Street Level

Thirty Canadian geese swam up to the dock today.

A baby duck jumped onto Alan’s kayak.

And, when I went to buy newspapers — it’s an addiction, what can I say? — and bread, the lady behind the cash register remembered me.

This is rural B.C. It’s what we all brag about when we talk to our friends and relatives back East.

It’s what we talk about when we explain why this is God’s country.

More than Cambie Street or Robson Street or the proximity to Washington state, it is the grandeur outside the 604 exchange that truly describes what British Columbia is.

And it’s why talk of closing schools in rural areas of the Kamloops area is simply wrong.

Rural B.C. isn’t the same as Vancouver or Victoria. It’s not even the same as Kamloops. It’s those communities where everyone knows everyone else. Where they nod their heads as they drive past you. Where they tell you to have a great day and you get the feeling they really mean it.

It’s where their schools are more than just a collection of classrooms. They’re as much a part of the hub of the community as those halls and arenas that host the local artisans with their craft fairs and the tiny-tot hockey teams every winter.

Take away a rural community’s school and you’ve killed much of its heart.

You’ve taken away yet another reason why these pioneers — and that’s what they are, even today — choose to live the tough life that defines much of rural British Columbia. You might as well close their legion, shut down the mom-and-pop grocery store and roll up the streets.

Closing their schools is more than just a smack upside the face. It’s a death blow -- and these are people who do not deserve that kid of treatment.

Which is not to say School District 73 isn’t facing tough times and has some tough decisions to make. But let’s be honest. Close a neighbourhood school in Kamloops and all those affected families will simply have to learn to become part of some other school community.

We’ve done it with our children who, because we have chosen to send them not to our neighbourhood elementary, but to Beattie School of the Arts, have had to learn to become part of a community created from throughout Kamloops.

It’s hasn’t been that difficult. If the guys want to go visit with some school chums, they have to take a slightly longer bus ride. They don’t have to ask us to drive them to another city.

Close the school in Pinantan, Heffley, Westwold or Savona and you’re forcing the children to leave their home community and ride on a bus for a ridiculously long time to attend a school whose community can never really be their own.

What is most galling is that all it takes is a majority of the board to enact these cold, callous decisions. And that same majority doesn’t have to rely on the rural vote to be re-elected.

Can’t you picture it? It’s so simple.

The Kamloops trustees — a majority — shut down the rural schools. They don’t lose a lot of votes in the city because, heck, they didn’t do much in Kamloops. The few rural trustees rage and rail and condemn — a surefire way to guarantee re-election next time we go to the polls.

Nobody loses — except those who live in Pinantan, Westwold, Heffley, Savona and all those other communities that really define what British Columbia is.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 4:59 p.m. Comments

Henry Leland never had an easy life.

He was kicked out of his band at Squilax when he was just a teen — albeit one who was already headed down the path that would take him to the streets of Kamloops.

His mother was beaten to death in Vancouver.

He was estranged from his father, who died just before Henry’s frozen body was found out front of the Knights Inn, snow piled around him.

No one had noticed.

The anonymity of the street life may have been Henry’s legacy at one point but, thanks to the AIDS Society of Kamloops, his name now defines what was once called the Whistler Inn.

And, it’s hoped, the other part of his legacy is that, as social agencies strive to provide housing for those who are hard to house, Henry may be the last street person to die.

Tina Baptiste loves the sentiment, but doesn’t expect that reality.

As someone who thought of Henry as a brother — and who fought for him when he wasn’t strong enough to apply for a disability pension and the other fundamental cogs in our province’s unravelling social-safety net — Tina has seen too many friends die.

And they’re all her friends, the street family, as she describes those who many Kamloopsians try so desperately to not see as they walk downtown.

“He was just so lost,” Tina says of Henry.

“It’s been so hard to let Henry go.”

Tina has spent years working with people like Henry.

She took an advocacy course years ago with Skylark Disraeli — and then headed out to help.

As with Henry, she’s helped members of her street family get the benefits they should be receiving.

She’s learned how to keep smiling in social-assistance offices, even when she wants to scream at the wait — which can go on for hours.

Today, she’s hoping to see changes come with the opening and occupancy of Henry Leland House, a building that — despite massive cost overruns to deal with a building constructed at a time when the rules weren’t so rigid — is filling a gap.

ASK executive director Bob Hughes agrees.

In fact, he’s been adamant the times we’ve talked about this program — and yes, we’ve had pleasant and not-so-pleasant conversations about it — that Henry is going to be the last person in Kamloops to die on the streets because he had no home.

Last winter, with just the rumour of another homeless person being found frozen to death, Hughes was desperately trying to find out the facts because it’s his mission to provide housing for the hard-to-house.

He’s not the only one.

No matter how you feel about the Victory Inn or Georgian Court, you have to agree the John Howard Society — and, in particular, its CEO, Dawn Hyrcan — has led the way in building low-income housing.

Despite losing a crucial Interior Health Authority contract, Tim Larose and the New Life Mission are doing everything they can to continue to provide even more needed housing for women.

The Kamloops branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association has its Emerald House, which provides housing for women.

Interior Community Services probably owns more housing it uses for its clients than most Kamloopsians know.

The agency for which I volunteer — Kamloops Society for Community Living is also heavily invested in providing housing, but for disabled adults.

These are just some of the organizations that quietly, determinedly, persevere in their goal to get our brothers and sisters, our sons and our parents off the street or ensure they never end up here.

Henry Leland House is the newest one on the block, so to speak, but one has to hope it won’t be the last.

Because, although we all desperately want to believe it, it’s unlikely Henry will be the last person to die in the cold on the streets of Kamloops.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 5:41 p.m. Comments

This is a column about Tigger.

Tigger doesn’t look all that impressive — like most house cats, he’s kinda furry, knows exactly which visitor is allergic and truly doesn’t care all that much about anything other than his world.

But this unimposing little pet has managed to do something high-priced lobbyists, determined politicians and, yes, even pushy reporters, have never been able to do.

Tigger has shut up a whole lot of bureaucrats.

The communications folks for the provincial ministry of housing won’t talk about Tigger.

Neither will their counterparts at B.C. Housing.

Locally, the executive director of one of the larger social agencies in Kamloops doesn’t want to talk about Tigger.

But Roy Sim does.

Roy loves Tigger. They’ve been buddies, roomies for years now.

When Roy sits down at night to watch some TV, Tigger’s right there with him, quietly mewing.

Tigger went with Roy when he and all the other people living at the former Whistler Inn were evicted after B.C. Housing bought it and handed it over to the AIDS Society of Kamloops to run as project to provide housing for the hard-to-house.

Roy says he thinks it’s a great project and he’s all for it.

Sure, he fought the eviction but did so because, as he puts it, “that’s been my home for years.”

Tigger went with Roy when he found temporary lodging and the two of them have remained together, waiting for the construction at the downtown building to be complete so they can go home.

Except Tigger’s not welcome.

Roy is, but there’s now a no-pets-allowed policy at the facility.

And, like most pet owners, this is simply wrong to Roy.

As he puts it, he’s a senior and having his cat gives him a reason to get up some mornings.

It gives him someone to look after, to feed, to care for, to talk to when there’s no one else around to listen.

Roy knows the research.

He knows countless studies done over decades have shown having a pet is good for seniors — and, at 68 and living off a couple of pensions, Roy reluctantly agrees that yes, he’s officially a senior.

He knows owning a pet can help lower blood pressure and depression.

That can lead to better health and fewer doctors’ appointments.

Pets can foster friendships.

There’s nothing that will bond people quicker than sharing stories about their animals.

Roy knows countless organizations that work with seniors, with people who have disabilities and addictions all use pets in therapy.

So, Roy can’t figure out why he can’t go home with his pet.

So far, the only answer he’s been able to get is that it’s because pets aren’t allowed anymore.

I can’t get any answers. Requests for explanation to the government are now being ignored. Requests to the AIDS Society have recently just led to complaints about my writing on this issue.

Roy has even suggested a compromise that sure seems like a good idea. Since he’s just going back home, let him keep his pet.

For those moving into the building, who will be working to overcome substance-abuse and mental-health issues, acknowledge the role pets can provide in therapy.

Let them earn the right to have a pet for themselves, Roy says.

Sure makes sense to me.

Movie nights in the common room and barbecues out in the parking lot will all help with building community and helping people interact with society again — but there’s nothing like having a cat curl up beside you to remind you that you’re not alone.

And that’s not too much for a senior to ask for, is it?

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 5:03 p.m. Comments

So here’s an idea.

Let’s just do away with city council.

Who needs it anyway? All councillors do is sit around and talk and read reports and talk some more and read some more reports.

How hard can that be?

The rest of us out here can certainly take on that job.

Need to make a decision? Let’s hold referenda. We can do one every week if we have to.

Let the people speak.

Problem is, that’s exactly what the people do — theoretically — on election day.

We pick the people we think can best run the city.

Every three years, if we like what they’ve done, we can vote for them again, if they’re running.

If we’re not happy with them, we can collectively vote them out — or at least have the satisfaction of knowing with our X we’ve expressed our view.

That’s the way the system works and it’s the reason why all this nonsense about water meters needs to stop.

We elected this council.

The councillors have read the reports. They’ve asked the questions.

They’ve considered the issue.

I’m sure many have asked their friends, family — perhaps even total strangers — for feedback on the issue. And they’ve made the decision the city needs to have water meters.

Most of the debate has centred around one of two concepts:

We can teach people to conserve and didn’t we already say no to this once?

The education-awareness argument doesn’t need much comment.

Of course we can launch a campaign to do this.

Some people will listen; others won’t. That’s the way it’s always been and likely will remain for years to come.

People buy into concepts or they don’t.

The argument that concerns me the most is this “listen to the people.”

“The people” today are different from “the people” who voted on the water-meter referendum years ago.

The time in which they voted was a different one. We weren’t as aware as we are now about the city’s water consumption, its cost, the consequences of not controlling its use — all those issues we now face.

And the time we are in now is not going to be much like the one our children will see when they reach voting age.

We can’t keep running back to the general population for a “vote.”

It just won’t work. It might be democracy in its purest form, but if you think we have voter apathy now, just imagine how engaged people would become if, on every major issue, we had to hold a referendum.

Now there’s a cost you won’t want to see added to the property-tax calculations.

The real reason the “we already said no” argument is being raised is because, yes, some people already said no.

It’s a convenient argument for those who still want to say no.

But here’s the bottom line: We use too much water.

We know it and yet many of us continue to use too much water — so much for that awareness and education choice.

Meters will force us to realize how much water we use and require us to pay for it.

Basic economics here: Use little, pay little. Use more, pay more.

And here’s the principle we’re in danger of losing if we cave in to those naysayers and pander to their calls for public referenda: We make our civic leaders obsolete.

We don’t need them.

We can decide.

I’m not sure who would be the one picking the “big” issues that require the public to make the decision.

Maybe we could hold a referendum to choose.

In the meantime, these are the folks we chose to make those decisions needed to run Kamloops.

Let’s let them do it.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 2:27 p.m. Comments

Our last Sunday edition was published today.
It's got an awesome front; Chris Foulds put some of the best Sunday fronts we've done in recent history below the mast, with a series of sundae cups in reduced levels of holding ice cream above the mast.
Some of the people I work with questioned this, saying the Sunday paper might come back.
It might, but I'm not expecting that to happen.
There's even a rumour out there about more possible changes in the publishing arena in Kamloops, which is further proof -- if it turns out to be something more than a rumour -- the industry I've grown up with and in is changing dramatically.
Some day, I think we're going to miss printed newspapers, like we're now starting to miss the purity of vinyl records.
They're coming back, slowly, as we continue to look backwards while we're running forwards.
Fridays were always what I called my day from hell; massive push to get everything done by 5 p.m., the staff just getting over having put out the Friday paper and faced with a quick turnaround to get stories and photos all in.
I can't remember the number of Friday nights it was just me, the editor and Dave Eagles still finishing things off at 5:30 p.m. -- and sometimes later.
It will be nice to get out of work on Fridays at a normal hour.
It's just going to take some time to get used to.

Posted by Dale at 12:07 p.m. Comments