Re: Dear John:

http://aguynamedbrian.blogspot.com/2...e-laoagan.html


Arcelie Laoagan

Arcelie Laoagan was found dead last Thursday evening here in Calgary. On her way home from the downtown around 10:00 PM, having left one of the two jobs she worked, she was allegedly killed, police believe, as she left one of the LTR stations in the city's southeast area, along the path from the Franklin Station. They also believe that she had been harassed and followed on the train by the person who eventually attacked her from the corner of 8th Street and 7th Avenue SW all the way southeast. The 40 year old mother of five who only recently immigrated to Canada from the Philippines, settling first in Toronto, and then moving west, is Calgary's fourth homicide.

The details of Arcelie's life are familiar and too sad; hard working, great religious faith, and a belief that she was able to make a better life not only for herself here in Canada, but for her family. More familiar and much sadder is the threat that her death is about to used for political leverage by elected officials and the cadre of local big business owners and fodder for a local media that is routinely lazy and woefully unintelligent.

Tucked inside today's Calgary Herald, in Don Braid's column, is a rather lengthy piece that centers on the thoughts of George Brookman. Brookman is the president and the chairman of the Calgary Stampede as well as the owner of Western Canadian Graphics, where Arcelie held one her two jobs and where she left for home late last Thursday night. Mr. Brookman is upset, described and sad and furious, that one of his employees was victim of a senseless crime. I'm not about to question the validity of his feelings surrounding Arcelie's murder. But I am about to question his and Don Braid's overall response to this latest example of Calgary's ever growing social ills.

The column's headline is Death at C-Train shows city not so safe anymore. It details Mr. Brookman's contention, communicated in an email sent yesterday to Mr. Braid that "the "Western Values" I talk about at the Calgary Stampede do not mean much if our great city isn't safe for it's own citizens." I understand Mr. Brookman's sentiment, but what is confusing is his insistence that there are somehow "Western Values" at play here and more confusing is how the man has just recently noticed that not much at all is right about Calgary's continued demise.

What are values that would be thought of as Western? Is it a belief in the overriding religion of a free market that motivates a behavior largely marked by an apolitical selfishness where interest and participation in government at any level is nonexistent? Or is it an insistence that ignoring something, something like say rampant, uncontrollable crime or the erosion of community means it doesn't really exist? Or perhaps it is a contention that it is in the best interest for a society to be one where substance abuse is not only regarded as an inalienable right, but as something to be celebrated, because that too works as a means of distracting citizens from the more pressing, less understandable problems of the day.

Just now, with the tragic and preventable murder of Arcelie Laoagan, the citizens and politicians are realized that the city is not safe, that it has changed in ways so thorough and insidious they may be irreversible? Public transportation, in addition to be woefully ineffective, is at best at nervous ride, fraught with danger, small, big, real and imagined. From the moment I arrived back here, I noticed it seemed to operate more as a caravan of low-level criminals, dangerous drug addicts, and the homeless, all of whom seemed to utilize the easily abused system to move from one area of the city to the other. No security presence - ever - and means to contact security that often fails and falls well short of offering any reassurance. Both the trains themselves and the stations - not only in the downtown core, but throughout the line - are used as shelters, toilets, and a kind of open air drug market, apparent to everyone, but of interest to few.

Seriously, how great of an overall failure could be on display? The recent elections were regarded more as a curiosity - an opportunity for the public to be told over and over again how prosperous the city was and would continue to be and a chance for the local media to parse personality rather than force issues. Mayoral candidate international felon and slumlord Alnoor Kassam and the incumbent and eventual mayor elect Dave Bronconnier both ran campaigns that seemed stunningly out of touch with the reality of Calgary, preaching a kind of parable where everything was wonderful and well, we all are having the time of our life. Mr. Braid's column suggests that there are a number of people in Calgary who would like to see Mr. Brookman run for elected office - that a man of his passion and beliefs would be prescriptive for all that ails the city. I'm sure that it would, if only because it would contrast with the current roster, all of whom seem remarkable unaware and dreadfully apathetic, his ideas of western values notwithstanding.

Don't pay attention, whatever you do. Build bigger homes with bigger security systems in bigger communities with bigger fences surrounding them and when you do arrive home, draw the drapes and kick back and watch the follies of the hapless Calgary Flames. Keep smiling. Nothings wrong. Not one thing. Even it is - and that's unlikely - what would you care?