To the Editor,
Been in downtown Nanaimo lately to see the bland, no colour, Christmas decorations on the main street?
Looks like someone couldn’t decide on a colour or couldn’t afford multi-coloured bulbs so they went with the washed-out look.
What you see glaring in your face are tree trunks wrapped with oodles of tiny white bulbs. The light strings don’t really even extend onto the branches, so at night you don’t even know a tree is being outlined.
The whitish bulbs do nothing to add pizzazz to our city core at this very special, magical, joyous time of the year.
This type of lighting could be left up all year long. Other cities do.
For festive ideas, Nanaimo just needed to look to the little town to the south that did. Ladysmith has become a poster city for Christmas decorating anywhere in the world.
Even Langford, once the ugliest city centre on the Island, shines with one of the best light displays in Canada.
What could have set our city apart, and made it dazzle, would have been to install those bulbs which can be turned any color you want at the flick of a switch.
There could be multi-coloured lights for Christmas, red and white for Valentine’s Day, green for St. Patrick’s Day and white for the rest of the year.
All as it takes is some research, thinking, care and planning. Obviously that wasn’t the case here.
Anyone got some paint?
M.D. Stade
Nanaimo