Dear Editor:
Full disclosure: for 26 years I have been counsel, under contract and/or on an ad hoc basis, to B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development. These comments are my own personal views and have no connection to ministry policy, practice, and/or procedure.
I have been reading with great interest the articles, op/ed pieces, including your Helicopter Down (Sept. 6 Viewpoint), letters to the editor and comments regarding the news story of the ministry’s investigation of Adrian Crook’s children’s riding public transit in Vancouver without adult supervision.
The general consensus seems to be that there are no safety issues here, that Mr. Crook has taken all the right steps in educating and training his children, and by citing child protection concerns, the ministry is being over-bearing and exemplifying unwarranted state interference in the raising of his children. Oh, and children are far more likely to be hurt in a car accident than they are on the bus.
Funnily enough, no one has mentioned the risk every TransLink passenger (particularly those not male) face, of harassment, threats and violence from other passengers.
Yes, at the age of 11 years I regularly took the bus by myself down Lonsdale to the North Vancouver City library on 14th and back home again, but that was some 40-odd years ago. The world has changed. Standards have changed. As a parent you cannot trust other adults to step in and assist your child should s/he be in need (40-odd years ago people would not have behaved on transit the way they do today).
I too lament how the world is no longer the “safe place” it was, or appeared to be, in years past but neither am I about to put my young children at risk in some vain hope that the world will change as a result.
Michelle B. Fuchs
Cranbrook, B.C.
What are your thoughts? Send us a letter via email by clicking here or post a comment below.
