BradfordToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). This letter is about the town's decision not to host the Ahmadiyya Annual Convention in 2025.
I felt compelled to write about the recent council decision to deny the AMJ Convention application for 2025, not necessarily for the decision itself but for the countless responses questioning of such decision by democratically elected officials.
The AMJ Community has been a positive and giving part of our Bradford community for several years which has not gone unnoticed. I have read many news articles of all the good this community has done, and I have several work colleagues from this community that I consider friends.
Just as I support council's recent decision on denying the 2025 application, stating perhaps a rotational venue would be in the best interest of all. I would definitely oppose a decision to outright refuse this event.
AMJ Canada officials and supporters continuously have mentioned tolerance, understanding and mutual regard as wonderful Canadian attributes while simultaneously questioning transparency and mutual trust with the unfavourable decision. Insinuating tones which would have one believe critics, concerned neighbours, Bradford residents and some of our elected councillors lack the former attributes.
When an AMJ executive states his community is not insensitive to its neighbours' comfort, I find that reassuring. When this same AMJ executive states "we really want to stick to the facts," one could say, the fact is, Hadiqa Ahmad Ahmadiyya Muslim Community land at 3078 Line 11 in Bradford is most definitely not zoned for conventions and an annual event would preclude this land from ever being used for agricultural purposes.
While being asked to accept the small inconvenience of traffic issues for one weekend a year by AMJ supporters is understandable, one could say that is the small inconvenience of rotating the annual convention at different locations.
I would like to believe all understand, support and agree with what the annual conference is about and why it takes place.
The 'where' on private agricultural land is the issue. In reference to other events, whether the Santa Claus parade, Carrot Fest in Bradford or other festivals in the area, one must also realize and understand they transpire on public roads and lands or appropriately zoned venues.
If the tremendous positive, enthusiastic and passionate accounts from the AMJ community was about the love and loyalty of their land for its intended use, there would be no objection.
Instead of months of logistical, physical assembly and preparation with weeks of deconstruction at a tremendous cost for only a few days, would it not be reasonable to expend this energy to actually use the land for its agricultural use, feeding many communities and using the financial benefits to allocate yearly in renting a convention facility?
As a three-decade-long Ward 5 Bradford resident and rural residential property owner, whose family still uses the property as such and does not test the tolerance, understanding and regard of its neighbours, I would say perhaps my AMJ neighbours should reflect and heed the same, if sensitivity to their neighbours is the truth.
Francisco Marreiros
Bradford
