Editorial

A matter of respect

Time for another harangue about respect for pedestrians. Or the lack of it.
Any way you slice it, allowing icy sidewalks to remain outside one’s home or place of business is disrespectful to those who walk. It’s especially so to those who have to walk; perhaps a bit less so for those who only choose to walk.
Ours is a driving culture. Driving four blocks to work or to the store for a loaf of bread and a movie rental goes without saying. Driving to work the same. Who thinks twice about it?
But gas is going up another dime per litre, we hear. We also hear that pumping carbon into the atmosphere is not healthy for the planet. The ice caps are melting. We’re losing the glaciers.
This is not to attempt to make drivers feel guilty. But there are a few and possibly growing number of people (yes, even in Slave Lake!) who feel that walking to work (or wherever) is the right thing to do. And then of course there are those who have no vehicle and walk by necessity. Others choose to do so for exercise.
The point is, these people are out there, and in current conditions are forced to walk over some pretty icy surfaces. The older among them are at serious risk of breaking bones if they fall.
To ignore this fact by allowing the sidewalks to stay icy is dangerous and disrespectful. No community that values, or claims to value, its citizens and especially it’s senior citizens, should force them to walk on ice. It amounts to treating them like a lower, less-important class than those who choose to drive everywhere.
Bad sidewalks are sometimes unavoidable, certainly. But with a reasonable amount of attention and effort, the situation could be improved. We can do better as a community, and we should.
A light at the end of the tourism tunnel
If you don’t tell people what you’ve got, they won’t know about it and they won’t come. So how do you market a region?
One way is for hotels to put a levy on their room bills, pool the money and use it to pay for tourism promotion, or even for developing tourism product. Such a system is in place in many parts of the country and is apparently working quite well.
Hoteliers in Big Lake Country are currently considering the concept. It seems likely they’ll go ahead. In the competitive world of tourism, if you aren’t moving ahead, you’re probably losing ground.
There are many details to be worked out, certainly. But it seems a good idea and we wish the best to the participants in getting it off the ground.