Street Level

The mayor and several councillors are off on their all-expenses-paid jaunt to China — but there are still plenty of city councillors left in town.

So here’s an idea — head to the Kamloops United Church on Sunday at about 5 p.m.

Bring your sleeping bag and warm clothes and spend a night living the way too many Kamloopsians do every night.

On the street. Cold. Hungry. Probably not with a down-filled sleeping bag. More likely with a worn blanket.

When you’re out on the church lawn, where the overnight vigil is being held, talk to people.

Talk to people you might not normally talk to.

Ask questions. Ask them what their lives are like. Ask them how they survive. Ask them what’s wrong with a country that cannot care for them.

And then listen.

You’ll all be better politicians — and human beings — than you are now.

And then take the information you get and do something with it.

Talk to your colleagues — after they return from their trade and tourism promotional jaunt — about ways Kamloops can make a difference.

About ways Kamloops can start to mend the shattered social safety net.

Don’t do any more studies.

The statistics are there for the reading. We’ve done the homelessness census.

We’ve counted the paltry number of affordable housing units in the city.

Don’t hold any more workshops, because it’s the same people at every one.

It’s like preaching to the choir.

The people who really need to know aren’t the people who take part in these repetitive sessions.

They all sit and nod and know those statistics because they either helped compile them or they see them every day in their agency offices.

Behind each statistic is a story and, combined, it’s a tragic anthology of dreams lost, hopes dashed, lives ruined.

But that does not mean these are lives to be ignored.

I met an incredible woman once who has a mental illness.

She had been homeless. She had been lost to society.

But people showed interest in her, listened to her and discovered she too had dreams.

She was not her mental illness, but it was what was defining her.

Once people were able to see past that, an incredible support group developed around her that helped her leave the streets and start the life she wanted.

Today, she’s a homeowner with the most adorable little boy who is growing up surrounded by the kind of love that only those who have lost it can ever really express.

I spent time once in the old tent city that erupted behind the New Life Mission years ago, talking to a Maritimer who was once bringing in more than $70,000 a year.

He had a wife, kids, friends, hobbies — everything most of us take for granted.

Then his government job was gone, the victim of downsizing.

And out in the Maritimes, well, the jobs weren’t all that plentiful then.

Rum became his reason to get up every morning. Eventually, rum was more important than his wife and kids because, when he spent time with it, he forgot that his life was a disaster.

Eventually, it led him to a tent behind the mission, where he talked of wanting sobriety but not being able to handle the wait to get into a program.

One day, when I went to talk to him again, he was gone. His buddies in that back lot didn’t know where he was.

To this day, I wonder.

It’s too easy to ignore them, the panhandlers, the “strange ones” we see on the streets every day.

It’s too easy to think those thoughts you know you’ve had before. We all do at some time.

But it’s important to remember that these are our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our friends.

These are who we might be if the cards had been shuffled a bit differently for us.

And it behooves our politicians, those who claim the right to represent us and work for us, to learn who all of us are.

And that means spending some time at church on Sunday.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 10:59 a.m. Comments