Letters to the Editor: March/April 2025

Off the Records Michelle Cyca’s investigation into Jani Lauzon’s claims of Métis identity, in “An Acclaimed Canadian Playwright Faces Questions of Pretendianism,” explores a heartbreaking phenomenon. However, the article describes genealogy tests and official records, which may not always support one’s anecdotal evidence. For example, there can be inaccuracies in genetic testing by laboratories, cases of genuinely integrated community members who do not share blood, deliberate erasure of evidence (to protect or oppress people), and the possibility of previous generations misremembering or outright lying. I am a child of immigrants who fled Soviet rule in the late 1980s, and much of my family history before the past three to four generations was burned or kept secret. Lauzon has worked all her life to better understand and uncover her heritage. We should be having difficult discussions about why there are discrepancies while also taking all of these things into consideration. Monica Mazur Ottawa, ON No Size Fits All Monika Warzecha hits the nail on the head in “Terrible Apparel” (December 2024) with her critique of the fashion industry. But she forgot one important issue: sizing. Declining quality control means it feels like there is no universal agreement on sizing. I am small in some clothes but medium to large in others. I don’t know how anyone buys clothing online. You have to try everything on to get an idea of the fit. It is an irritating constant in the fashion world. Jane McCall Ladner, BC Come from Away Trevor Corkum’s “Changing Tides” (December 2024) is yet another sanctimonious and patronizing diatribe about the Maritimes. Like many Prince Edward Islanders, I am beyond exhausted by the cheap tropes incessantly launched at us by metropolitans. It’s routine that outsiders and outsider capital come to the Island, seize the land and its resources, and make everything worse. We’ve endured British absentee landlords, potato and oil magnates from New Brunswick, and now cottage dwellers and the threat of digital nomads. Corkum questions whether it’s fair for Islanders to judge interprovincial transplants when PEI is unceded Mi’kmaq territory. But who is more equipped to actually confront this fact? Those with a generational understanding of the Island’s idiosyncrasies and vested interest in the well-being of its people, land, and animals? Or urbanites who weaponize Indigeneity to call someone a bumpkin and then flee to their home in the city and write about it as soon as their bucolic fantasies falter? Ben Wheeler Charlottetown, PEI Like an increasing number of Maritimers who migrated from their hometowns to Ontario to pursue a career, I’ve returned home to pursue the type of vibrant, active, close-knit living that many of us miss. A recent Public Policy Forum report credits an influx of migration into Atlantic Canada for Maritimers’ “greater satisfaction with their quality of life than Canadians as a whole and a greater sense of belonging to the community.” The report notes that this satisfaction is in part due to employment rates rising quicker there than in the rest of the country, and also an average home price that is still “at least $230,000 lower than the national average and $400,000 than in Ontario.” My cohort, however, is noticeably absent from Corkum’s analysis of the population boom, which instead relies on the anecdotal experiences of a few select acquaintances. John G. Kelly St. Andrews, NBThe post Letters to the Editor: March/April 2025 first appeared on The Walrus.