days, he would put a new plan in place to reverse the decline of the industry.

Fifty days into his term, things -- some good and some bad -- are beginning to happen. In today's newspaper, we report on the new initiatives by the Monitor Group and the Visitor Industry Partnership to attract new visitors to the Island and to raise standards of service for visitors once they get here.

We also report on the continued ramifications in Canada of the collapse of the Rebecca Middleton premeditated murder trial. This includes at least two travel agents saying that they will not be sending visitors to the Island.

It is true that some of the bad publicity is being counteracted. The infamous travel story in the Globe and Mail, while somewhat saccharine, points out that Bermuda is a fundamentally safe place. The fact that one Canadian visitor was murdered in Bermuda does not mean that every visitor risks their lives by stepping foot on Bermuda soil.

And the Toronto Sun published an opinion piece in its Monday edition making the same point that we did last week: a boycott will hurt innocent, law-abiding people who deplore what happened to Rebecca Middleton just as much as the people of Belleville, Ontario do.

The opinion story has been reprinted in its entirety on this page. But it is worth repeating one paragraph of Jules Elder's column: "I want the Middleton family to get justice. But I cannot accept tarnishing the good name of a mostly law-abiding people because of a few miscreants and possible inefficiency in the justice system.'' This kind of opinion is essential to reversing the dangerous trend that is developing in Canada, where this story shows few signs of dissipating. In some ways, there is little that the Ministry of Tourism can do, as the backlash to the Globe and Mail story shows. But a careful media campaign making the points that Mr. Elder has so ably put, and a "blitz'' of contacting travel agents in the Ontario area to defend Bermuda's name would be in order.

For Mr. Allen, this should serve as a reminder that events do not always wait for plans to be put in place. He and the Government need to lead and respond to this quickly -- and to assure the Bermuda people that they are doing what they can to contain the damage.

The risk is that this kind of story can undo hours and years of hard work.

Schemes like Monitor's "escapers'' initiative and the Visitor Industry Partnership's "Superhost'' effort are important for the revival of tourism, but they cannot work if people refuse to come to the Island because they believe it is unsafe.

Mr. Allen's job -- which was already challenging -- has just got harder.