Reverse your U.S. flag decision
Dear City Council,
Chuck Yeager is indisputably the most famous test pilot of all time. He won a permanent place in the history as the first pilot ever to fly faster than the speed of sound, only days after cracking several ribs in a horseback riding accident. He taught most of the NASA astronauts who flew in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. He won dozens of military honours over his career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His life story can be found in the bestselling book, The Right Stuff (1979), by Tom Wolfe, and the popular film of the same title (1983).
In addition to all this, Chuck Yeager loved Cranbrook. He loved to hunt in this area, and he was especially fond of the local guides here.
One can imagine the amount of money he spent on these trips; let alone the goodwill he created for our area. So, it seems odd that we would remove American flags from our town. Do we no longer want visitors from the United States? Do we no longer want all the tourists, sports teams, entertainers, businesses, students, educators, and even their national heroes spending time and money here? The U.S. has had floats in every single Same Steele / Spirit of the Rockies parades every single year since 1966. Are we uninviting them this year? Is no one in town married to an American?
We’ve been here before. “British Columbia has no need of Italians to work here,” said the ‘Cranbrook Herald’ in 1898. “We Neither Patronize or Employ Chinese Here” appeared the next year, followed by “It is time Cranbrook had a steam laundry operated by a member of Anglo-Saxon race" in 1901.
We didn’t do much better decades later either. One of Cranbrook’s earliest settlers was Rikuzo Futa, whose sawmill on Hidden Valley Road employed over 40 Cranbrook citizens. His later businesses (grocery store, gas station, café, apartment buildings) were positioned to cater to the employees of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1942 Futu and his family were packed off to an internment camp, with all of his businesses, property, and life savings liquidated to support the war effort. “Thank you people of Cranbrook and District who have been our loyal customers and supporters of our enterprises for the past 45 years and to the last minute,” Futa managed to write before he was carted off. The only thing Cranbrook could do in his memory was to name the site of his sawmill “Jap Lake.”
And now the Americans are seen as the enemy, much like they were during COVID, when the site of American licence plates caused panic outrage, which turned into threats and vandalism done to those with Alberta plates.
What are we doing here? Why is the fact that Coeur d’Alene was our sister city being brushed aside as some trivial thing, as if it was a mistake for two city councils from two separate countries to find common ground and friendship. Something that contributed to the cultural and financial well being of both.
Nationalism is defined as “identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations”. We all know where this leads. It is suggested that putting the flags of the United States back up will “open a can of worms,” but what is the drawback here? Putting the flags back up is a signal of friendship and hospitality, letting visitors to Cranbrook that they are welcome, and can feel safe and at home.
It’s understandable why people complained about them, as well as why they were taken down. Not only is Donald Trump the worst president in American history, he is also one of the worst human beings on the planet. But us taking down flags is the kind of isolating nonsense he is counting on. Another American — Dr. Martin Luther King — warned us that, especially during contentious times, to see our “political enemies as moral equals whom we are interdependent with and vulnerable to, and whose needs and welfare we are obligated to consider.”
As for those Anglo-Saxons who wanted a “whites only” laundry, I am the fourth generation of that group. My children are the fifth; and I want their children to grow up in the Cranbrook that puts up flags, not the one that takes them down. I urge City Council to reverse this decision. Not because of obvious economic impact it will create, which it will, but simply because it is the right thing to do.
Mike Selby/Cranbrook
The BC Conservatives and the Ides of March
The 2024 BC provincial election proved one thing: history repeats itself—and sometimes in the ugliest ways possible.
The Ides of March, infamous for the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, was a brutal reminder of what happens when power-hungry opportunists turn on their own. Caesar fell to a conspiracy of senators who saw him as both a threat and a tool for their own ambitions. Sound familiar?
Enter the BC Conservatives. Riding the ideological blue wave of Pierre Poilievre, the party stormed into opposition status with an untested leader and a slate of unknown, poorly vetted candidates. It took less than three weeks into the first legislative session for the cracks to show—and the bodies to start piling up.
Two MLAs have already left the party in protest after another was expelled for making offensive comments about Residential Schools on social media. Internal feuds over Trump’s tariffs, ideological purity tests, and personal grudges are already tearing the party apart. This is not just growing pains—this is a party imploding before our eyes.
And the irony? The BC Conservatives once railed against independent candidates, calling them undemocratic and a gift to the BC NDP. Now, in a delicious twist of fate, they’re stuffing the Legislature with independents of their own making. Leading the purge? John Rustad, the man who cried foul when BC United booted him from caucus. Now, he’s the one swinging the executioner’s axe. Three weeks in, and the bloodletting has already begun.
As a conservative-minded voter, I find this nothing short of disgraceful. B.C. is drowning in economic instability, crime, addiction, and cultural division, yet the supposed “opposition” party is too busy eating itself alive. This is not leadership. This is not governance. This is a clown show, and the people of B.C. deserve better.
Politics has devolved into cheap soundbites, bumper-sticker slogans, and gang-like power plays. We’ve watched this poison consume American politics—now it’s infecting Canada. The party line is supposed to be a guiding principle shaped by the people, not a rigid doctrine imposed by self-serving politicians. MLAs represent their constituents, not party bosses. Ignore that, and democracy dies.
The knives are out for the BC Conservative leadership. Rustad may have thought he was Caesar, but he should remember how that story ended.
Beware the Ides of March.
Tom Shypitka/Cranbrook
