Biking safer than stated

At www.veloquebec.info/documents/bicyclingquebec2005-en.pdf, anyone can read: “Since 2004 the road safety record of cyclists has remained stable, with an annual average of 198 serious injuries and 20 deaths between 2000 and 2004. During the same period, the number of cyclists and bicycle use have also remained stable. This contrasts with the 1990s, when the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured in road accidents fell by half, declining from a peak of 445 in 1991 to a low of 207 in 2000.”

In your Angel & Insect section [Angel, May 3] you write: “An estimated 12,000 cyclists were injured in Montreal last year, and some 50 people died.”

I suggest you expand your research efforts beyond copying from the Gazette, who listed the same bizarre statistics.

>> Pieter Sijpkes

[Ed’s note: The numbers in question refer to injuries and deaths involving heavy trucks. We apologize for the error on behalf of both the Mirror and the Gazette.]

Sniffing out Montreal BBQ

[Re: “The rub with the ribs,” Resto, April 26] That Montreal, otherwise the gustatory capital of Canada, has no decent genuine barbeque has been a travesty that friends and I have remarked and complained about for eons. And we have speculated that the person who does open a real Memphis, or Carolina, or Texas, or Kansas City joint in Montreal is going to become a gazillionaire.

Fortunately, I have cause to get to Boston monthly, and my trek back has often included much of the car trunk taken up by epicurean Memphis-style ’cue procured at Boston’s famed Redbones—the wonderful odours bound to evoke puckering nostrils and comments of envy by Canada Customs inspectors.

In fact, every decent ’cue pit I know or can remember south of the 45th parallel one can (dreamily) smell 100 metres away. And many other restaurants cast their delightful scents at least onto sidewalks or into the parking lots. But one hardly ever smells the menu outside of Montreal restaurants, with the exception, perhaps, of a few Chinatown eateries, no matter how fine or wonderful the food.

The thrilling smells of garlic and simmering tomatoes and olive oil and herbs richly fuse the air of the streets of Little Italys in cities all over North America, Europe and elsewhere, but hardly at all on St-Laurent, St-Dominique or St-Zotique. 

I have enquired of owners at restaurants I have visited, and they concurred that the heavy sanctions for wafting odours resulted in their being forced to spend extraordinarily for filtration. I can well imagine how any decent ’cue pit and its wonderful smoke would overwhelm even those efforts. This may explain your disappointment with Bofinger’s efforts.

>> H. Lynn Keller-LeFebvre

Challenging Frankel

A reply to Ken Frankel’s letter [Letters, May 3]: The U.N. mandate of 1947 sought to establish Israel as a home for European Jews who were the victims of decades of Christian and Nazi persecution. Ironically, the U.S. cast its vote of approval only after the USSR voted for approval. Recall that the USSR was an impending enemy, and that this was only five years before the U.S. lynching of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. So hypocrisy was still the norm. Turmoil ensued after the installation of Israel; the occupants of Palestine had no voice in this takeover and several Arab nations viewed this new nation as an invasion by the Europeans. The fighting had just now begun.

Then comes Ken Frankel into this mixing bowl. He carves this punishing juncture in history into his own mélange of contradictions, untruths, convolutions and twisted logic, into a reckless exposition of many confusing words complete with justifications and complete with U.N. Resolutions. Not U.N. Mandates, however, as the U.S. wields its veto power—exceeding all other nation’s vetoes—mainly at the behest of Israel. So we live with the U.N., who is subservient to U.S. policy—the world’s mightiest nation; visit Iraq, for example.

So continue on, Mr. Frankel, blasting those A-rabs, who are not, as you stated, “brethren to the Palestinians,” and several of whom do vigorous trade with, and so are not the “enemies of Israel.” 

Frankel’s expositions contain many reckless reviews and are at times insulting. More civility is called for.

>> Edward Abramic

[Re: Letters, May 3] Ken Frankel’s designation of “anti-Semite” for critics of Israel is as worn-out and discredited as his charge that Palestinian refugees “largely left at the urging of Arab leaders.” That often-repeated claim was first exposed as a blatant lie over four decades ago when Irish journalist Erskine Childers examined the monitoring records of all Middle East broadcasts of the period. He reported that “There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion” by Arab leaders calling for Palestinians to leave. These findings have been corroborated by a host of historians in Israel, but apparently, third-rate propagandists in Montreal still seem to think that repeating old lies will fool the gullible. Nice try, but no cigar.

>> Shirley Groves

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