Government Cuts: Neglect and cruelty obvious on Vancouver streets

Friday, Oct. 21, 2010 will be seared in my mind forever. It was the day I found a man dead in a wheelchair in front of the McDonald’s at Robson and Bidwell. He had passed away right there on that busy city street, while hundreds of people walked by. He had been sitting there for eight hours. I know this because I had

passed him around 1 p. m. that same day.

When I noticed him earlier in the day, he looked small and frail, almost dwarfed by the wheelchair, which was drawn up next to one of those grey garbage cans. Parked beside him was a power-line truck, its ladder at a 45 degree angle. The man was looking right at the two men sitting in the truck, but they seemed oblivious to him. I was on my lunch break and hurried back to work.

Later that evening, around 9: 15 p. m. as I walked back home, the man was still in the exact same spot. He looked asleep, but his dark grey pallor bothered me.

He had sunken down low in the chair with a blanket over his shoulders and seemed smaller and more fragile than earlier in the day. I went over to him and asked him if he was okay, but he did not respond. A woman named Jennifer came by and asked me if the man was all right. I told her he might have passed away. She went up to the man, tried to wake him, but said he felt stiff. A young man named Pascal came along, said he knew the man from the streets, and also feared the man was dead.

As I did not have a phone with me, I went into McDonald’s and asked the manager to call 911. The manager came outside with his cellphone and spent 15 minutes trying to convince the 911 operator that this man needed assistance. Twenty minutes later an ambulance arrived and the medics put the man in the ambulance, saying they would try to revive him. Soon another ambulance arrived with equipment and a fire engine too, so the intersection was completely blocked off as onlookers began to gather.

A woman who knew the man came over to talk to us and said his name was Ken, that he was a nice man and that he had been hoping to get into Sunset Towers apartments on Barclay Street.

Soon one of the paramedics came out of the ambulance and said the man had passed away. Within minutes, all the vehicles were gone and all that was left on the street was the deceased’s wheelchair, a blanket and a plastic bag with some belongings.

It struck me that Ken had received more attention in death than he had in life. I thought of how this city, my city, puts more care into providing bike lanes for urban professionals than for housing the homeless. Mayor Gregor Robertson’s election promises ring incredibly hollow. It is often said that a society can be judged by the way it treats weakest members. If such is the case, Vancouver scores shockingly low on the scale of providing even the basic necessities of life to one elderly homeless man who died on Robson Street.

Shame on Vancouver for ignoring society’s most vulnerable, for marginalizing them, the poor, the sick, the drug addicted. Shame on the number crunchers who justify this callousness as a social problem, a product of poverty and mental illness. Shame on all of us for not taking up the cause of our society’s most disadvantaged, the ones we go out of our way to ignore every day.

If Robertson and the city of Vancouver would put one ounce of the passion into putting a few roofs over a few heads as they do with providing surplus recreation for the over-privileged, there’s one old man who might still be here today.

I for one can say that I am not proud at the moment to be a citizen of Vancouver.

source: http://digital.vancouversun.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

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Note from Voting 4 Change Across Canada Editor:

I do not know what is worse in this nightmare that Ken faced;

- That he died in broad daylight alone?

- That out of the 5 who voted thru Vancouver Sun (the source of this story) as to

  whether it was written well or not, that 2 readers gave it a thumbs down?

- Or that 'Norman dePlume' in his comment at the foot of the story likely represents a greater portion of society in their thinking then what I would like to give them credit for when he wrote;

"Could it not be possible that this person quietly and peacefully expired out in the fresh air on a warm early fall day in the most beautiful city in the world? Not in a car or plane crash, not at the destination of a bullet, not on an operating table at the hands of an incompetent surgeon, not on an overdose of anything, and almost certainly not in pain (otherwise passers by would CERTAINLY have noticed). I hope when my time comes, I am so lucky!"

Have we become so truly desensitized in Canada that any of us could think it is right to post such an ignorant statement; that a homeless elderly man who died outside and without any care in his final moments of life, in broad day light and passed by likely hundreds of people that day was lucky?

It is time for an overhaul across all political spectrums in Canada.

For a province and country that were able to rack up a deficit that even my grandchildren will still be paying in their generation, as the legacy to the 2010 Winter Olympics; how is it that people are still dying on the streets of our cities? How is it that the most vulnerable are the easiest targets by our respective levels of governments?

This is what you have elected. To bury your head and pretend it is not your problem, or to open your mouth and offer the rebuttal that this is the fallout from the last political party's doing, is cheap and pathetic! Bring CHANGE not rhetoric!

If you remain on the sidelines, no matter WHO you are, you are as guilty in the death of Ken and others that will certainly follow, no matter where they are in Canada.

You are guilty when you are silent and do not see it a priority to change the circumstance for the better!