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| The loneliness must be intense... |
Louis Shalako
I saw this guy at the gas bar. Black Chrysler van, loaded with bags,
boxes and crates. The exhaust system is shot. The van is dented, dinged and
rusting through. A metal shield on the exhaust system is hanging down, scraping
the road on every bump. I've seen him before, grabbing ten or twelve black bins
at the Beer Store, which he takes out into the parking lot and fills up from
other bins and bags, of empties he's collected over his travels.
He may stop in at the food bank, or the soup kitchen, but that driver's seat is where he lives. That is his bed, ladies and gentlemen, that is where he sleeps. With a 27-year waiting list, (only a slight exaggeration – ed.), for geared-to-income housing, and this guy's an older man, one wonders where he parks at night—I have been reliably informed that the Tim Horton's on south Indian Road is locking its doors at night. No walk-ins, only drive-through after ten or eleven at night. This is due to homeless people, getting in from the cold, it's also due to drug overdoses in the bathroom. How long can he keep that thing on the road, and after that, then what?
One wonders where he goes to take a shit, or to take a shower once in a while. And I rather doubt this one has been counted among the local statistics. One wonders how he deals with the hopelessness, the sheer loneliness of his position.
Shortly after the 2018 municipal election, county council called for a five-year study of housing affordability. I wonder what sort of nonsense report the Bill Dennis types (an extremely conservative person in his own words) think they can get away with, or are we just supposed to forget.
The report will focus in on 'leveraging paradigms' and stupid shit like that. Only fools talk like that, and this is a serious problem.
They are, in the words of Karl Marx, ‘useful fools’, and they do know what is expected of them…they even get paid to do it.
According to news sources, something like 1,300 volunteers had been through the Inn of the Good Shepherd in a recent year, and they were serving 1,700 or more families and individuals per month, in a whole plethora of services. At some point I had to realize, that any asshole can go down there and make soup for the people. I know that sounds cruel. But it really doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to make soup, nor a doctor, a lawyer, or any skilled person. It is mostly church groups, service clubs and some of the union locals. The food bank serves some need in them as well, or they wouldn’t do it, would they. Some people make cash donations. Surely there is a surplus of cash out there, somewhere…perhaps it’s a problem of distribution. Maybe it's just a 'supply-chain disruption'.
But the only way to tackle systemic issues is by political means. It is a challenge of communication, not one of handing out food baskets, which are never enough and it doesn't solve the root problem anyways.
Making 'political statements' is something the food bank operators are loathe to do, as is the local news media, for related but different reasons. Non-profits are barred from political activity, although that has never stopped the conservative think-tanks. I recall one conservative government went after some left-wing think-tanks, claiming they were violating their mandate, which some might argue includes a bit of criticism of the social order—and the government stands at the top of that heap, don't they. The food banks don't want to scare off donors, some of whom are very conservative, and the media don't want to lose advertising dollars or have to deal with an inundation of angry letters to the editor. Oddly enough, the government does a fair bit of advertising in local media…
This is why the never-ending food drive is a 'good-news' story about a 'sharing and caring community'. All propaganda, in order to be truly effective, must be based on some truths...and once it is swallowed, and accepted, it becomes 'truth', which is also a bit of a problem around here.
There is no surplus of truth, not in this town, ladies and gentlemen.
After more than forty years of, quite frankly, thoughtless media indoctrination, no one really questions it anymore.
That, is the challenge of communication.
They have grown up with such stories for their entire lives. It takes great courage to question such an ‘unquestionable’ narrative, and that’s why no one ever does it.
If the local food bank can get 55,000 lbs. of food a month to distribute, the problem is not food. There is clearly surplus food. The problem is one of income. People don't have enough money to buy their own food. Many of those people are working.
Where does the Chamber of Commerce stand on this issue?
Take a wild guess…
More food drives, more charity, more mental-health outreach programs, more free Nalaxone kits handed out in clumps of bushes down on the riverbank...please, please, please, don't do anything that would actually solve this problem, for example raising the minimum wage...or business taxes, or property taxes, or meddling with any other funding stream.
The current welfare and disability regime in this province and this country are ludicrously underfunded. Always have been, always will be.
Nothing is ever going to change until we change.
And change, my friend, is hard.
END
Image: Morguefile.
Note. The passages highlighted in blue are from Facebook comments. The main text was pieced together in Fb posts. I tried saving as a .txt document, which will often strip out unwanted formatting, but it clearly did not work. - Louis
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Thank you for reading.
