For those of a certain vintage, you may recall a TV show called WKRP in Cincinnati. It was a comedy series about a radio station, but the episode that sticks out for me was on censorship. It related to a song by a member of one of my favourite bands of all times, the Beatles. It was John Lennon’s song “Imagine”, considered one of the great peace anthems. The opening line is “Imagine there’s no heaven…”. The religious televangelist character was threatening to boycott the station if demands in relation to what was played were not met.
The televangelist’s vote on this proposed song was that although it had no reference to sexuality or obscenities, it was blasphemous. It did not suggest there was no heaven, but just to imagine. The head of the station notes, “We’re talking about ideas, political, the philosophical ideas. First, you censor a word and then you censor the ideas.”
You cannot deal with issues if you ignore them and hope they will go away. That strategy might work for internet trolls desperate for attention, but that approach definitely won’t work for homelessness. I recall when I was very young that there would always seem to be a homeless person wherever you lived. They were the one who went from garbage to garbage looking for bottles to cash in.
There was often a rumour that those bottle collectors were millionaires, searching out every penny to save. My industrious little brother and I thought that was a great idea and searched the neighbours’ bins for bottles to cash in for corner store candy and firecrackers. Those were the good old days, 5-year-old children lighting things on fire that would explode; I still recall my delinquent-headed friend lighting one and setting it under me to explode while I was squatting down to light one myself, humour of that lost on me. The burnt hole in my sock from the explosion made me appreciate the thickness of a pair of jeans.
My brother and I then had the brilliant idea of going to the city dump, the grand cache for discarded bottles by the thousands! Unfortunately, everything at the dump was crushed, how anti-climatic. Now they would be recycled. Not a scalable business model then nor now. That was the extent of our young thoughts on the homeless, people choosing an alternative lifestyle.
Even when I, the lawyer, first moved to Red Deer at the end of the last millennium, and observed the downtown from my 6th floor office, the homeless observations were very much a backdrop. I was wise enough to understand mental health and poverty issues, but worked around the clock and thought homelessness was the problem for the powers that be, and we paid taxes to fund the solutions from the elected and/or the wise. When I moved out of that same office during the pandemic, my very last image was looking out of my “ivory tower” window and seeing the exponentially growing numbers of homeless, surrounded by a number of police vehicles.
The homeless population in all of our cities is growing exponentially, that is an understatement. Outside my former downtown apartment in Calgary, I recently had to call for someone to resuscitate the overdosed gentleman in the back alley in broad daylight. Similarly, in downtown Red Deer recently, a darkly clad young lady was wandering aimlessly in the middle of the street, barely visible to traffic, and I contacted law enforcement to come and assist. Never assume someone else has it covered, especially in crowds.
The homeless population in Red Deer has been quoted at under 500; my colleague in Los Angeles says theirs is about 50,000; my colleagues from other countries have whole shanty towns and those “with” are a very exclusive group. Every citizen, including business owners, workers and retired persons need to try to make some space in their schedule to put time, energy and ideas forward and have an open mind as I do not think anyone has “the” solution. This will take a lot of imagination and bold action.
Donna Purcell, K.C., (aka Lady Justice) is a central Alberta lawyer and Chief Innovation Officer with Donna Purcell QC Law. If you have legal questions, contact dpurcell@dpqclaw.com.