Editor: In response to Eileen Patterson’s letter, ‘Losing sense of place’ (RMO July 16), may I suggest there is, for a variety of reasons, no truly affordable home for some people.
The underlying truth to most of these pleas is that the less fortunate, or those who in some instances steadfastly refuse to position themselves in a place better suited to their economics, have come to expect someone else to subsidize their lives or lifestyles.
More than “sense of place” which Patterson quotes from Bob Sanford’s book The Weekender Effect, I prefer to think more in terms of sense of pride in accomplishments offered up by one’s own hand. Dare I mention “the sense of place” local who I bought a home from in Canmore in 2002 also bought up two others during the heyday and no doubt prospered when he sold them.
After spending considerable time this spring and summer in the coastal Pacific Northwest, I can assure that Canmore has no more or less a problem with housing that any village, town or city I visited, or in Lethbridge where I now live. Here there is (and always has been) a variable number of lost souls wandering the streets with no place to prepare the donated food they picked up from the local food bank - just like everywhere else.
Of the 7.5 billion people on this planet, 2.7 of those billions, it has been estimated, live with inadequate food, water and housing. In Alberta, an oft talked about prosperous place, author Mel Hurtig, in 1999, penned an instructive/informative 350 page book pertaining to the Canadian plight. He titled that sad tome pay the rent or feed the kids - the tragedy and disgrace of poverty in Canada.
A socialist leaning NDP government, whose social experiments in other jurisdictions have grandly taxed those who prosper, and bestowed it upon the poor, over time may take some pressure off the affordable housing crisis, but I doubt it.
History shows us that unearned money rarely solved anyone’s deeper long-term problems, and Canada, spending tens of billions annually on poverty, perceived or real social injustices, food, clothing and shelter for those who won’t, don’t or can’t support themselves for every reason imaginable - is a model of proof of that statement.
Alvin Shier,
Lethbridge
