Editor: I spoke with Langley City Councillor Gayle Martin on the phone on Thursday, May 23. She told me she is in favour of putting a racetrack in a nature park because she says “parks should be for everyone” and she objects to Campbell Valley Park being used as horse riders’ “private country club.”
Councillor Martin apparently doesn’t know that most horse riders are regular, working folk who would never — and mostly could never — join a country club.
Horse riders have never objected to the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, bird watchers, dog walkers, families and pretty much anyone who loves to get out of the city to spend time in a quiet, beautiful Metro Vancouver nature park.
Race car lovers say they need a new race track. But not in a nature park. They must look elsewhere.
I doubt there is a single nature park anywhere in the world that welcomes car racing.
Martin is totally out of touch with her constituency.
She also must never have been to Campbell Valley Park or she would have seen that it is, in fact, a park for everyone’s use. She does not seem to understand the basic concept of a park.
It’s no one’s private country club. It’s a park — plain and simple.
Joanne Braithwaite,
Langley