THEIR Street

It's most unfortunate that most of the residents of Farincourt Crescent - being seniors certainly doesn't excuse their behaviour - chose to continue their protests against school buses using their 'adult lifestyle' street, thus annoying them no end by disrupting the peace and quiet of their immediate neighbourhood. Why those elderly, demandingly-entitled residents of Orleans, living in a newly-developed area feel their street must be treated differently than all others is puzzling.

All streets and roadways are open to the public. They are, furthermore, access-enabling in this particular instance where school buses have been using it to turn around because of a nearby-dead end street, where schoolchildren are picked up to be ferried to school. The residents appear to have formed an ad hoc committee of disgruntled grey heads, refusing to use their grey matter to consider a trifle more deeply what it is they are demanding.

No one has exclusive rights to a city street. Home owners have legal possession of their little plots upon which sit their houses and their gardens. Their homes are legally sacrosanct, and they may deny entry to any who wish to enter their homes unauthorized. They have no right, morally, ethically or legally to deny entry of public vehicles (or for that matter private ones) to a public roadway.

Their action of protest designed to stop bus drivers as they conveyed children to school this morning, in a bid to intimidate the drivers (what else can it be called when the purpose was to instruct the drivers with respect to more feasible alternate routes than their street) was an absurd exercise in stupidity. We don't necessarily grow wiser as we grow older.

"Our objective was simply to talk to the bus-drivers and inform them that it was time for them to use the alternate routes", explained one of the elderly protesters. Do school bus drivers have nothing else to concern them when they're tasked with the care of many children aboard a bus than to stop at the behest of angry residents and listen patiently to their tirades?

Do these annoyed elders make a practise of berating sales clerks in the supermarket when the items they wish to purchase are not available, or when they take umbrage at the steady rise of food prices? In a society where generations live in close proximity it behooves the elderly to offer due respect to the needs of children. A elderly-lifestyle gated community might better serve their wishes.

School boards have rules, too. One of which is that junior and senior kindergarten children cannot walk more than 500 metres to connect with their school bus. The bus stops are identified in specific areas to minimize undue walking times for very young children who have sufficient concerns in their young heads.

How do individuals reach the ripe age of 60 to 80 without being aware of their societal obligations?