Dear Editor,

Colonialism is an ancient form of land and property theft practiced by organized societies, dating back to ancient Jericho, circa 1400 BCE. Fact or fiction, the Jericho meme inspired 35 centuries of land or property theft, and it’s still being practiced by many governments in foreign lands, as well as the County.

Since the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in 1998, Canadians of conscience have been struggling with ethical confusion, a form of cognitive dissonance arising from the increasingly consuming conflict between Canada’s “fake official narrative”, created by British Supremacists, and as many as 150,000 Anne Frank type narratives revealed collectively in the TRR in 2015, as “Canada’s true history”.

To know how Canada was made, one must study colonialism, an historic process of land or property theft on a massive scale. Today, Russia is “colonizing the Ukraine”, with the same formula of violence and threats of violence, while a morally confused Canadian press conceals its own historic guilt, by reducing colonialism to Russian military aggression against the Ukraine.

Historically, property has represented political power and seizing legal control over private properties with predatory government policies, and forcing property owners into futile architectural regulation that foolishly allows modern aluminum upgrades has resulted in an overall lowering of architectural historic values on Main St.

More importantly however, the hostile Heritage Conservation District destroyed any “vestiges of goodwill on Main Street”, as property owners were shamefully abused by this exercise in oppressive government domination, for its own sake.

Council’s hostile takeovers of our private properties in Picton and Wellington is gross abuse of their elected powers. No good community does this to itself. It’s another power grab by amateur, badly trained Councillors who have fueled the political hostility in this County and created a hateful environment- a hub for more political extremism.

In 2014, the business property owners on Picton’s Main Street absolutely refused another costly and useless layer of government regulation when they unsuccessfully opposed the HCD at the OMB.

My feedback survey of the HCD four years later found that the property owners were still enraged by the imposition and bungling of the HCD by Shire Hall. No Councillors have found the courage to face the consequences of their decision by canvassing the unwanted HCD to learn important heritage lesson.

These paid bunglers failed to learn and they did it again to the good property owners in Wellington.

Taxpayers lose since there are no visible, tangible benefits from the obviously fake Picton HCD.

I identified seven major flaws to County Council ending with the radical modernization of the formerly historic Armoury and the Royal. The Royal is a brick shell of its former self and no longer contributes any architectural significance to Picton’s streetscape.

This County continues to slide into social entropy because County leadership has been abusing its constituents with harmful power grabs that benefit no one. Built heritage is a jumble of old bricks and sticks which often no longer resemble what most people remember, debunking the false notion of “sense of place”.

When our governments value our stuff higher than us, it’s time to change government.

We witnessed shocking provincial duplicity regarding built heritage during the demolitions of the historic Hyatt and Macdonald buildings by the Ford-Smith government. The provincial government destroyed these buildings, along with any remaining credibility and authority in the Heritage Act.

Unless we stand our ground for human rights including property rights, we can turn out the lights in the County and surrender to the darkness created in Shire Hall by elected officials who refuse to respond to legitimate needs of their electorate with silent County laptops while they loudly demand higher wages for their service to self.

Steve Staniek

Woodville