Dear Editor:
As a society, we all acknowledge the risks of our children's increasingly inactive lifestyle, and we all comment on the need to get out of our homes and cars and to connect with our communities.
We reminisce about childhoods spent running through local parks with friends, and ask why more children don't enjoy the same freedoms today.
As I discovered last week, part of the reason is that there are people in our community who are letting fear override common sense.
Our young family lives in Central Lonsdale, and on a recent morning, my three young daughters asked if they could walk the family dog straight down our street to Mahon Park and back for the first time on their own.
This is a route that I travel with them every day. I looked out and saw that the street was full of its usual activity, with local contractors, gardeners and neighbourhood dog owners going about their business.
I thought: "Here is a perfect opportunity for them to enjoy a brief bit of independence in their own neighbourhood." So I said: "Yes."
You can imagine my annoyance when they came home 10 minutes later, crestfallen, to say that they would never walk the dog again.
A woman walking her own dog had come up to them, unbidden, and told them that young girls should not be out on their own, that bears were in the area, and that it was dangerous.
I want to reiterate that this was in the middle of a busy weekday morning, on a Central Lonsdale street, with all sorts of people about, including gardeners with leafblowers. What do you think the chances were of my girls crossing paths with a bear?
Please, if you are out in your neighbourhood and come across my children playing, feel free to give them a smile and a wave, and keep a watchful eye out for them. But don't take it upon yourself to scare them with tales of lurking evils.
I don't want my children afraid of their own neighbourhood, and that is what insensitive interferences like the ones that my daughters experienced this morning do.
Laurel Douglas North Vancouver
