Street Level

By DALE BASS
Apr 27 2007

A poster publicizing Saturday’s Day of Mourning arrived last week. I pinned it on the backboard of my working area; a couple of co-workers have stopped to look at it.

I can’t because it succeeds every time I catch a glimpse of it. It’s reminding us all that people are literally dying to work.

I’ve had three dear friends die because of their jobs, one of them the person who inspired me to become a reporter.

His name was Joe McClelland and a kinder man you would never meet. He was assigned to cover a mock election I had organized at my high school to co-incide with the 1972 federal election.

I spent a lot of time that day talking with Joe, asking questions and starting to think he had a great gig going. He explained why, in one particularly harsh column, he had written some critical things about my father, at the time one of those old-style trade unionists.

Later, when still in my teens and starting out in the business, my desk was next to Joe’s. He guided and inspired me until 1986 when, as the sole provincial media representative covering hearings in northern Ontario on government plans for hydro plants, the plane he was in crashed and this gentle man died.

I had never seen co-workers cry before. I had never seen the city editor so devastated he could not make phone calls to others in the paper’s hierarchy who had to be told.

And no one could answer the prevailing question: Why Joe?

The poster reminds me of another sweet man — why is it the kind, gentle, hard-working ones seem to be the ones taken too soon? — who once, decades ago, dedicated himself to teaching me to dance.

Ray Martin was a black man with red hair, the result of some fascinating genetic linkups, I suspect. He was skinny, while his wife Judy was one of those big women with an even bigger smile, home cooking always on and as much love as her husband had — which was more than enough for their five kids.

Judy went first, a victim of a swift cancer, leaving Ray with his brood, who would drag me off with the bunch of them to dances at his church.

I don’t dance. I can’t dance. I love to watch other people dance, but I simply cannot do it.

This didn’t stop Ray. He’d drag me out there, the instructions would begin, I’d be terrible — truly awful — and he’d keep it up.

It took more than a year for him to finally admit defeat. A few months later, working on a roller-based machine at his job at 3M Canada, something went horribly wrong and Ray died almost instantaneously.

He had worked on that equipment for years. It used to be done by two operators, but the company, in a downsizing move, decided one was enough. 3M was charged, convicted and fined. Five children were left orphans.

And I never did dance with Ray.

Finally, the poster reminds me there are some who don’t die quickly on the job, but slowly because of the job. We’ve read about them: miners with black lung, workers with asbestosis and firefighters who, after so much exposure to smoke, chemicals, dirt, dust and who knows what else, develop cancer.

To this day, thinking of Roger Chiasson brings tears to my eyes. All he wanted to be was a firefighter, a husband and a dad.

My best friend, the one who is more sister than friend, had the great fortune of meeting Roger, becoming friends with him and, later, marrying the charmer with that wicked New Brunswick accent and contagious smile.

Roger was a great firefighter. He’d just as quickly don his uniform and make a visit to one of my sons’ kindergarten classes for show and tell as he would grab his gear and lead his guys into a blaze.

Cancer invaded him, too. He fought it just as hard as he fought that horrendous fire one freezing winter night at our YMCA-YWCA, a monstrous, ancient four-storey building that took up half a city block,

Fire claimed the Y. In 1996, cancer claimed the firefighter.

In B.C. last year, 160 workers died; 30 in motor vehicle accidents, 61 from occupational diseases — a category that has continued to increase in the past 20 years, according to WorkSafe B.C. — and 69 from traumatic injuries. It’s down from 2005, when there were 188 deaths in the province, but up from the year before, when there were 134 workplace fatalities.

That’s too many. One is too many.

Going to work shouldn’t be a life- or-death decision.

© Copyright 2007 Kamloops This Week

Posted by Dale at 10:58 a.m. Comments

Many years ago, when the "feminist" movement was in full swing and women were being yanked through the glass ceiling just so companies could prove they didn't discriminate, a female co-worker informed me that I was, if anything, the worst kind of feminist.

In fact, she actually doubted that I belonged in that category. Her reasons? Well, I was married. I had children. I didn't want my name on a door and all the bureaucracy that entailed. I would rather have spent time at my children's co-op preschool helping out than going to a meeting of other women bitching about how the world was treating them badly. It was a game I wasn't willing to play.

Honestly, that's what she told me. It was a surreal experience. Had I had an ounce of respect for this woman to begin with, it would definitely have been gone by the end of the rant. Instead, I just felt sorry for someone so driven to be a "feminist" that she forgot we have to be true to ourselves first.

I thought of this recently when one of the dearest women on the planet, someone I adore to bits, started to doubt herself. And not the little doubts we all go through from time to time, but a VERY BIG DOUBT. About everything that makes her who she is.

In many ways, her situation is much like the one I found myself in those many years ago. She works with women who are desperate to prove they belong in the positions they now hold. They have their own view of their world, their own agenda and their own criteria for admission to their group. And my friend, much like me years ago, doesn't fit the mould.

She too knows what games she will and won't play —- and theirs isn't one of them.

And, instead of seeing those judging her for what they are, she's judging herself.

Makes me wonder: Why do women do this to each other? Why do they claim they want to be themselves, but then, when someone doesn't fit the mould, they go on the attack?

And why, all these years later, is it still happening?

Posted by Dale at 9:50 a.m. Comments

Many, many years ago, as one of his last acts before retirement, the associate publisher of the newspaper where I worked officially banned smoking in the building.

Back in those days, most of the reporters were male, too many of them smoked and most of them viewed this as heresy.

It wasn’t lost on them that the dear man issued the mandate and then moved to Naples, Fla., soon afterward.

A non-smoking colleague was so inflamed by this edict that he took up the habit. What a stupid thing to do, I thought at the time. But I’ve thought of him frequently in recent days as I’ve mulled around the idea of painting a colourful mural on my garage door.

Not because the artistic muse is moving me to express myself. Actually, it’s more a reaction to the truly dumb decision of our city council, one of several councillors have made recently in what one dear friend referred to as the “strata mentality.”

They must control everything, and everything must be the same. In doing so, they keep pushing their noses into matters that really are none of their business.

Let’s start with the proposed pesticide bylaw.

Give her credit, because Coun. Tina Lange is right. Their use is a health issue, so perhaps there is an argument to be made for some restrictions on their use. And Coun. Pat Wallace is also right when she points out that health is a provincial matter.

Our council, however, actually contemplated a bylaw that would restrict pesticide use by people who spray their lawn, what, maybe once a year? Who have a few fruit trees?

But it would have exempted those who use the chemicals intensively — golf courses (must have those gorgeous greens, you know) and commercial-orchard operators.

Not the most effective bylaw, it would appear. Swat a fly, but ignore that big bees’ nest next to you.

The proposal has been sent back for reworking. Its next incarnation should be interesting to read.

Consider next the decision to get involved in how the free-enterprise system works in this city, by mandating a minimum drink charge for pubs and bars.

The rationale? To stop binge drinking.

Is that not the duty of the barkeepers? And do we not have regulations already in place to ensure that duty is enforced, and consequences the proper authorities can enforce to ensure this?

This is not the responsibility of municipal government. It is a policing matter, both through the liquor licensing officials and the local police.

This reality, combined with the fundamental laws of economics, are what should govern how much one pays for a drink in public.

And it is also the responsibility of parents to teach their children about binge drinking. I know that doesn’t preclude it from happening, but I’d rather have my children show restraint because they learned about the consequences of too much drinking from my husband and me, and understand the legal and health issues, instead of having their decision based on the amount of money they would have to spend.

And now, we have the graffiti bylaw, which will not only require the victims to pay for the crime, but has now deemed graffiti to be much more than what I always thought it included.

Now, if I want to paint that mural on my garage door, I would be violating the city’s rules unless I first get permission. And it’s almost worth doing it to see what would happen.

What criteria will be used to grant permission? Is our municipal government now taking on the job of art critic as well? Would a rendition of Edgar Degas’ ballerinas be approved, while one of his After the Bath series be turned down?

And what city councillor would actually decree something like that could be considered graffiti?

It would add a completely new twist to that age-old debate: is it art or vandalism?

Whatever it is, it’s none of council’s business.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

© Copyright 2007 Kamloops This Week

Posted by Dale at 8:24 a.m. Comments

There are some extraordinarily lucky people living in Kamloops.

I won’t name them because they know who they are and, except for those few who dared to actually put their names to recent letters to the editor, the rest are wise to not be recognized for what they are.

These people are lucky because, first, they have the ability to read minds.

They simply know that all beggars asking for money want it to buy drugs or booze.

I wish I was as prescient as they are.

They are lucky because they know what each and every one of their days will bring them.

No, that’s not the result of the aforementioned incredible psychic ability — it’s because they know they’ll get up in their own home.

They’ll go into their own kitchen. They’ll open their own cupboards and fridge and take out all the fixings for their own breakfast.

Then they’ll choose from the many clothes in their own closet and they’ll get dressed.

Maybe they’ll get into their own car, or use some of their spare change to take a bus.

Odds are they’ll go to their own job, or to their own classes.

They’ll do work that no doubt they grumble about, but it’s meaningful, it contributes to society and, in the end, they’ll be paid for it.

Maybe after work they’ll take in a movie, or just go home, pop open a beer and veg out in front of the television.

Perhaps they’ll hit the pub with some friends and express their opinions — because they have that right — that we should just put all the homeless and marginalized on a train and ship them off somewhere.

Close down the soup kitchens and thrift stores.

Heck, let’s turn the mission, hostel and House of Ruth into B&Bs while we’re at it.

Forget about providing methadone to help drug addicts. Let’s just let them wait until our RCMP finally routs out every drug dealer in town.

Anyone care to tell me when that might actually happen?

While we’re at it, why don’t we just round up all the beggars, put them in a bus and ship them out of town?

Not in my backyard is a good philosophy, right?

These people are lucky for so many more reasons.

They’re lucky they’ve never been so far down that they didn’t think they could sink much lower, only to discover there was someone even further down, dragging them into their own pit to use and abuse them.

They’re lucky they have the mental capacity to handle the hurdles life may throw at them, something those with mental illness, and others who have been told all their life they’re nothing more than crap, will never have.

They’re lucky they had families who cared about them, even if those families had to use “tough love” to do so.

There’s a word in that phrase these folks seem to have either ignored or forgotten the meaning of: love.

Tough love is when you’ve tried absolutely everything else and, because you love that person who is stuck in a quagmire, you have to do the kinds of things that hurt you to the core, because your love for that person is greater than the agony your actions cause you.

They’re lucky because, no doubt, they have found others who share their opinions and who will slap them on the back, cheer on their rhetoric and go home believing they, too, are right because, heck, their best buddy says things they wish they had the guts to say as well.

They’re lucky because, in this country, they have the right to express such uneducated drivel and the rest of us must defend their right to spout out reckneck beliefs that quite simply have no place in today’s society.

Yes, they’re lucky people.

They’ve got everything — except the ability to read the minds of anyone other than beggars.

Too bad.

If they could, they’d know how truly lucky they are.

Posted by Dale at 10:22 a.m. Comments

Wow. It's been quite the week. A simple story, pretty straightforward, if you ask me, leads to people calling me up asking if I like being Public Enemy No. 1, if I'm deliberately trying to destroy the local food bank, stuff like that. Even got an email from the executive director of the food bank asking why I'm writing such mean stories and hurting people's feelings.

Unfortunately, as a reporter, we're not allowed to actually yell at people like that, so I did the next best thing and said "Gee, I'm just doing my job. You're the one making the news. I'm just writing it."

All this because two large agencies, the New Life Mission and the Salvation Army, pulled out of a massive food-recovery program run by them and the food bank, for reasons they explained quite succinctly. It happened, move on. Deal with it. Even the one agency head who came to me with the story decided to stop talking to me about it after it was published, with nothing more than an email that this person didn't care anymore.

There are days I wish I'd followed father's advice and become a secretary. At least then, the person doing the talking knows that we're just taking notes of what they're saying.

Posted by Dale at 11:28 a.m. Comments