He's Homeless, Let's Kick Him

According to radio reports today, a man was brutally beaten last night. I am glad to live in a place where this is still shocking news and I hope to God we never become so callous that it's not attention-getting.

The victim came here by bus from some other province, like so many people do. Those of us who weren't born here come to improve our circumstances. Usually we come for jobs, or the rumour of jobs, the rumour of streets paved with gold. Sometimes we come for fun, for the summer, or the Stampede, or to get a job in the famed oil patch.

Some of us come here with connections and a place to stay, or at least the money to pay for one.

This poor man apparently didn't have that. He got off the Greyhound bus and walked about half a mile west, probably following the road in front of him, moving west away from the city centre. Was he trying to get a better view of the mountains? Trying to avoid the downtown - was he afraid of it? Or just picking the road of least resistance, maybe.

There's an underpass where the railroad crosses above 14th Street. I think that's about where this happened. Something about that location is ringing a mental bell. My daughter had a friend who lived in a nice neighbourhood about a half mile further west. There was a murder by that underpass a week before my daughter went to the friend's place for a sleepover. She was just a little kid then. I was speechless and impotently frightened when I heard later that the girls had walked downtown via that street, past that murder place.

I'd forgotten about that until today.

This man from out of town went to sleep somewhere near that underpass. While he slept some violent person or persons beat him so badly that he is now in a coma awaiting surgery. The miraculous thing is that he managed to get himself back to the Greyhound station where someone called 911 for help.

This is not the city I want to be part of. I want civility and the absence of violence. We shouldn't have to ask for it.