Dear editor,
I just read your article in the March 23 edition of the Fitzhugh concerning Daniel Gallant and Monika Schaefer.
I’m delighted to see Daniel Gallant’s court challenge against Schaefer, and congratulate the Fitzhugh for excellent and responsible reporting.
Until recently, there has been an understandable tendency in Jasper to overlook or downplay the Schaefer story.
The vast majority of Jasper residents are tolerant, peaceful, and responsible citizens, who don’t harbour and publicly promote radically hostile, extremist viewpoints.
Everyone is entitled to their own private beliefs and opinions, but not to shove them in other people’s faces like Schaefer has done.
Her carefully crafted image as “just a peaceful little old lady who wants freedom of speech” simply doesn’t accord with the known facts.
Her public association with known extremists, anti-Semitic websites and international neo-Nazi groups is evident to anyone who takes the time to look.
Schaefer has drawn negative international attention to herself and the town of Jasper, tarnishing the image of a truly great community by her presence.
She seems to relish her self-imposed status as a persecuted martyr of historical revisionism and the extremist alternate right.
She doesn’t seem to get the fact that living in Jasper is a privilege, not a right.
Paul Brooke
North Vancouver, B.C.
