Sunday 8 July 2012

memoir writers homework/a hated place

It was 1979 when I first came to the most hated place I can think of.I have no idea why I would come back again in 2012 for a third kick at the cat.Oh,yes,there is plenty of work here,it's a boom town,just like it was the first time around.Money grows on trees,or at least on the kind of trees that go to make news print for the classified ads.I'm not sure I ever really believed that money grew on trees anyway.

But just because there is work is not to say that Calgary offers a decent lifestyle,with all respect to those who like it here.I don't!

This town just sucks a person dry.Sure you can make money,but the city takes away as much as it gives.Boom town economy brings boom town prices.It's hard to find housing at any price and even a lot of the working people are homeless.For $500/month you can sometimes rent a room roughly the size of a broom closet.And you have to put up with things a person should never have to put up with.Crackheads living in the next room and leaving their needles all over the place,or knocking on your door at 3am to see if you have anything to sell.I never have been involved in that kind of enterprise,but try telling a crackhead that,or that you have to be up at 5am to go to an honest job.And there is no point calling the police here in Calgary when you have bad neighbors.You see,most of the affordable suites are illegal in terms of zoning laws so there is a danger of becoming instantly homeless.Or,more likely the police will just say you consent to being mistreated by virtue of living in an illegal suite.Unless you get very seriously assaulted,the police could not be bothered.There is no shortage of police cars to hide in the bushes though so as to capitalize on the flow of money with speed traps.

Food is another thing.In Toronto I could actually afford food.I could purchase anything I wanted in good quality with a far better selection than I ever could here.The same goes for clothing.All part of the rat race I guess.People running about to get nowhere,never realizing they are slaves to a system.

Then there are the people who say"if you don't like it here why don't you leave"That's long been a prevailing attitude here.I'm here to help fill at least one of those jobs that you say can't be filled because of a shortage of workers.But as sure as the oil prices could drop like a stone again,sometime at least,these people would be talking about firewalls against the rest of Canada and offering anyone not from here a bus ticket home.Calgary is not a welcoming city.I have some very dear friends here,whom I dearly love.But that is in spite of the way this city really is.I will always,along with many like me be perceived as"that eastern trash that brings crime and social problems to Alberta"It may be thirty years since our former premier said that,but it's impossible to live here and not know that many Albertans still feel it.So,as I look to the blue mountains only sixty or so miles away,I wonder why I don't just start walking into them.Maybe someday I will.Calgary is a place to work but not a place to live.

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