Community ties
I read with interest the article in your Feb. 11 edition about black settlers in Alberta. I suspect that many do not know that there is a direct connection to Saskatchewan.
My grandfather and grandmother and my mother and her siblings, who homesteaded near Gull Lake, Sask., used to travel to Junkins, Alta., which is now Wildwood, to work in the sawmills during the winter.
Some of our Scandinavian relatives had left Gull Lake because of hard times and established logging operations in the area of Junkins.
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In our family’s case, it was a brother to my grandfather. My grandparents and family used to have to stay in a reconverted granary, which had no insulation, during the winter.
My mother told me about her first trip to Junkins when she was three years old. My grandmother’s best friend there was a black woman from Oklahoma. My mother was terrified at first because she had never seen a black person. However, because of the friendship between them she soon learned that there was very little difference between the hardships endured by the two families.
Many other Scandinavian families went up there to work as well. It is a little-known connection between the Scandinavian and black communities.
Howard Leeson
Regina
20 years too long
The good news for laying hens is the recent commitment by Egg Farmers of Canada to end battery cages for laying hens. The bad news is it will take up to 20 years.
The Feb. 5 announcement from egg farmers is focused on enriched cages for hens, not cage-free systems, as consumers are requesting. Eggs produced in enriched cages won’t satisfy retailer requirements for cage-free eggs.
Tim Hortons, Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell, General Mills, Nestle and others have responded to public pressure and are calling for cage-free eggs. It is regrettable egg farmers still promote cages for laying hens. Whatever the alternative caging is called — ‘furnished’, ‘enriched’ or ‘colony’— it remains an unacceptable confinement system.
About 95 percent of laying hens in Canada are now confined to battery cages, with each hen having less space than a standard sheet of paper.
Even with growing public pressure against battery cages, the EFC wants until 2036 to change from small battery cages to larger confinement operations.
Twenty years is too long for the Canadian egg industry to move hens out of battery cages. The European Union made its change in 12 years.
Stephanie Brown,
Director, Canadian Coalition
for Farm Animals, Toronto
Liz White,
Director, Animal Alliance
of Canada, Ottawa
