The increasing lawlessness reported daily, mostly in the GTA and Toronto, appears to be out-of-control. Recently the media has reported numerous senseless murders throughout the area.

The older generation of Ontarians recall the days of civility and mutual respect that marked our society a few decades ago when doors were infrequently locked and the police were given the respect they merit. It was safe to walk the streets at night and old people were proffered assistance when seen to be in need.

Why, one might ask, has everything changed, deteriorated since the sixties? From where does this violence originate?

Josephene Tey, the author and playwright, wrote in her novel. "The daughter of time" The really likeable old lags were now outmoded, growing fewer and fewer daily. Their places had been taken by their egocentric souls, as illiterate as puppies and as pitiless as a circular saw. The criminal of yesterday was astute and professional and free of viciousness and had a more cat and mouse relationship with the police. Those old fashion days have given way to young persons anxious to demonstrate the very worst in the hearts of men—-and women.

On what is this thuggery to be blamed? Could it be the all pervasive drug culture that appears to reside in many of our young people? Could it be attributable to the rivers of blood and senseless violence that so many T.V. programs portray? Who knows?

Surely we must institute greater levels of punishment for all crimes, the heaviest for murder. There is reasonable excuse for the wielding of a knife or the use of a firearm to resolve a difference of any kind.

Let us stop excusing the perpetrator and exact the appropriate punishment.
Ken Hayward
Mono