LETTERS: New school is crucial to city’s future

Dear Editor

Re: “Cemetery back to haunt new school?,” New Westminster Record, May 5.

The CEO, Mr. Chu, claims he “doesn’t oppose a new high school for New Westminster” and “we wish them all the best,” but his disparaging and condescending use of the word “just” in “just for the sake of building the high school,” after “we don’t want them to dig up a cemetery” is another way of implying that a cemetery over 100 years old is infinitely more important than a new, needed high school.

And it certainly does sound like he does not want a high school to be built in the area at all. His own idea that Westminster Pier Park was built out of nothingness, let alone adding the entire area necessary for a sizable high school, to this productive “nothing,” does not sound very realistic to me.

He also claims that an alleged “backfilled” area was “big enough for a plane to land.” Frankly, I’m skeptical of that.

Education is essential and necessary for the progress, amelioration and even cultural survival of a civilized society. It is also necessary not only for the future job training and potential professionalism of a new generation, but for the benefit of a general knowledge and worldly informed choices during elections necessary for a functioning democracy. The consequences of a lack of education, or an old high school in extremely poor unsafe conditions, can be very serious.

Surely, a proper education and high school matter more. Surely, there must be some way to compromise if only those involved would listen to others.

The alleged cemetery section of five acres should have been properly decommissioned.

Surely, there must be some satisfactory ceremony of respect, some small memorial monument to consider building, and other compromises to consider. Granting the existence of remains there, they could be found and removed. (Many are skeptical.) At any rate, a new high school has been badly needed for generations. To do nothing about it is definitely no solution! People need to listen and somehow compromise.

Terry Hilmar, New Westminster