Editor:
Another long weekend has come and gone and most of us who used Alberta’s highways arrived safe and sound at home.
A little black bear lying dead as a door nail in the northbound lane of Highway 40 near Peter Lougheed Park didn’t have the same good fortune.
A gruesome five-foot streak of blood on the pavement clearly showed the point of impact to the final resting place of this little fellow. As I passed the scene, I couldn’t help but wonder why an RCMP officer was standing on the side of the road with a rifle pointed up the steep bank near the carnage, nor why another police officer and a park official were near the top of that bank with rifles pointing menacingly at the treeline.
Maybe they were exercising caution. Perhaps the mother of the baby lying dead on the pavement might still be mad – raging about the sudden change in the life she knew; healthy toddlers by her side, minding their business, moving from location to location, wanting only to be left alone.
Many humans are like that too. Some of us just want to enjoy the God-given space allowed us and to enjoy it at a pace sufficient for our liking. We share this space with those whose mantra is faster, higher, deeper – those never quite pleased with past performances who may only wake up in the aftermath of tragedy.
We need policemen and women to bring civility to civilization, to balance the competitive quest in the human beast who can’t share fairly and who feels laws are there to be broken regardless of the risk to them or anyone else.
I think it’s fair to postulate that police officers never relish attending the scene of carnage and I don’t think anyone, whether bystander or official, on Wednesday Aug. 8, enjoyed what they were witness to on Highway 40.
I’ve been labelled a “career meddler” among other disparaging things for years, as I’ve campaigned to encourage people to obey the rules of highway travel and use reason when sharing those roads with thousands of others.
I could avoid the criticism, like most do, by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing. That’s the easy route. But if the meddling has resulted in slowing one person down or saved one life, be it a little helpless bear cub or someone’s precious six-year-old kid about to start Grade 1 next month, the meddling is easily worth triple the flak this public dart board has absorbed.
Alvin Shier,
Canmore
