MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article titled 'Midland residents save waterfront 'hidden gem' for one more year', published March 4.
Dear Editor,
I read your article Midland residents save waterfront ‘hidden gem’ for one more year and found myself shaking my head.
Many of the reasons for selling off a small remaining piece of public access to the bay make sense, given the state of Midland and of the world in this day and age, but at the same time I heard the bell toll as another piece of Midland’s history slowly slides away.
I too have spent most of my life in North Simcoe. My family actually has a history in Midland dating back to the 1870s. As a young boy being raised in Midland, I would walk the shoreline from the Townhouse Elevator to Midland Point stopping to visit with my great grandparents who lived along the shore.
Now of course, such a hike is impossible with the shoreline being, for the most part, private property.
Some would call what’s happened, what’s happening here in Midland, progress, perhaps, but in my mind we’re simply bowing to commerce while we slowly bury our past….
The Village
Used to be that
the village was small,
a few families grouped together
for the benefit of all.
The village,
in time,
grew,
strangers moved in,
information,
secrets once shared,
now hidden,
seldom viewed.
In time,
one village became two,
then three, until
as time passed,
as time does,
the village disappeared,
replaced by a town.
The town grew and grew until,
it too was replaced
by a city, in which
strangers live side by side,
hidden from view.
Information once shared,
now written down,
voice opinion as if truth,
sowing mistrust -
and fear.
Words once spoken,
as a matter of fact,
now carefully measured,
not written down.
Intimacy,
thoughts and advice,
once shared by a village,
replaced by silence,
and stares.
A voice of choice
from a mechanical device,
computers,
our best friends.
And,
what of the village,
back-broken,
lying in ruins,
a memory for
but a few.
The village,
now global,
a terrible mess,
everything virtual,
reality distressed.
Sincerely,
Ernest Somers
Midland, ON
