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Petition Tag - lac
1. Front Street Lahaina Halloween 
Origins/End Result —Halloween grew (in the 70’s) from a couple of costume parties, at local bars after revelers spilled out onto Front Street. More and more came over the years, eventually an amazing 20,000 annually.
Getting Organized — In 1980, The LahainaTown Action Committee (LAC) stepped and supplied port-a-potties, got a permit, closed the street, worked cooperatively with police, sponsored a costume party, and until recent years, ran a tight ship.
Local Businesses Prospered — Enjoying one of their biggest nights of the year, eateries used the extra revenue to tide them over during weak Novembers until the return of holiday visitors. Merchants thought they had a field of dreams: October 31, and they will come.
Halloween Challenged — A group of Native Hawaiians in 2006 challenged LAC sponsorship, saying they objected to parking problems, costumes interpreted as lewd and an alleged increase in crime. In 2008, the Cultural Resources Commission bought the “inappropriate to the culture argument” and denied a street-closing permit for prime time. As a result there was less Sensation for a Front Street Lahaina Halloween. This year there are no planned events and the LAC has pulled their permit.
2. Save the "Lest We Forget" Program
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has recently announced cuts to “Lest We Forget,” its award-winning First World War history program. For the past number of years, LAC, through its public Learning Centre, has offered workshops to Canadian students in which they engage in primary historical research with records from the First World War.
Now LAC plans to cut the workshops. Richard Provencher, a spokesperson for LAC, despite acknowledging that the program has “exploded basically, it’s gotten very popular,” has stated that cuts to “Lest We Forget” are part of a “modernization exercise” after which only a small sample of the wartime documents will be digitized and made available. At the end of this school year, the Archives staff who have run the workshops and done so much to inspire hundreds of students to become interested in the First World War and Canadian history will be re-assigned to other work.
We, the students and instructor in “Canada and the World,” a first-year Canadian History course at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, wish to add our voices to the growing public criticism of the decision to cut back the “Lest We Forget” program. Some of the students in our course have participated in “Lest We Forget,” while we all recognize the value of the personal encounters with Canada’s past provided by the program’s primary research workshops.
Recently, with the passing of Jack Babcock, Canada’s last First World War veteran, the Prime Minister’s Office stated, “Canada mourns the passing of an entire generation, a generation that defined our nation.” Peter MacKay, the Minister of Defence, issued a statement saying, “We vow to honour his memory in our actions and deeds.” At the same time, another arm of the government, Library and Archives Canada, is cutting back on a program designed precisely to promote the very thing the Prime Minister and Peter MacKay claim the government wants to do. We believe the federal government should move beyond issuing statements and, through deeds and actions, fully restore the “Lest We Forget” program. If you agree, we encourage you to sign our petition.
