Bad choice of a name

Letters

Editor: I live in Vancouver. I don't get a gas bill as heat is included in my rent. So I wasn't aware until recently that B.C. Gas had changed its name to Terasen Gas.
Three years ago, I was in Prague. Europe is rife with reminders of war. The Jewish Museum in Prague has a memorial to the thousands who perished at Terezin or later when they were sent to Auschwitz.

Terezin wasn't an extermination camp like Auschwitz, though it served as a way station to the camps and ghettos in occupied Eastern Europe. However, that doesn't mean there weren't atrocities committed at Terezin.

Of the nearly 140,000 men, women and children deported to Terezin from the Czech lands, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary, 34,000 died. From 1942 to 1944, transports carried 87,000 people from Terezin eastward. Of those, 83,000 were murdered, tortured to death, or perished on forced marches.

According to Terasen's Web site, tera-sen means "sent from the earth." How appropriate.

I can't help but be bothered by this insensitive choice of names for a gas company. Perhaps if they made widgets I wouldn't have noticed. I ask that concerned citizens write to Canadian Jewish Congress, the B'nai Brith Anti-defamation League and this newspaper to voice their concerns.

Simon Garber
Vancouver

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