Editor:
Re: Preserving Delta's fishing heritage, Aug. 21
Of all his worries about the state of wild salmon in B.C., my late father, a commercial salmon fisherman for about a half-century, was particularly worried about the dangerously negative repercussions of the over-warming of waters on our wild salmon, not to mention fish-farming and pollution.
Currently, the Fraser River is experiencing a bad-news rise in temperature, and about which the Optimist has been conspicuously silent.
Having said that, however, I can picture him whirling in his urn if he could still observe what our governments are allowing - and much more frightening, going to allow - various industrial interests to do to cause serious damage, perhaps irrevocably, to our precious salmon habitat; and, topping it all off, apparently to a degree beyond what Dad likely ever thought possible.
So many very-early mornings, I'd briefly get up for a washroom break and see the light breaking through underneath his bedroom door and into the hallway's darkness, with my father on the other side very-slowly typewriting missives to various politicians. I must've proofread and made many grammar corrections to almost a couple hundred letters of his over the years, just on this topic alone.
Although I'd assure him the politicians do not have or will not give their time to personally respond to each concerned writer; that they almost certainly had hired staff to read the missives and use an issue-template letter return system, with a specific template ready to respond to every potential issue. All they'd likely do is type in the letter-writer's name and address and print it out to mail back ...
Nonetheless, my father typed on about what were to him the greatest fish-habitat concerns of the day.
Oh, the irony.
Frank G. Sterle, Jr.
