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LETTER: Suggest learning some compassion from our past

Amid COVID-19, saddened to see people of all ages hoarding, unwilling to share
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Pam Omelaniec, believed to be about three at the time of this picture, grew up in the U.K. knowing what it meant to go with. (Special to Langley Advance Times)

Dear Editor,

Re: [Hoarders, please ask: Do others need it more?, March 18, Langley Advance Times letters]

I was born in Lancashire, U.K. in1942, during the Second World War.

As a child I never knew what a fresh egg [was] and had never seen a banana. Toilet rolls had not been in invented.

We had no phones in the house, no TV. No one had a car. People stood in line ups for food not knowing what they were lining up for.

A family was rationed to one quarter ounce of butter per week – and all the time our parents listened for the sound of the air raid sirens wailing telling us to get to the air raid shelters as a bombing raid was upon us.

If anyone ran out of a necessities, neighbours would help as best they could.

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We lived on a corporation housing estate where, even before and after the war, luxuries were non-existent.

My husbands family came to Aldergrove in 1936, from what is now Belarus.

They bought 40 acres of bush and with a new baby they lived under a tree, took water from the creek, and cooked in the open air with a log fire.

How times have changed.

The older generation often blame the young as the “me generation.”

On shopping at the Otter Co-op in Aldergrove this last week, it is sad to say that is not true.

People of all ages were filling their grocery carts to excess because of their avarice (greed) regardless of their fellow man. Not willing to share.

And this is happening day after day across our province; and there is not a bomber in sight.

Shame on you.

Pamela G Omelaniec, Langley

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Everything from fresh produce to canned goods, toilet paper and hand sanitizer to meat, are being bought up faster than some stores can stock. (Langley Advance Times files)