As a life-long resident (and business owner) in Trail, there are times that I feel a letter to our local paper is an absolute necessity.
This is one of those times.
On a daily basis there are things that I will do and things that I won’t do depending on the time of year.
When I wasn’t watching, we slid (slid being the optimum word here) into winter and winter in Trail can be beautiful with one glaring exception. The streets are dangerous to the average walker and downright life threatening if that walker happens to be a senior.
I am betting that you would like me to get to the point of this letter so here it is - I have a challenge to our new–old city council. I would like all of them to go for a walk on our streets around 5–6 p.m. and then do a report on what they find.
I did this very thing on Saturday night. Two of my very close friends and I decided to attend the Metis Christmas dinner that night and since all three of us were already downtown, we decided to walk.
Big mistake – huge mistake. We are all in the senior-ish range and it took us more than 20 minutes to walk from the corner of Cedar Avenue to the United Church annex.
Do not even ask me how long it took us to mince back to our starting point after the dinner was over. That may be a totally different letter.
Before you give me the old line about it being up to the individual business owners to take care of their own part of the sidewalks, I already know that and have a big bag of ice melt dedicated to be thrown at my patch of sidewalk.
With all the attention being given to the revitalization of the downtown core, the first thing we must do is make it safe for the people who actually still walk downtown.
To finish this letter may I add that I not only work downtown but I live downtown as well.
Linda Grandbois
Trail