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JV Humphries – Grade 8/9 Writing The grade eight and nine students at J. V. Humphries School have been doing some writing that we all thought might be of interest to a wider audience than just our classes. The grade eights have written about what they care about; their opinions on things connected to their lives and environment. You will quickly see that they have passionate, diverse, and humorous opinions on a wide range of topics. The grade nines have chosen a number of forms to express their thoughts, everything from comics, to poetry, nature writing to opinion. Victoria McAllister (JV Humphries Teacher) ______________________________________________________________________ My Opinion by Isaac Picture the world as a map of ideas. The good ideas exist at the North Pole and the bad ideas exist at the South Pole. You travel down to the Antarctic and keep going until you see a big pole that says “south pole” on it. Then you look up and on top of the pole is this idea: the Kaslo Bay Estates. I believe that the Kaslo Bay Estates are a bad idea for a variety of reasons. Reason #1: The Kaslo Bay Estates are practically within the Kaslo Jazz Festival boundaries and the new owners may not like the festival because of all the noise, crowds and litter that they will not be able to escape by going home. Reason #2: The Kaslo Bay Estates might not all sell and then eventually the owners might just give up and stop taking care of them and then the buildings would just sit there rotting taking up valuable land for maybe fifty years until somebody finally has them removed. If this is the case, no good actually comes from it, and somebody ends up losing a huge amount of money because they decided to build condominiums when the already existing condominiums are almost completely empty. Reason #3: There is somewhat of a housing shortage in Kaslo, and, contrary to what some people may think, the Kaslo Bay Estates are not actually helping. Because the prices of the Kaslo Bay Estates are so high, many people with families who need housing in Kaslo will not be able to afford to buy a condominium. What we need is more affordable housing in Kaslo instead of vacation homes for wealthy out-of-towners. Reason #4: The people who end up buying the Kaslo Bay Estates will probably be wealthy people who are just buying them as second or third homes and will probably only spend a week or so in them every year. By only spending a week or so in Kaslo every year these people are contributing very little to the community. It’s just a bunch of empty houses sitting around wasting space. Take the marina condominiums for example, according to rumor there is only one person who actually keeps a permanent residence there. The rest (that sold) are owned by wealthy people who are using them as second or third homes and will only spend a week or two in them out of the year. I predict that the Kaslo Bay Estates will end up EXACTLY the same. I’d like to acknowledge that there is the temporary employment that comes from building the condos, but I think the fact that the condos are barely used and they are taking up space where they could build houses for the people who actually need them (and all the other bad things about the Kaslo Bay Estates) outweigh the good things that come from the Kaslo Bay Estates. All in all I think that this is a bad idea, I mean there probably is a good side to this, but I can’t see it from where I’m standing because the Kaslo Bay Estates are blocking my view. |
