Helicopters and writers do not mix
Editor:
As I've done for years, I spent last weekend (Aug. 15 to 18) at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt's Rockwood Pavillion, thoroughly enjoying the readings, lectures and performances of 27 of Canada's finest writers.
No, let me correct that. I was only able to enjoy listening to 24 of those writers, because the other three were rudely drowned out by the thunder of a helicopter hovering overhead for several hours, positioning air conditioning equipment onto the roof of Chatelech Secondary School next door.
Sechelt may be open for business, as Mayor Henderson loves to tell us, but this was taking the concept to a ridiculous extreme.
The District of Sechelt has long supported this nationally-renowned festival, but clearly the right hand doesn't always tell the left hand what it's doing.
The District was informed of the festival's dates many months ago, and yet someone authorized the use of a helicopter operation virtually overhead of the festival -on a weekend no less - without bothering to check what else was going on in that area on that date.
The impression this left with the audience, which comes from all over B.C. and even from across the U.S. border -was of a community that couldn't care less about the arts in Sechelt, and which was willing to interrupt and drown out most of a Saturday morning's list of events in the name of somebody's construction schedule.
I'm sure this was not intentional, but I hope the District's administration will take greater care to avoid such embarrassing incidents in the future.
Andreas Schroeder, Roberts Creek
