Alice Munro at her daughter Sheila's home during an interview in Victoria, B.C., on Dec. 10, 2013.Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press
Fight left
Re “Joe Biden won’t concede, but neither will his critics. Something has to give” (Opinion, July 13): “I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice.”
I see no difference between repeated and pronounced illiberalism in the service of defeating Donald Trump and this quote, which was controversially and futilely uttered in 1964 by Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who went down in a landslide defeat at the hands of Lyndon Johnson.
Barry Stagg Boswarlos, N.L.
New order
Re “Bretton Woods birthed a genius world economic order. That order is now under threat” (Opinion, July 13): Tight financial regulation and controls of speculative capital flows were the heart of the Bretton Woods system, and were largely responsible for avoiding financial crises and instability during the early postwar period.
Indeed, capital controls were written into the articles of agreement of the International Monetary Fund, because they were seen as legitimate policy instruments to prevent financial instability. Such policies were swept away in waves of economic liberalization beginning in the 1970s.
The result was not a new era of growth, but recurring financial and debt crises particularly deleterious to countries in the Global South. But the crisis of 2008 almost precipitated an economic meltdown in the United States and Europe.
Bretton Woods is indeed dead. What remains is but a pale shadow of the bold global system envisaged by John Maynard Keynes in 1944.
Roy Culpeper Ottawa
Best-laid plans
Re “Canada’s next housing crisis: Who is going to build millions of new homes?” (Report on Business, July 13): “Canada finally has a plan.” I would say Canada does not have a plan. It has merely set goals.
Plans are about how to achieve goals, and are particularly critical when the required changes are complex, urgent and transcend so many organizational boundaries. Incentives alone are not enough.
If I told my financial adviser that I wanted $100-million in my investment portfolio by 2031 and set specific incentives for achievement, would anyone think I had a plan? I doubt it.
In years past, there have been governments that have demonstrated pro-active delivery leadership. But recently? Not so much.
Canada doesn’t have a housing-crisis plan, it has a housing-plan crisis.
Bob Rafuse Beaconsfield, Que.
March on
Re “The Orange Order once ruled Ontario’s politics. Today, it’s been squeezed out” (Opinion, July 13): During the Great Depression, my father was a small businessman in Glengarry County, Ont. He owned a general store and grist mill, and he also ran a gravel-hauling business.
A potential gravel contract came up and he applied to the local councilman, an Orangeman. He was told that if he wished to get the contract, he would have to march on the Glorious Twelfth.
My father, a French-speaking Knight of Columbus and braced by a fair amount of Scotch, marched and was awarded the contract. Times were tough in the 1930s.
Our father passed away in 1949, but our mother regaled us with this story for many years after.
John Roy Calgary
Reader beware
Re “Deeper read” (Letters, July 13): A letter-writer defends literary fiction “as being morally improving and able to develop a capacity for empathy.” If reading literature truly made us better people, then English professors would be the most decent people on Earth.
Literature no doubt refines our capacities for moral discrimination, and may even enhance our capacities for empathic projection into the minds and lives of others. But in weeping for, say, Charles Dickens’s Little Nell, we court the danger of empathizing with fictional characters at the expense of actual people. Literature doesn’t necessarily facilitate moral virtue and fellow feeling in real life.
So please let Alice Munro be. She was under no obligation to improve us; it is enough that she gave us her works of genius.
“Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it,” as D.H. Lawrence said.
Greig Henderson Toronto
Olympic spirit
Re “Penny Oleksiak’s hard road to the Paris Olympics” (Sports, July 13): Of all the examples of thoughtfulness and generosity I witnessed from swimmers and their families at the Olympic trials in Toronto this year, one in particular stands out for me.
Upon entering the public foyer after an evening session, Penny Oleksiak found herself in a mob of admiring fans. I wondered how she might gracefully extricate herself in order to get back to her lodgings and rest for the next day, and how many fans would leave disappointed.
Smiling, Ms. Oleksiak knelt beside small children for photographs, stood beside adults for selfies and signed autographs for everyone interested. After 40 minutes, the crowd had dispersed, everyone left happy and she then made her exit.
If I had a voice in the selection for opening-ceremony flagbearer, Ms. Oleksiak would be my choice.
Dan Brennan Belleville, Ont.
Hot stuff
Re “Hot summer nights used to be romantic – now they’re dangerous” (Opinion, July 13): “Trying to sleep with a fan painting your body with dryness is like necking with an inept partner.” Like reporter Ian Brown’s family, we also don’t have central air.
When we moved to British Columbia from Montreal 33 years ago, the summer heat did not seem quite so hot. Now we struggle each summer in our 1950s wood-framed bungalow.
Recently, we discovered the best way to use a fan at night: Rather than recirculate hot air through the room, we place the fan in the window and blow it outside.
It’s made an enormous difference. Try it.
Roxanne Davies North Vancouver
“Maybe the heat will draw us together again.” My wife and I, two seniors out for a walk, were recently stopped on the streets of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., by a cyclist who startled us with her question: “Are you okay?”
“What?” we answered back cluelessly. Because of the extreme heat conditions, she had noticed us walking two hours earlier. Seeing us still walking, she wondered if we were perhaps victims of sunstroke, too disoriented to get out from under the sun’s overpowering rays. The kindness of a stranger stopping to check on our well-being.
Later, while having lunch at a local vineyard, we asked the waitress why they planted roses in front of every row of vines. She said roses serve as an early warning system. Because of their sensitive nature, they succumb to diseases before grapes.
It’s nice to think there are humans who serve as beautiful roses among us.
Tony D’Andrea Toronto
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