Human Compassion

Letters The NEWS Sept 26-28th

Here’s a thought D. Ferguson and Sandy MacDougall and anyone else wanting to get rid of this so called human detritus, why don’t we build large compounds hundreds of miles from civilization and enclose them with barbed wire and we could tattoo numbers on them so we can better keep track of them if they happen to escape. Granted this is nothing new and has been tried before by Hitler and Stalin but we could give the CARE CENTRES less ominous names than Gulags and Death camps because those names have such a negative context.

Seriously if you want to blame someone for this horrible situation do not blame Bob Goos or the Salvation Army Caring place or any other organization that is only trying to help an ever worsening human tragedy that we see or close our eyes too every day. 

There are many reasons for people being homeless forty percent of the homeless are either mentally or physically handicapped the unemployment rate is 7 percent so the real number is closer to 14 percent, about 20 percent are working but don’t make enough to eat and have a roof over their heads also, the average family is 3 weeks away from bankruptcy and if the worst happens the simple fact is that if you aren’t lucky enough to have a family or friends that you can live with until you can turn things around you end up on the street and but for the grace of god there go I. 

In the 1980s there was probably 600 homeless in greater Vancouver and most of them were in Vancouver, by the beginning of the 90s they were everywhere Kerrisdale, Burnaby, Coquitlam and yes Maple Ridge.

In the mid 1980s the BC government was shutting down mental and care homes all over BC, places such as Essondale and smaller facilities all over the province with the promise to open smaller less institution like facilities, a promise they never kept, so all over BC they would take people out of these care homes, take them to the bus depot give them $20 dollars and send them to Vancouver, where they ended up living in the streets or on my bus. I can tell many sad stories about these poor unfortunates who should have been under someones care other than a bus driver, needless to say I have seen many things I would rather not over the years.

A healthy soul can extend itself, put itself in the place of another persons experiences, from that comes wisdom and compassion.

 

If you want to blame someone for this untenable tragedy blame the governments who failed to live up to their promises of positive change and yes blame yourself for letting them get away with their lies, deceptions, and yes outright malfeasance. 

As always It is always about money, but a civilization is judged by how they take care of the sick the old in other words the helpless, less unfortunate of any population and so far we have certainly have not lived up to a very high standard.