Kootenay Crust

By Ian Cobb

The Kootenays are a lovely sheltered paradise. Far beyond the hullabaloo of major population centres, the East Kootenay and Central Kootenay (note that they are not plural) are bastions of all that is good left in the world.

Blessed with abundant wilderness that would make John Muir weep, the Kootenays are emblematic of the great Canadian experience.  It doesn’t matter where you turn and look – on even a partly grey day – there is God’s work on a good Thursday when it appeared He/She could get off early on Friday. We live and work amongst wonderment that countless millions dream about while inhaling cancer-causing emissions and suffering the slings and arrows of the unwashed masses.

While our kin in the city sit in traffic or on trains filled with germ-covered wheezers, we enjoy a drive through the mountains or a brief walk home, the Rockies and Purcells shining. Birds sing, deer graze and then attack the helpless, and fairies and nymphs scamper hither thither.

And then you look at the more real side of the Kootenays. We’re no different than most everywhere else, except the Lower Mainland – that place is screwed. Never mind the shootings, or the eventual earthquake/tsunami scenario or a surprise ‘HELLO’ from Mount Baker (not Cranbrook’s Mount Baker) or the impending POP of the Canadian housing bubble, Dr. David Suzuki says the entire western coast of North America is eminently mounted if and when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has a final meltdown, likely spurred on by another Ring of Fire trembler, also destroying Japan and adjacent jurisdictions and, sure as houses, setting off the Tao of Gojira. Think of a mass flight from Lower Mainland communities in the fuzzy future as a result of that nightmare scenario.

While we’re not as screwed as the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island in the big picture sense, we do have all the same social issues and they are growing as program funding support continues to shrink. Yet, we don’t seem to have the same resources in place to deal with them, as they have pretty much everywhere else in B.C.

Case-in-point: Extreme weather homeless shelters.

On Nov. 8 the Ministry of Natural Gas Development and Responsible for Housing (I am not making this up) issued a press release bragging about “Extreme weather shelter spaces available throughout B.C.”

It then provided a list of shelters throughout our large and complex province. (See: https://www.e-know.ca/news/extreme-weather-shelter-spaces-available-throughout-b-c/).

What struck me like a deflected puck from that list is how few spaces there are in the Kootenays; 36 to be exact, with 24 in Cranbrook and six apiece in Trail and Nelson.

City of Cranbrook Councillor Sharon Cross Nov. 4 noted there are about 300 homeless “or nearly homeless” people in Cranbrook. Those of you who explore the backroads of our region also know about the growing volume of ‘campers.’

With all that glorious Crown land surrounding us, we could easily experience a veritable Oklahoma land dash for the economically disinterred with access to trailers or vans.

Our nation’s population continues to grow – the big cities are insanely expensive places in which to live or find a life within and prosperous small cities such as the like we have in the East Kootenay are going to keep growing – whatever the economic tides.

Having a social service such as a homeless shelter, good or foul weather, doesn’t just make sense, it adds up.

There are only 24 bad weather spaces available at The Salvation Army’s 533 Slater Road location for a city of about 20,000 souls and regional centre for about 50,000 more (full-time – never mind the tourism and passing through traffic).

While a healthy percentage of our regional population earns solid wages thanks to coal mining, the forest industry, government jobs and location location location, another large percentage of our residents live poverty-level lives, trying to eke out livings on the crusts of tourism.

We are escapeland; getawaysville; paradise; not Calgary. All of that adds up to a steady stream of transient traffic, further bolstering the potential for a large number of homeless people.

If you have wondered why the Salvation Army and Cranbrook and District Community Foundation are working so hard to build a new, larger homeless shelter in Cranbrook, consider the above and consider the fact we are behind most of the rest of B.C. when it comes to available spaces. Then realize that the need isn’t decreasing for the final ‘ah ha’ and ‘oh’ to settle in.

Yeoman efforts have occurred to raise funds for the Cranbrook shelter, which will also provide affordable housing for people close to getting back on their financial feet and those involved are to be heartily commended. Such hands up in times of woe can have great impacts on people who turn their lives around and give back to their communities.

As the old saying kinda-sorta goes, a community should be judged on how all its citizens are faring, not just the prosperous.

For more – Community Connections Society of Southeast BC:  http://hop.ccscranbrook.ca.

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