letter in the Aug. 8 edition of the Outlook “concerns on Canmore area redevelopment plan”. I’m very glad I’m not alone in publicly raising these alarms.
There are so many conversations springing up, about the town’s plans for expansion/development.
There is no such thing as underused or vacant land. It is wholly being used by nature.
Who will say stop to further human population expansion and exploitation in this wildlife habitat? We’re already exceeding Parks Canada’s and Canmore’s capacities with respect to ecology including wildlife, quality of existing residents’ human life, and capacity to evacuate when and/if we need to.
On Canmore Folk Festival Sunday, when the rains arrived early evening, I could barely get across the street to head east from downtown. I’ve never seen such an inbound traffic backlog before.
Who will say no to more development and developers? Who will say no to more profiting from ecological beauty, rather than preservation and true care of it?
There seem to be more realtors in this town than doctors or teachers.
We don’t need more tourist accommodation or second houses. We do need more housing for people who actually work and live here.
Residents are disturbed, feeling betrayed, that historic Eklof Park is up for erasure and thus development of a city-like four-storey complex.
We need to reclaim our vision of this being a small-scale, inter-connective community – a town – not a mini-burgeoning city and we need to rediscover and bow to our responsibility to be a part of – not the governors of – the sacred beauty that we are privileged to live amidst.
Acknowledging our Indigenous neighbours in land acknowledgments, saying “helping us to steward this land”, is a laugh. How many of us actually have a clue what this means? It’s high time that we take time, to deeply, deeply, deeply reflect on this. This will bring us to humility, remembering our place amidst the sacredness of the natural wonders everywhere around us and not commodifying what isn’t ours, to sell as profit.
Nothing is owned. When we finally actually do get it, we’ll feel remorse, realizing how far afield we’ve been from our birthright, which is to respectfully care for what we have the privilege of being amidst.
Ariole K Alei,
Canmore
