When the Montreal Forum closed in 1996, The Montreal Gazette published my Letter to the Editor in which I proposed that the Forum building should be used to provide services for the many homeless who lived on the streets in the area. I proposed that the City of Montreal provide cots, showers, food, social services, employment services and medical services on the site.
But that never happened.
Imagine a city where the homeless, the unemployed, the poor, drug addicts and alcoholics would not be left to die in the streets or to sit, filthy, in a stupor, begging for hand-outs. Where people found in the streets using drugs or begging would be picked up and taken in to shelters where they would be provided with the basics of life and required to undergo evaluation.
Is he sick? Is he mentally disabled? Is he educated? Does he need medical care? Psychiatric care? Could he be rehabilitated? Could he learn a trade? Is he a criminal? Is he a danger to others? Should he be in prison? Does this woman have children? Who is taking care of them? Is she a rape victim?
So many questions. Yes. And then, human beings would cease to be trash for the graveyard and have a chance to live a life. How many could be saved?
Q. What would it take to accomplish this?
A. The will to do it.
But who cares? Politicians find a hundred excuses to do nothing.
The proof of what I say is out there. You can see the evidence for yourself any day of the year - in the streets and in potters's fields everywhere.
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