Category Archives: Homeless
Penny Jodway Plaque
I, I, I, I …
I have no idea what resentments Sharon Ross is holding onto so firmly that she is so agitated over the plaque placed in Penny’s memory. I do however know that the plaque was arranged and paid for by those who knew Penny. The plaque is not about whether there was honour in Penny’s life, but about the fact that people who knew Penny felt the need to honour their memories of Penny as a person, flaws and all.
Ergo, if Ms. Ross truly seeks an answer as to why there is a plaque for Penny and not to herself, she must seek the answer to that ‘why’ in her mirror, in herself.
Penny was not a saint and never claimed to be. Hence the questions: What was it about Penny that people who knew her for who and what she was thought enough of her to place a plaque in her memory? What is it about Ms Ross that that people who know her for who she is didn’t think enough of her to place a plaque?
Ms Ross might want to consider what it reflects that she is upset and complains about having to clean out the alcove rather than about the fact that a human being, a flawed and troubled human being, had to spend the nights in that alcove.
Or the pettiness and meanness contained in her comments on Penny’s son struggling with the scourge of addiction. While only a parent in similar circumstances can understand the pain of a child’s addiction, any human with empathy can understand just why “she wanted to keep young people off the street.”
Perhaps if Ms Ross would stop being judgmental and seek understanding, she would know that complaints about large amounts of taxpayer dollars being spent ineffectually trying to address a health issue through the legal system rather than the health system, should be directed to provincial and federal politicians.
Penny may not have been a saint but she never begrudged someone else what they had or got; accepting personal responsibility, not whining about, what havoc and pain her choices reaped upon her life.
A good look in the mirror and contemplation may enlighten Ms Ross to the fact that the plaque was not about honouring working on a corner downtown but honouring the effect Penny had upon those who knew her and honouring their memories of Penny.
Original Letter: http://www.bclocalnews.com/fraser_valley/abbynews/opinion/letters/82640222.html
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Actually Mr. Scheirer it is your letter and your words that exemplify certain facets of what is wrong with our community.
Not everything that is wrong since ‘everything that is wrong’ covers a wide variety of human weaknesses, behaviours and sins.
The legacy of despair and destruction, of the way your neighbourhood is, does not belong to Penny Jodway. It belongs to you, your neighbours and the many other citizens of Abbotsford, British Columbia and Canada who, in order to protect their ideology and beliefs, see what they want to see.
Unfortunately REALITY does not give a damn about ideology or beliefs, it just is.
It is the chaos that arises from within the differences between the factual reality that IS and the delusional reality our ideology and beliefs bring forth that IS NOT that brings about the issues and problems we are challenged by as Canadians.
It is understandable why those employed as the agency that enforced prohibition would wish to protect their livelihoods by finding a new ‘demon’ to pursue when prohibition ended in 1933. It is also understandable why, given lack of knowledge and experience, the public would buy into this demonization of other drugs as ‘demon rum’ was demonized to bring about prohibition.
Given our 80 years of experience with the futility of trying to address the issue of mind altering substances by waging war upon those who fall under the influence of mind altering substances; our knowledge and understanding of addiction as a health and mental health issue; we have only ourselves to blame for pursuing a course of action that attempts to solve a medical issue with the legal system instead of the health system.
It is choosing to ignore the reality that addiction is a health care issue in favour of pursuing the illusions many want to be, that effective actions do not get taken and ineffective actions are repeated over and over well past the point of insanity.
It is in our stubborn refusal to learn from the lessons in Penny’s life (and far too many other lives) that what is wrong with our community not only lies but thrives in. It is this stubborn refusal to learn from a reality we simply don’t like because it challenges or contradicts ideologies and/or beliefs that condemns us to repeat mistakes and have problems such as poverty, homelessness and addiction grow.
It is our own choices that prevent us addressing and dealing with these problems.
Penny Jodway was merely an evidentiary symptom, not a cause.
Original Letter:
The Tale of a friend, crippling pain and Fraser Un-Health.
I have a homeless friend I first met shortly after finding myself living on the streets of Abbotsford.
For a period we were among those sharing a pod and both found ourselves returned to living on the streets close to the same point in time and through the same agency, although on different grounds.
I was able to find housing in a couple of months, whereas he has been homeless ever since that point in time.
About three weeks ago I was giving him a bad time about getting old after he hurt his back getting up that morning. His back continued to bother him until one morning a week and a half ago he found himself unable to move or get to his feet.
Late on the second day of being incapacitated and having no water he dragged himself to the road were someone saw him and called the Abbotsford police. Who arrived and asked him if he had been hit by a car (no) or if he was so intoxicated he could not stand (no). Upon explaining about his being crippled by his back the officers called him an ambulance.
At which time he began a close encounter of the unprofessional kind with ‘The Attitude’ that the homeless and too many other powerless sub-groups are treated with by emergency medical staff in Abbotsford.
The Abbotsford ambulance crew expressed … let’s say skepticism… as to his claim of not being an addict. Further, when he said he had not been taken to the hospital by ambulance anytime recently, one of the ambulance attendants insisted he had taken him to the hospital just weeks before.
His treatment did not improve upon arrival at the new Regional Hospital in Abbotsford, where once again the fact he was homeless automatically made him an addict, despite his statements about not having an addiction.
When my friend suggested that labelling him an addict, assuming that he was there to abuse the medical system and that he was there for some reason other than his back was causing him crippling pain was not the way staff should be acting, he was subjected to ‘who are you (a nobody) what have you done with your life (nothing)’ attitude and behaviours.
I am sure that I am not the only one who has had the experience of having a doctor tell you that they cannot find any evidence of a back problem, while you were lying there in agony.
So – anyone surprised the doctor didn’t find any evidence of a back problem when he, the doctor, had decided my friend was a homeless addict who was lying about his addiction and about why he was at the hospital? Me neither.
Most British Columbians, myself included, labour under the impression hospitals are there to provide health care to British Columbians who find themselves in need to 24 hour bed rest and health care. Apparently we are mistaken.
Hospital staff gave him a shot and shipped him off, still unable to move and in agony, to the Salvation Army – which has no facilities or capacity to provide 24 hour bed care for someone. Of course since he could not walk they were forced to call a taxi to have him carted off the premises. Talk about a bums rush!
Fortunately for my friend on his way to, but before he found himself stranded helplessly at the Salvation Army, he spotted his brother who got him to his (the brother’s) place.
Of course since he was an addict and would either abuse or sell any medication he was given, he was sent off without medication or any prescription for medication. As a result of which he got to spend a week unable to move and in a great deal of pain.
The reason I started with the background of how long I have know my friend is so that I can state: that he does not use drugs or alcohol; that his last ambulance trip to the hospital was thirty years ago after a car accident; that if he says his back is causing crippling pain – it is causing crippling pain.
My friend was treated with the usual (unacceptable) lack of respect and professionalism that is standard operating procedure for treatment of the homeless. That’s just a fact of life for the homeless in Abbotsford.
However, his treatment goes beyond the normal standard lack of professionalism into bad health care or as the French would say Mal-practice.
Thought Bites
H’mmm
Hail, snow flurries, torrential downpours, driving rain, high winds and cold temperatures.
Obviously it is once again time for the City of Abbotsford to send in its minions, backed by the strong arm of the APD, to render the homeless even more homeless and destitute; turning them out of what shelter they managed to cobble together and expropriating any meagre belongings they possess.
With no housing the homeless can afford available, with shelters full and the weather a threat to health and life – why would city council not take the opportunity to reduce the number of living homeless on the streets of Abbotsford?
I see that another annual Abbotsford tradition, council’s annual scare/bamboozle/sell the fudget budget to the pubic, has begun with Mayor Peary opening this year’s season with “what services are taxpayers willing to do without.”
Why do any services need to be cut? The Ratepayer’s association was correct that we could save close to a million dollars by cutting the business development department, a department with no demonstrable benefit to the city.
There are several millions slated for parks. Just why are we developing parks when we cannot maintain our current parks? Given the usury level of fees the city charges who can afford to use all the current fields?
Then there are items such as why the Abbotsford Recreation Centre needs three people to run one centre?
Which raises an important question: why does the City not allow citizens access to the detailed numbers of Abbotsford’s finances and how taxpayer dollars are actually spent. Details that would settle questions such as how ARC is managed, allowing the public to determine whose source is correct, whether it is one person in charge of the pool and one for the rest of the facility OR one person in charge of the pool, one in charge of the ice rink and one person in charge of the operations of the Plan A extension.
Access to adequately detailed information would undoubtedly reveal abundant Fudget fat to cut, saving Abbotsford money and requiring no service cuts.
With less salesmanship and scare tactics, more detailed financial numbers and a budget process that would past muster with BC’s Auditor General, Abbotsford could get its financial house in order before citizens start to lose their homes to the City because they cannot pay their municipal taxes.
Only in Abbotsford.
It did not take the brains of a rocket scientist to predict that if the province granted council’s request for a 2 cents a litre gas tax it would not be long, given council’s spendthrift ways, for council to want to increase the tax.
Mind bogglingly, city council has outdone themselves with a 50% raise to 3 cents a litre – before the tax is even approved by the province.
Which is why I urge fellow Abbotsfordians to join me in calling for Mike de Jong, John van Dongen, Randy Hawes, Bill Bennett and Gordon Campbell to “just say no” to enabling city council’s spending addiction and give a NO to Abbotsford’s proposed gas tax.
The fudgeting process throws into stark relief the fact that the ideas of cost cutting, only spending on necessities and NOT spending on things that are not necessities are totally foreign concepts council and staff.
The root of Abbotsford’s financial mess, debt and the constant upward spiral of taxes and fees is council and staffs’s spending addiction.
Well that plus council and staff’s demonstrated lack of any ability for financial planning and realistic budgeting, highlighted by the reports of the need to subsidize the operations of the Sports and Entertainment Complex to the tune of $2 million a year. It turns out that those who questioned council’s promise, during the Plan A debate, that the Complex would make money had/have a much better grasp of arithmetic and financial reality than council and staff.
Still, the first order of business to avoid the embarrassment (not to mention the financial calamity) of council and staff spending the City of Abbotsford into Bankruptcy is doing something about their spend, spend, spend, spending addiction.
Perhaps we can arrange a group rate at Kinghaven? This would have the additional benefit of having council and staff spending time with people who live in the real world and would, perhaps, help council and staff to ‘get real’.
Mission councillor Paul Horn writing about the homeless issue urged the use of Section 28 of the Mental Health Act to lock the homeless up for their own good as you cannot trust “a person with an acute mental illness to make a major life decision”.
I suspect that having “an acute mental illness” and that this being why they are homeless will come as quite a shock to all those who thought they were homeless because they simply could not afford the cost of housing in the lower mainland.
People who the recession cost their jobs and prevented from finding employment before their Employment Insurance ran out and they discovered the harsh reality that in BC “assistance” levels are such that the entire “assistance” cheque would not cover their rent, much less luxuries such as food.
Or those who are working 40 hours (or more) a week but whose wages are not sufficient to cover the cost of living in Abbotsford or Mission.
FYI – the leading cause of homelessness in Canada is now Poverty and not mental illness.
I was conversing with a friend who lives under a bridge about what it says about Canadians that we tolerate a federal government that, if you have a bathroom is willing to use taxpayer dollars to help you renovate it, but should you have no bathroom has no leadership or money to address affordable housing or poverty.
A federal government with billions to bailout big business, but no money to help individuals facing a shaky financial future or even homelessness as their Employment Insurance runs out.
A government whose priorities are policies of corporate welfare and increasing the wealth of the wealthiest, but places no priority on slowing the growth of poverty in Canada, much less stopping or reducing poverty levels.
And it does say something about us that we not only tolerate but continue to elect governments with priorities based on greed and lacking in ethics or principled behaviour.
The BC government can find $3.3 Billion to spend on a bridge but cannot find the funds to keep the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit open in Abbotsford.
But hey, children and young people do not need appropriate care that reflects their age. Just throw them in with the adults and pray that there are no predators.
Another casualty of the Great Fraser Health Mental Health Massacre was the detox center in Chilliwack.
According to Fraser Health the utilization rate of detox was only 60%. Which comes as quite a surprise to all who regularly sought to help addicts gain admittance to this medically supervised detox service and who were told detox was full and the waiting list was from one to six months in length?
Was the facility only funded sufficiently to open 6 out of its 10 beds OR was it managed in such a way that 40% of its capacity was wasted?
As this was not the only service that was cut due to under utilization in the face of abundant demand we are faced with the disturbing possibility that management and operating practices waste 40% of the health care systems capacity.
Watching a news report of deaths in a house fire had me wondering where Rich Coleman was.
After all, if the death of a single homeless person from fire last year in BC has Minister Coleman violating the rights of the homeless with the draconian “Assistance to Shelter Act”, how is it this fire death and the many other deaths that occur as a result of house fires in BC do not have Minister Coleman rushing into enacting legislation to have the police force people out of their homes because they are fire death traps?
On the subject of Minister Rich Coleman, who as the Minister of Housing and Social Development is in charge of income assistance in BC:
Could sending Minister Coleman (rich.coleman.mla@leg.bc.ca) and Premier Gordon Campbell (Gordon.Campbell.MLA@leg.bc.ca ) the definition of assistance along with explanations and examples of what assistance means and what assistance is, possibly enlighten them to the reality that current levels of what passes for assistance in BC is in fact a major barrier to the survival of those who fall into the clutches of the system, much less getting off the system and on with their lives?
Worth a try as it would also serve to put politicians on notice that their priorities need to be ethical and principled behaviour.
People’s well-being centered priorities at both the federal and provincial levels would relieve the pressure on the Abbotsford Food Bank from the increasing number of people depending on the food bank to eat.
In spite of our local politicians trumpeting Abbotsford as the most generous place in Canada, donations to the Abbotsford Food Bank at Thanksgiving where only a third of last year’s levels.
This decrease in donations comes at the same time information is emerging that across Canada the numbers of those in need of help from food banks soared.
Could it be government’s lack of appropriate people priorities is not a matter of tolerance on the part of Canadians but is reflective of citizen’s priorities?
Waddle is the best word to describe people leaving the Salvation Army’s meal centre at lunchtime Saturday November 22, 2009.
Gentlemen from our East Indian community prepared and served lunch; then returned to serve dinner for the Emergency Shelter. On a previous Saturday the women from the East Indian community had prepared and served lunch at the meal centre.
Some in our community are taking action to reduce hunger in Abbotsford.
The food was plentiful and tasty to the point that many struggled to finish what was on their plates before waddling on their way.
Not that the food the ladies prepared was not tasty and appreciated but … sorry ladies, the men were on their game/had their game on and sent diners waddling on their way.
Thank you, it was delicious and much appreciated.
‘Assistance to Shelter Act’ makes this Remembrance Day a Day of Shame in BC
November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada; a result of November 11th being the date the Armistice ending World War I was signed. It is the day Canadians commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war or conflict.
It is the day we remember those who served, fought, bled and died to preserve the freedom of Canada and Canadians to make their own choices and decisions.
A Day of Shame in British Columbia this year as a result of the BC government’s introduction of the ‘Assistance to Shelter Act’ – an act written to strip freedom of choice from the a specific group of citizens – the Homeless.
This shameful Act is made more shameful, more intolerable, by virtue of the fact that it is for the purpose of enabling the BC government to remove the homeless from areas of high visibility and relocate them to less visible or embarrassing locations during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
The logic of seeking to avoid the embarrassment of having the homeless visible to the international community during the Olympics through the criminal violation of internationally recognized human rights escapes me.
Unless the government of BC expects the international community to be bamboozled by claims that the government’s action is about providing shelter from the weather for the homeless, when the actions of the government demonstrate the lack of any true concern about whether the homeless are sheltered from the weather or not.
If the BC government was concerned about the homeless being sheltered from inclement weather, the government would not be appealing the Adams ruling which found that people have a right to erect their own temporary shelter to protect themselves.
The case was not blanket permission for the homeless to erect temporary shelters but rested on the fact that the number of people who are homeless in Victoria far exceed the number of available shelter beds.
Thus a government that was truly concerned about sheltering the homeless would not be seeking to prevent the homeless erecting shelter, but would instead seek to resolve the issue of homeless camps by providing shelter beds and appropriate housing.
Instead the BC government will empower police to use force to remove the homeless from the streets, ignoring the inconvenient fact that there more homeless that there are shelter beds.
To ensure that the government can have the police remove the homeless from sight during a specific time period of their choosing, the Act gives the Minister the power to issue an extreme weather alert. As opposed to the situation currently, where the calling of an extreme weather alert is in the hands of individual representatives in each community.
The minister and the BC government have claimed that this Act, violating the human rights of the homeless, is necessary “for their own good” and is NOT simply a tool to “sweep the homeless under the carpet” and remove them from sight during the Olympics.
Even if the actions of the BC government supported (which they clearly do not) the BC governments claim that the purpose of the Act was to benefit the homeless and not about Olympic beautification, William Pitt was right when he stated “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
On this Remembrance Day of 2009, Canadian troops are in Kabul province in Afghanistan; serving, fighting, bleeding and dying seeking to protect the freedom of the Afghani people to choose from the tyranny of the Taliban.
While in the province of British Columbia in their homeland of Canada the provincial government is seeking to impose the tyranny of “for their own good”, stripping the right to choose from homeless Canadians.
Which is why November 11th is a Day of Shame in British Columbia this year, as the government seeks to violate the freedom to choose of the homeless; a freedom that those we Remember on November 11th served, fought, bled and died to ensure for Canada and all Canadians.
On Remembrance Day it is important to remember not only those who made sacrifices but why those sacrifices were made.
Lest We Forget the price paid for our freedom and the right to choose for ourselves and in the forgetting dishonour the sacrifices of those we Remember on November 11th by allowing tyrants to violate the right of Canadians to decide what is best for them, themselves.