POST FALLS: On City Council holiday decisions

I am surprised and disappointed that the Post Falls City Council would decide not to recognize Juneteenth as a holiday and recognize Columbus Day instead. 

The Juneteenth celebrates the formal military declaration to enslaved people in Texas that they were free in 1865, some two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. This is a historical fact.

Columbus discovering America in 1492 is fiction. Christopher Columbus’ first voyage landed in the Caribbean. He thought he had reached India and named the people “Indians.” He captured some of these people and took them back to Spain as slaves. His third and last voyage touched the coast of South America in 1502.

He never set foot on the North American continent. 

His voyages triggered subsequent Spanish and Portuguese invasions of South America, our Southwest, and Florida. 

There is solid evidence that Leif Erickson reached the North American continent and briefly settled around the year 1000 in what is now Newfoundland, Canada.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to celebrate Leif Erikson Day.

MARK WEADICK
Coeur d’Alene