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Trustee’s history should have been known to public

Re: Trustee position won by election, Letters, Dec. 13.

To the Editor,

Re: Trustee position won by election, Letters, Dec. 13.

The writer states that Donna Allen and Eric Ricker are taking us back to the “bad old days” by trying to deprive Bill Bard of his human rights in suggesting that school trustees should not have a criminal record.

What about the voters’ rights to know about the truth? What about our right to autonomously run our country according to our own values? How can democracy be effective if the truth is not transparent on a candidate’s past?

Morally, it is everyone’s right to know the history of anyone running for a trustee and the obligation for the candidate to disclose.

Growing pot may be a minor offence, but we must have the right to demand that those in leadership respect the law and reflect our highest standards of character and thus be a good example for the kids.

In what the writer describes as the bad old days, there was also a lot of good, like low divorce rates, close-nit families and communities, high voter participation, traditional values, traditional role models, less mental illness, less crime, cheap real estate, and much more economic and agricultural self-sufficiency.

I know several old classmates who have not missed a day being incessantly stoned on pot for 30 years and are messed up. Both legal and illegal drugs can be devastating.

My father was an English professor and after a doctor prescribed him demerol, he soon became a dysfunctional demerol junkie, which led to my parents divorce and to him committing suicide three years later when I was 14.

Holden Southward

Nanaimo