I’m going down to the greyhound station
Gonna get a ticket to ride
Gonna find that lady with 2 or 3 kids
And sit down by her side
And ride until the sun comes up and down around me about 2 or 3 times
smoking cigarettes in the last seat trying
to hide my sorrow from the people I meet
And get along with it all
Go down where people say ya’ll
Sing a song with a friend
Change the shape that I’m in
And get back in the game
And start playing again
I’d like to stay but I might have to go to start over again
I might go back down to Texas I might go somewhere that I’ve never been
And get up in the morning and go out at night
And I won’t have to go home
Get used to being alone
Change the words to this song
And start singing again
I’m tired of running round looking for answers to questions that I
already know
I could build me a castle of memories just to have somewhere to go
Count the days and the nights that it takes to get back in the saddle
again
Feed the pigeons some clay
Turn the night into day
Start talking again when I know what to say
I’m going down to the greyhound station
Gonna get a ticket to ride
Gonna find that lady with 2 or 3 kids
And sit down by her side
And Ride until the sun comes up and down around about 2 or 3 times
smoking cigarettes in the last seat
trying to hide my sorrow from the people I meet
And get along with it all
Go down where people say ya’ll
Feed the pigeons some clay
Turn the night into day
Start talking again when I know what to say
Disclaimer: This is not pizza from Vera Pizzeria. This is scummy Montreal metro pizza, which also has it’s place.
I have oft dreamed of a world free from the bondages of currency. The ‘bootstraps’ analogy that no longer makes analogical sense would neither make societal sense because people would all have the same strapless boots, the same homes, and the same neapolitan ingredients in the fridge. Where no matter how hard you work, you get a piece of the pie. The pizza pie.
I have oft dreamed of a job that pays me in pizza and beer but until recently I believed it was an impossible, utopian dream. I have found said job. I wear an apron, I swing my hips liberally to the hook-heavy anthems of Jenny Lewis, I spray, scrub, soak, sort, and airdry the cheese-grimed pizza plates of Vera Pizzeria, home of the finest pizza your pedestrian tongue (and undoubtedly mine) will likely ever taste. Contrary to my communist, currency-free compulsions, on busy nights where my free labour has been deemed as moderately necessary, I work hardest and get paid the least, a perfect microcosm of capitalism. In the name of that covetous progress, the human-crushing runaway train that it is, they have sourced a commerical dishwasher. And with the simple stroke of a pen, with the lease of a stainless steel washer that sprays with the intensity of a pissed off geyser at 150degrees centigrade, I have become obsolete.
So with my severance package in hand (a bout of scurvy in my organs from a pizza-only diet), and my travel backpack on my shoulder, I will slither towards an early retirement. Savings were significant in the height of the pizza game, and my investments were sound, so with the wealth of a nation, the tropics call my name. I have long desired, for three years or more, to leave my home to see the homes of others, and now, ticket for Thailand securely in hand, visa for India theoretically in transit, this retirement dream will soon come to pass.
I pack my belongings, patch the holes on my backpack, google trip plans when flashbacks of swimming in the ocean, drinking five-cent chai, eating dogmeat bring excited memories of the learned parts of travel. Then flashbacks of sweaty, anxious, late walks on the beach, the embarassed purchase of tacos from women squatting in the alley across from the department store, feeling responsible and justified when I get attacked on several occasions strike my memory.
Hold on a second. People’s dreams change? Without them even knowing it? Until it’s too late? Well that’s some merited bullshit. Some ironic piece of formaggio pizza, light and bubbly crust on the outside, black and tarry on the inside. I’ve already bought a one-way ticket, already dreamed of the exploits and adventures of the trip for three years. Like a soon-to-be-wife with cold feet, always dreaming of the day she’d get married, but when the vows are written and the dress is tailored and the family has flown into town she realizes that this dream was what she wanted when she was 19, not 29. But she goes through with it anyway because, she figures, it’s still what she wants.
Much has changed in my brain in the three years since I last was in a territory that I was not welcome. For example, I have learned that I have always lived in a territory that I was not welcome; The Dominion of Canada. I have learned that as a person of privilege, I am ignorant and blind to my privilege unless someone calls me out on it, and even then I’m likely too stupid to comprehend it. I realize that abusing this privilege by flaunting it and spending its savings unwittingly, I disrespect those who have no privilege, even if I attempt to be ‘socially responsible’ while I do it.
I am willingly throwing myself into a situation to inevitably become the type of person I never want to be. As if I decided to run in party politics, or get season tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The tenets that I used to hold dear and romanticize about my lifestyle—the learning about culture, and seeing new things, and helping where I can—now come off as paternalistic blather. I am a product of loving parents that worked hard to give me everything I ever needed, which, along with the technologial and economic progression of the west, has turned me into a skilless rube whose only ability is to pick up and go. As a ‘writer’ I use this as ‘inspiration’ for ‘projects’ and ‘essays’. Previously my impulse was to I enjoy flaking on the lifestyles and traditions of groups of people far from my home that have been adversely flaked on by colonial forces for hundreds of years. Now, I’d prefer to do so at home, by myself, in a rundown house in small-town Saskatchewan where I can negatively affect only the people nearest me.
I look forward to coming out of early retirement to rejoin the workforce and finally stop perpetuating the types of relationships I have come to realize as unbalanced and unfair. I look forward to squatting in a moldy, infested apartment, dressing like a true dishwasher thus embracing the motto, “Dress how you want to be addressed” and forever scrubbing the cheese off of pizza-related tools, all for the simple reason that I am too unintelligent to understand how to truly live in balance with other people, so I’d rather just rot.
The following was presented at the Alternative Housing Summit Press Conference on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 in Regina, Saskatchewan to put pressure on the City of Regina to take serious steps to improve the affordable housing crisis in Regina.
Right now the City and developers are upstairs patting themselves on the back for a year of inaction and bare minimums. They’re talking about purportedly innovative housing starts in the city that won’t even put a dent in the affordable housing crisis that still exists in our city. Since the Mayor’s Housing Summit last year, the City has been paying developers to build normal, everyday, market rental units. Because of pressure from the community through Roof-Ready Regina project, they have recently changed their subsidy program and now use the CMHC definition of affordable housing, that is 30% of an individual’s income.
This past year developers built more market rental units and sucked up as much of the municipal subsidy as they could before the unsustainable, nonsensical program inevitably changed. Housing starts were up, the vacancy rate went up, but more importantly rental costs continue to soar; that is what they’re here celebrating.
Locally and provincially no firm plan has been created to address homelessness when similar cities in the country have set specific goals and measures to ensure the end of homelessness within ten years. Instead the city has gone as far as to subsidize and entirely rely on the market to do what is the government’s job. The municipal government repeatedly claims that housing isn’t their fiscal responsibility, however this doesn’t absolve the city from being a proactive player in ending homelessness.
Several small steps could be made to keep developers accountable and to improve the housing situation of the most marginalized in our city.
Requiring developers to build a certain percentage of their units as affordable housing, or requiring them to pay into an affordable housing fund would be a progressive step to ensure adequate amounts of affordable housing was created, and to make a sustainable housing program run by the city.
Forming true partnerships with the provincial government to align programs and funding is the logical step for the city to move forward. Creating an Action Plan with solid, measured, and attainable goals in affordable housing is the responsible thing for the City to do, with the help from the provincial and federal government
In working with community I have seen dozens of people living in substandard housing that they can still barely afford because of rental costs in the city, and for many, the idea of living in a safe, healthy, and affordable place of their own is a pipe dream. It takes a responsible community and more importantly a responsible, just, and moral government to ensure that housing is accessible to all.
Decisions of policy makers have not been made in the public interest but in the interest of private developers and in the interest of garnering votes. Focusing on low-income seniors and single-parent families is incredibly important, but is often done to sway the public interest and not to truly cover the marginalized in our society. The municipal government has the opportunity to be a proactive player in developing policy to ensure that adequate amounts of affordable housing is developed in our community, and they have the responsibility to partner with all levels of government to do so. We call on the City to develop proactive and concrete plan to improve housing for everyone, not just everyone who can pay for it.
As a renewed cellphone-free man I drink the heavy nectar of wi-fi. I sense when it exists and where it exists and how to position my body and tilt my neck to best receive the finely-tuned wavelengths into my lungs and my soul and my device. I have given up on pride and ask even the least appropriate places for their security codes, their passwords to open the sesame of my personal communication. Restaurants, bars, party/costume shops, hotels, homes, parks, community centres, libraries.
“Excuse me, what is your wi-fi password?” is like admitting your poverty and asking for change. People look at you, notice that your device is seven generations old and scoff. I sit in the corner and send messages to mom in India. Last night at midnight I stood in the cold outside of the local cafe and sent messages to travelling friends. The addiction is real. But I distance myself as best as possible which is why I am now a parasite.
On my previous bout of unemployment I tagged it as the Freeloader trip, but I understood that this was an slightly more endearing term of what it really was: parasitism. Attaching to and sucking dry those connected to me that have vision and ambitions and talent and patience to see their goals through and somehow have room for a tapeworm in their process of progress. I “sold t-shirts” for Close Talker, coming up with a completely unnecessary job so that I could watch free music, travel, see friends, and drink too much. I will move to the farm to help a friend herd cattle and build a home on his century-old homestead, neither of which I know anything about. I will go to a new city to potentially participate in a friend’s grand project of opening a particular kind of pizza joint. I will latch on to progressive people of diligence and industriousness and hope that in my blood-sucking, what I admire in them will be transmitted to me.
Then, when these months are said and done I will travel to countries that want nothing to do with another white man but will put up with it for the sake of an economy that is the tourism industry. And I will feed off of their land and their labour and their inexpensive living for my own personal benefit. I will inevitably further damage relationships because even responsible tourism is harmful. And with any luck I will come home six months later with a gnarly stomach worm, a parasite of deadly origins, and I will learn what it is like to be the host of someone who isn’t capable of envisioning their own future.
Carmichael Outreach is a unique community unlike any other within the city of Regina. Community members, occasionally referred to in the pejorative as ‘clients’, use Carmichael for its services and programs, which are often as unique as the community itself. Community members also come to Carmichael for a sense of dignity, belonging, friendship, and community. Where most people find this in their own homes, Carmichael community members make their own family, and use the coffee room as their living room. I have experienced no greater example of belonging, dignity and respect.
The reasons a place like Carmichael has to exist is complex and longterm. Poverty, addiction, mental illness, abuse are complicated human issues that will never be solved by the harm reduction programs run out of a small, dilapidated building with an overrun staff. But the decisions that that individuals and organizations make that cause these issues are clear, and as a non-profit, very avoidable. The systems of capitalism and colonialism are the root cause of the issues that tax the lives of the Carmichael community members. Capitalism is the economic model used by Canada’s colonial past and present. This economic system not only took over Indigenous land for the sake of giving land for new homesteads, but has played the largest role in the destruction of the traditions and governing systems for the fact that capitalism cannot exist in the presence of other traditions. The traditions and governance of Indigenous peoples are the polar opposite of capitalism, which is why colonialism had no choice but to assimilate and exterminate.
As a community-based organization, Carmichael has the distinct opportunity to stray from its current model of governance, that is, treating the non-profit as it were a multimillion dollar company, and to treat it like the living, breathing community that it is. Top-down, hierarchal decision making has worked superficially in the past and works in other contexts, but running Carmichael in such a manner only perpetuates the reasons Carmichael has to exist in the first place. Decisions, economic and otherwise, made for a community’s well-being without direct involvement or even simple consultation of that community, will be uninformed and detrimental to healthy functioning.
A shift to a more communicative, cooperative model of governance, still based in the Canadian laws for charitable organizations, would greatly benefit an agency like Carmichael Outreach. Board members offer a unique outside community perspective with business and executive expertise, while staff bring a frontline, community-member voice imperative to the balanced and equal decision-making to ensure that the customary neocolonial top-down approach of running an organization doesn’t take hold. Carmichael community-member input, more than once a year in patronizing AGM meetings, is imperative to the inclusion of the most important demographic; the service-user. To expect the opinions, ideas, plans, and dreams of hundreds of community-members and dozens of staff members to be filtered through a single Executive Director position is not only ineffective and impossible, it is unfair to charge the Executive Director with such an overwhelming task. Communal decision-making ensures a transparent, efficient, and effective process, and one that could slowly be transitioned into simply by allowing a Carmichael staff member to participate in the board meetings each month. Such a change would bring board members into a far greater understanding of daily operations at Carmichael, and would give staff members a clearer understanding of the necessity of process in an organization of this size. This transition could be complete with running Carmichael as a cooperative community movement that includes people of all backgrounds, incomes, and visions together in one common goal of continuing the important community work at which Carmichael already succeeds. Community requires such social mix, and a community organization’s healthy functioning is no different. Greater communication between stakeholders of Carmichael Outreach can only improve the future strength and effectiveness of such a community. I ask that you please consider a more cooperative and communicative approach to the operations of such a strong and critical community in Regina as it would be a disservice to the service-users to run it in any other way.
I have not, and likely will never again, work in a place such as Carmichael, and I know its potential far outweighs its current impact, which is a significant statement considering Carmichael’s influential past and present. Please consider decolonizing Carmichael’s governance and shift to inclusive and cooperative styles of governanace that truly can benefit such a distinct community.
Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this organization.
You probably don’t remember me, and I don’t blame you. We likely never had a full conversation, except that time on Christmas Day that I picked you and Leon up at the bus stop and drove you to turkey dinner at the Marian Centre. But even then I didn’t know what you said when I asked you your name. I thought you said Leonard. Although I didn’t know you as well as I would’ve liked, I can say that I think of you often. I hung your name on my bedroom wall.
I can also say, however, that there was a time that I forgot you. I forgot your name and your face and how you talked. I forgot how you died and I forgot what reserve you were from. I forgot who your family was. I forgot your real name. Linden. All I remembered was this faint vision of a man I knew that had died last winter, and that was about it. When your name, ‘Mouse’ finally surfaced in my brain I wrote it on a sticky note and have kept it since. A pathetic monument, to be sure, but better than the alternative of me permanently forgetting.
That is what was supposed to happen. You were to die and your case file was to close and the $459 that the ministry gave you would be swallowed back into general funds and used to finance interest free/tax free rental developments and that was that. Your home at Detox would fill your bed in a matter of hours and after a week they’d neglect to mention your name ever again. All levels of government would continue to stage press conferences with scummy developers to show their commitment to you, although they deny your existence outright, even aloud to the media. Community organizations would trod along in their busy, busted down buildings and wait for the next death to sombre things up. You’d be forgotten by the world except by the family who would feed you while you’re on the other side.
There are campaigns for your sisters and aunts and grandmothers and daughters who have gone missing or were murdered, and the spirit of these rallies and vigils also reaches to you. Because although you’re a male, and although we know where and how you died, you’ve been brushed aside and purposely forgotten by a brutal system of murder and assimilation.
We’re all eventually forgotten, Mouse, that much is certain. In 100 years no one will know my name or remember that I can’t make a decision to save my goddamn life. But I’ll be forgotten simply because time has passed. They won’t remember you and how you said, ‘Softly,’ with a grin when you put out your closed hand for a fist pump. But you’d be forgotten because multi-million dollar government policy was designed for your culture to be destroyed and your life to be ripped apart. What I can try to do, in some way, even as simple and degrading as a sticky note on my bedroom wall, is to ensure that in 100 years, you’ll still have family on this earth that will at least have the chance to remember you and their other ancestors.
The government’s denial of your existence isn’t a slip of the tongue, it is long-standing, ingrained belief. Because to acknowledge your existence is to acknowledge that you deserve to be remembered. I won’t forget you and I’ll do my best make sure no one else does either. Because once we forget you, the system is winning and the people are losing. Eventually, the people always win. And we’ll win remembering your life.
Balls of Rice 
