Editor:
Yes, B.C. “needs Putin’s free land scheme,” though it’s not just Putin’s scheme. In the late 1800s, Canada had a similar system. Other successful examples exist.
My maternal grandfather staked out a quarter section in southeastern Saskatchewan. There was free land for the taking if you didn’t mind natives trekking through, paying tribute to the ancestors and the creator. Mom and her childhood classmates watched them one day in silence from her one-room schoolhouse window at the base of Wild Man’s Butte. She was spellbound but not afraid as Pépère Treflé had always said: “Les indiens sont naturellement bons.” (Indians are naturally good.)
The Québécois relatives of his future son-in-law had claimed land of their own, literally, in the region of Trois-Rivières where terrain was to be had for the staking … provided you were not Aboriginal. So, with the help of the local clergy, they concealed their native heritage and claimed a lake and three mountains in their own traditional territory.
Libya’s murdered leader was giving away free land, seeds, implements and water to anyone who would take up farming. Many Africans did and his man-made river, the largest fresh water transport project ever undertaken by humans, was greening the desert. Enter I’llBombYa, destroying the waterworks, deliberately plunging the whole place into havoc. It is reported that Hillary Clinton rejoiced at the Libyan leaders’ being sodomized with a bayonet by proxy terrorists. Libya’s amassed gold was to be the foundation for an African bank set to put an end to African poverty and create independence. That is one reason Colonel Gaddafi was a friend of Mandela’s and why the revered statesman would not receive Obama after the murder of his revolutionary friend.
Giant kudos to Gleeson for encouraging the free land idea! It certainly is time to create space for the young.
Roger Lagasse, Halfmoon Bay
