Letters to the editor

Theatres need funding to survive



To the editor:

I would be the first to applaud the wonderful news that Dawson College is going to have its much-deserved theatre.

My question to MP Lucienne Robillard is this: What happens to all our theatre graduates soon after their training? I can answer this question myself. They leave Montreal.

Two independent theatre companies have folded very recently through lack of financial support. I am holding my own with great pride, having given huge opportunities to young professional artists from our educational programmes here, in all areas of their expertise in 10 major productions since the company was first created in the year 2000. We have played to enthusiastic and supportive audiences, but for how much longer I wonder?

Everyone who knows about running a theatre company knows that it is impossible to manage the budget based solely on ticket sales.

Yes, we need to educate our young artists in the best possible way in the best possible space, but we also need funding from the government in order that anglo theatre companies like mine can continue if we are indeed going to "benefit the whole community" and encourage our young professional graduates to remain here.

Gabrielle Soskin

Artistic director, Persephone Productions

Somerville Avenue





City's park claims don't hold water



To the editor:

I wish reply to Peter Weldon's claim "Mr. Deegan’s presentation dealt with the chronic difficulties of maintaining the fields, the merits of artificial surface, safety and economic considerations" (Letters, Nov. 9).

Chronic difficulties in maintaining the fields?

Perhaps less returfing, less watering, less frequent aggressive mowing with heavy machines, less fencing off, less quasi-neurotic concern and misplaced TCL should allow the grass to root deeply in the earth and the chance to grow sturdy and to thrive.

Proof of the validity of the above statement resides in the soccer field at the Westmount High School Athletic Grounds. Hemmed in between the school, the dog run, a restroom, a children’s playground, two tennis courts, two vegetable gardens, seniors from nearby residences taking the air, joggers jogging, walkers and pets (who don’t like the dog run) socializing with other owners and pets, daily several baseball and soccer games and heavy public use of the field as a short cut to and from work place a stress on the grass that the manicured fields of Westmount Park have never been subjected to. And the grass on the Athletic Grounds has always been robust and thriving in spite of all the above and comparative neglect by the City.

The merits of artificial turf? Zero. Just the illusion of the real thing. Its demerits would make this letter too long.

Safety? What safety?

Economic considerations? The City would save a ton if only it would turn off the lights in the Public Library and the floodlights on its countless empty tennis courts at night.

Improve the quality of the playing fields for children?

I would ask our director of sports and recreation whether it is of any importance or concern to him that impressionable children should be given the message to value and love nature in all forms in times when nature is being relentlessly abused, mercilessly plundered and destroyed worldwide?

I believe the majority of Westmount residents are appalled, shocked and unbelieving that this idea to denaturalize and kill healthy green fields in a park devoted to the preservation of nature could even be considered by the City as to propose its adoption. Not only residents living near the Park object to this utterly absurd, outrageous and contrary-to-nature-reason-and-common-sense plan.

Everyone, everywhere, who values nature is affronted and affected by the proposal. What would visitors from abroad think of Westmount which prides itself on “providing 13 parks of every size and shape that nestle in the City’s one-and-a-half square miles. One of the joys of living in Westmount is the proximity each of us has to an attractive and inviting green space.� (Promised in writing by the City manager a couple of years ago.)

The park would not only lose considerable amounts of the oxygen that its grass produces in sunlight, earthworms/insects, birds and squirrels which feed on them will avoid the dead surface. I appeal to our new mayor for whom the majority of us voted, to kindly listen at least to the birds’ silent opinion and to let nature remain nature in our small, much-loved and fragile Westmount Park.

May I also suggest to our mayor to have the park lamp-posts repainted (promised in writing by the City manager a couple of years ago); three posts near the gazebo that have arisen more than foot off ground due to frost action are leaning dangerously, threatening to topple any day, could be properly secured into the ground; also if the mysteriously decapitated one in the same area replaced, the squirrel-chewed garbage cans replaced with animal proof ones, the rats eliminated, the trees and bushes along the bike path pruned for obvious safety reasons, the repaired surface on the historic horizontal willow roughened or sculpted to resemble the bark for aesthetics and to discourage graffiti and, last but not least: replace the rotting concrete paths with gravel and the ponderous, unsightly concrete barriers surrounding many trees and flower beds be replaced with organic material such as railway sleepers.

The economy resulting from switching off the powerful lights that flood Westmount’s numerous empty tennis courts and switching off the lights in an empty Westmount Public Library could well pay for these improvements.

I sincerely trust that under Mayor Karin Marks creatively inspired leadership, City Hall will constantly seek to improve Westmount’s parks and never even think to allow dead plastic on its living, oxygenating fields.

Stephen Chin

Sherbrooke Street