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In a real emergency
Re Hawaii's Missile Alert Misfire Feeds Doubts About A Real Emergency (Jan. 15): With Donald Trump at the helm, the takeaway from the false alarm about a nuclear strike on Hawaii is this: That's how quickly it will happen. Don't bother running, you will just die tired.
What can we do?
The answer is simple. Live in the moment, with the people you enjoy being around. And get off the damn phone.
Casimir Galas, Toronto
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A 'bad' feminist?
Women of my age (and Margaret Atwood's), grew up with men, predominantly white men, as the head of most social, economic and political institutions (Am I A Bad Feminist? – Opinion Section, Jan. 13).
Although women have made advances through social and political action, I see the system perpetuated in my daughter's working life. Entrenched social inequality continues to severely curtail women's ability to access the law to redress the misuses of power in sexual harassment and assault. This fact was recently documented in The Globe and Mail's Unfounded series.
It is impossible to ignore the failures of our legal system with missing and murdered Indigenous women and their families. The #metoo movement has helped put faces to the pervasiveness of abuse of power by men in the working lives of women. The movement seems to be spreading to industries which are particularly egregious, where women are low-wage earners and physically vulnerable.
Ms. Atwood is correct, however, about women's inherent agency. That agency is apparent in the political actions and bravery of the women who continue to fight for equality. Support for this important effort may eventually result in accountability for both men and women.
Margaret Shaw, Toronto
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What Trump says …
Re Trump Says He's Not Racist, Denies Making Disparaging Statements (Jan. 15): "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Unless they come from a shithole country, that is.
Sandy Szabo, North Saanich, B.C.
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Critics say Donald Trump doesn't speak for average Americans. Apparently, he doesn't even speak for Donald Trump – as he denies saying almost everything he has said (and done).
Jerry Steinberg, Surrey, B.C.
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Wages of inequity
Re How Economic Theory Explains The Tim Hortons Wage Debate (Opinion Section, Jan. 13): I wonder how Michael Farren, a research fellow with the Mercatus Center – a think tank which has received substantial Koch funding – would answer two questions in the Tim Hortons wage debate?
1) Why should a multibillion- dollar company like Restaurant Brands International rely and prosper on a business model based on poverty wages?
2) How can anyone in a big Canadian city put a roof over their head if they work only one job earning $14 an hour?
It wasn't so long ago that even conservative economists believed that someone working full time shouldn't be living in poverty. I guess that's changed, now that so many low-wage workers in Ontario toil for giants like RBI, Wal-Mart or McDonald's.
John Cartwright, president, Toronto & York Region Labour Council
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Michael Farren presents us with one snapshot of how the economy works: When minimum wages are raised, some employers respond by laying off employees and/or reducing non-wage benefits they provide to employees.
There will be, I hope, a second opinion piece that explains what happens to the economy when low-wage workers receive a raise. Do they put their additional earnings into their retirement savings account, or perhaps an offshore tax-free account, or do they spend it quickly, thus contributing to economic growth?
Harvey Krahn, Edmonton
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Along ethnic lines
Re Why Are Iron Curtain Countries Electing Extremists? Blame 1945 (Opinion Section, Jan. 13): Doug Saunders attributes the recent strain of intolerant ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe to the legacy of Yalta, when the victorious Allied powers divided the region "strictly along ethnic lines."
If he's right, it seems we can't win. Because the opposite approach has proven equally harmful. For example, it's been noted that post-colonial Africa was handicapped by borders that ignored ethnic divisions.
When the Europeans departed, they bequeathed their successors the same arbitrary borders with which they had previously divided the continent. This proved no less a recipe for conflict; except in Africa, it primarily went on within nations, not between them. Biafra comes immediately to mind.
Another example: the Sykes-Picot division of the Middle East, which again failed to respect the natural affinities of ethnic groups, and the legacy of which has been cited as an exacerbating factor in the Iraq and Syrian wars.
On the other hand, Mr. Saunders's point seems well made if one looks back to the early 20th century, when the Wilsonian doctrine of national self-determination – an idealistic concept grounded in ethnic/linguistic/religious homogeneity – may have abetted the start of the First World War. Big, cosmopolitan, and loosely governed empires – such as the Ottomans, or Austria-Hungary – were probably more stable and tolerant than the small, squabbling, and ethnically homogeneous nation-states emboldened by president Woodrow Wilson's promise.
Brian P.H. Green, Thunder Bay, Ont.
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Noisy reassurance
Re North Star Flies Non-Stop Across Canada For First Time (Moment in Time, Jan. 15, 1949): The famous "intolerably noisy cabin" of the Canadair North Star airplane once turned out to be something of a comfort for former prime minister Louis St. Laurent. On the way home from Paris in 1950, the prime minister's plane (he was travelling on the much quieter C-5 with twin engines) stopped at Keflavik airport in Iceland to refuel.
When the aircraft took off once more, an engine failed and the PM was forced to return to Iceland. St. Laurent was stuck there for a day before Trans-Canada Airlines could dispatch a plane – it sent a North Star with the four loud Merlin engines – to fetch him.
On the flight home, however, St. Laurent's special assistant Jack Pickersgill noted that the prime minister had turned to him and said that "the noise of the North Star was very reassuring."
J.D.M. Stewart, Toronto