I just finished reading the
macleans article that said north central Regina was Canada's worst neighbourhood and found nothing about it surprising.
I have seen people scouring garbage dumps, abandoned houses, basements of burned down houses, and even stealing old appliances from the curb to scavenge copper wires to melt down and sell to presumably finance drug or alcohol addictions. I've witnessed a former friends aunt pay the village drunk 24 beers to babysit her small children while she went to party. I caught people using syringes in the bathroom of a bar to shoot up drugs, and heard them trying to convince another person to get them more syringes from the veterinarian because the local pharmacist wouldn't sell them to them anymore. While having drinks in the bar one night with some friends, a group of men were showing off their
M-16 that they kept in their vehicle in the parking lot, and an aquaintance had a gun pulled on him while checking cattle in a pasture that his employer rented on a near by indian reserve.
When I was a little kid my parents owned a liquor store. It seemed like almost every weekend the store was broken into and liquor, and cigarettes were stolen. On more than one occasion my dad, and other local men gave chase to the perpetrators because of the slow reaction time of the RCMP, once resulting in a rollover on the end of main street. On one occasion one of the men that broke in cut himself on the broken window and got his blood all over the place, including merchandise. We learned later that the person in question was HIV positive.
All the incidents I describe above didn't take place in Regina, or Saskatoon or any other city for that matter. They took place in three small Saskatchewan towns within close proximity of each other, with a total population of less than 1200 peoople.
I've walked alone at night in obvious cities like Saskatoon, and Edmonton, but also larger cities like Honolulu Hawaii, Madrid Spain, and Monterrey Mexico, but you would never catch me walking alone at night, or day for that matter in certain parts of Regina.
If all the things listed above that I have witnessed first hand, and many more disturbing, and outrageous things which I have heard of second hand and didn't repeat here can happen in communities with such a small population, why is it so hard for some people to believe that north central Regina could be considered Canada's worst neighbourhood ?
Labels: abernethy, balcarres, Regina, Saskatchewan
