My Alberta: They Are Still Part of Us

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This is my Alberta.

I stood looking at this scene and kept thinking, this isn't sustainable.

Skyscrapers. Apartments. Businesses. Cars driving by. Families walking through the neighbourhood. People going to work, shopping, living their lives.

Millions of dollars being made all around us.

And right there are tents.

People sleeping on sidewalks, in doorways, building corridors, wherever they can find somewhere to make it through another night.

A church van feeding people.

And thousands of people experiencing homelessness in this city alone.

Thousands.

Hear that.

Sometimes I think we say "the homeless" so much that we forget what we're actually saying.

These are human beings.

That's somebody's daughter.

What is she having to do tonight just to survive?

That's somebody's son.

Somebody's mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, friend.

Maybe somebody you worked beside once.

They didn't suddenly appear when they became homeless. They were already part of our communities.

So when did they stop being part of us?

When they lost their apartment?

When they couldn't pay the rent?

When they became addicted?

When their mental health fell apart?

When they started sleeping in a tent?

I've been there.

And getting out isn't as simple, or as cold, as some people believe.

Not everyone out here is addicted. Some are. Some are very sick. Some have made terrible choices. Some have had terrible things happen to them. Some have simply found themselves in a situation that became untenable.

They're still human beings.

And while all of this is happening, life continues around them.

People drive past. Families walk through with their children. New immigrants are trying to build lives here. Indigenous people. Muslims. Christians. Africans. East Indians. People from all sorts of backgrounds, religions and cultures.

All moving through the same community.

That's what gets me.

Because homelessness doesn't end at the edge of a tent.

Every person sleeping there is connected to somebody else.

There are parents wondering where their children are. Children wondering about their parents. Brothers, sisters, cousins and friends.

Those connections reach through Edmonton and then across Alberta. Into towns, rural communities and reserves. Eventually they spider out across Canada.

This isn't some separate group of people living outside our society.

They're living right in the middle of it.

And it's getting worse.

Meanwhile, most of us continue going about our day.

I don't think most people are uncaring. I think most people look at something this big and aren't sure what they're supposed to do.

So we wait.

We wait for governments. Politicians. Churches. Charities. Organizations. Somebody with more power or more money.

But we can't keep waiting for somebody else to do something.

Our leaders aren't saviours.

Neither are we.

We're human beings, interconnected whether we recognize it or not.

We don't have to vote the same way. We don't have to worship the same way. We don't have to agree about everything. We don't even have to like each other.

Some things are bigger.

We can still feed someone.

We can still see someone.

We can still decide that losing your home doesn't mean losing your place among the rest of us.

Because this is my Alberta.

The towers are my Alberta.

The businesses are my Alberta.

The families walking through here are my Alberta.

And the person sleeping under that tarp is my Alberta too.

They didn't stop belonging to our community.

Maybe we stopped seeing them as part of it.

Feed my sheep.

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