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Mayor Jyoti Gondek, city council and Premier Danielle Smith have unanimously decided to spend about a billion dollars of your money to replace a perfectly serviceable, iconic arena for the wealthy owners of a hockey team that will not make the playoffs this year.
Gondek and council refuse to hold a plebiscite on the arena proposal because they know it will be soundly defeated. They say they know better than taxpayers — in the face of study after study that shows no net lasting economic benefit from subsidizing professional sports infrastructure.
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It’s a bad, political-donor-crony-motivated boondoggle, with no entertainment value and no lasting economic benefits, that diverts funds from far more important needs — just for the sake of a bored, booing, moneyed 1.3 per cent of Calgarians out of a 2024 city population of about 1.4 million.
Mike Priaro, Calgary
A snapshot of positive social order
Re: Japan shows the way on public safety, Opinion, March 27
I couldn’t agree more with the writer. In 1977, I spent five months in Japan as a study abroad student. I lugged my prized possession overseas — a very expensive camera gifted to me by my grandfather.
One Saturday I went shopping at a popular department store in Kyoto. On Sunday morning, I noticed my treasured camera was missing. No one seemed to have entered my apartment that night, so I hightailed it down to the department store and went through the side security door straight to lost and found. Sadly, no one had handed in a camera.
On the way out, I walked through the store’s large and very crowded vestibule and, much to my relief, my camera was still sitting on the bench I had used the day before. When I whipped back to lost and found, the same gentleman greeted me. I told him I was astounded to see my camera still sitting there.
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He looked puzzled and said, “But the camera belongs to you, not to anyone else.”
Bill Chomik, Calgary
Booing based on politics, not race
Re: Moment of shame and pride as mayor booked at celebration game, April 2
Rishi Nagar writes a column critical of the booing at the Flames game. It wasn’t racist, it was a political statement by Calgary voters on the worst mayor ever, regardless of nationality or sex.
On top of that, the Flames decided to have a South Asian Night on the holiest weekend for Christians. This event could and should have been held on another night.
Read the room. The mayor is extremely unpopular. To have her associated with South Asian Night (I thought being identified by ethnicity is racist) and introduced as the “first female mayor” (sexist some would say) is bad enough.
But the mayor previously insulted the Jewish community, and now the Christian community by ignoring Easter.
Colin Pratt, Calgary
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