Dear Editor,

How big is your ego?  How much territory do you identify as your own responsibility?  You may identify as king or queen of your castle, be it a small apartment or a spacious mansion, looking after your family and pets. If you’re a farmer, your fiefdom will include extensive real estate, along with plants and animals that live there. If you are a councillor or mayor of a municipality, your responsibility is theoretically expanded to include the whole municipal territory, and its population of lifeforms. And so it goes, theoretically. 

Does any person have a sufficiently open mind to actually identify with the entire population and environment of a municipal region, a province, or a nation?  We would hope so, because we have those people in place, whose job it is to regulate such vast and varied territories. They are voted in by a general population, but they sometimes slip into a trough of relating only to the needs of one skin colour, one economic activity, or one language group. Of course, they always stand for office on a basis of inclusivity, but with their being human, compromises are made. Can you live comfortably with those compromises, or must you step into the fray, and claim your place in the decision-makers’ club? Is your ego that big? 

Robert Wills, Shawville and Thorne