EDITOR:
The test facing Island society is a deeply moral one: can we rid the Island of industrialized agriculture?
There is something murderous about the way we treat the soil of this Island, and even those who don't commit the crime are strangely tolerant of the abuse, as though it were not a matter of grave seriousness.
The soil is a living organism; an entity that creates and nourished life. If we do not treat it with reverence, and return to it generously as we have received from it, it makes us plunderers. And if we are capable of such harshness it seems to me there is little chance that we will ever be able to respect and reverence one another.
If a people can be judged by the way it treats the earth then on this Island we are surely a criminal society, where all manner of other atrocities will also be tolerated, for it is impossible to build a compassionate, nurturing society on a desecrated landscape.
David Weale (Vision P.E.I.),
Charlottetown
