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Humbly yours,

Terre

In conversation with other people who look critically at the city, we have identified Urban Dead Zones (UDZ) as places that do fall seriously short in their potential as urban community areas. In particular, I think of the parking lot heavens of Charles St in almost it’s entirety, and Caroline as well. These places feel dangerous to women who avoid them at night, and are crazy for faster traffic. Other UDZ’s would be Duke St and Queen St  through the downtown with their commercial capacity completely dwindled.  Another type of UDZ would be the Waterloo Town Square that requires constant programming or major attraction such as a skating rink to maintain usage of the space.

I was very unimpressed by the choice to build the Charles St side of the new Charles and Benton garage not include street level store fronts, reinforcing Charles St as a continued UDZ.

The problem with UDZ is that they reinforce a continued feeling of emptiness in deeply urban spaces, reinforcing both a sense of danger for pedestrians both through not having feet on the streets, and they also tend to be worse for traffic with cars passing through large areas of parking lots, even though they are within the core, as though they were on country roads. Cyclist who have the misfortune of traveling down Caroline, even with the addition of bike lanes, often attest to the speed and grave concerns they have concerning the safety of the street.

UDZ’s also prevent vibrant community development. People avoid them for walking even if they provide a decent corridor for pedestrian and cycling transit.

Suburbs have similar, such as the ultra fast and scary for cyclists and pedestrians Fischer-Hallman or Ira Needles. Suburbs are so rampant with design and community issues that I won’t be touching them on this entry, or likely much ever in my blog (never mind much in person).

What is to be done? These spaces are already constructed and create a negative dynamic. Is there possibility for reclamations?

Charles and Benton UDZ

Parking lot across the street from....

...another parking lot.

Adults who follow pattern and process created by others to spawn things from instruction are not innovating and problem solving on the same level as a child does. This isn’t the learning of art, it is the learning of technique (not learning to become and artist, but learning to become a technician).

Kids’ creations are pure objects of problem solving and imagination. There is sometimes intention and concept in these, but the process is the creation of something out of what most of us would consider insignificant.

Our regional dialog and programming about the arts should perhaps take lessons from the specialists in lateral/divergent thinking: children.

Open Eclectic Studio is hosting an open call for art work that reflects divergent thinking. Click here for details.

However, my point isn’t about their merit. The grassroots need them. Maybe, perhaps now, they are starting to see how they need the grassroots as well (proof in opening The Studio, and more arrangement for local arts access to THEMUSEUM). As a unified and important arts and culture community the institutions and the grassroots artists need to truly collaborate. There is a symbiotic relationship that isn’t being exploited to its full extent and this relationship is perhaps the one that could save us all. I just have to look at Blue Dot that is organised by local artist, Ian Newton, and it’s wild, enormous, colourfully playful and KILLER COOL inter-arts display of marvel where he is lucky to cut even a small profit. He is pulling in an audience from here, Toronto, Montreal, New York, etc. for a single night show and we don’t enable him within this framework to do this on a more regular basis… and man… that show is really cool. Yet, here lies problems: no venue, or problems finding one. What? Really?

It should never be one or the other, but both. That is my main point.

When businesses, like Little Bean Cafe, Cafe Pyrus, Generation X Video all reach such a critical importance to the community, and the ones that serve as venues see non-stop energy, attraction, and vibrance, why aren’t we as a greater arts community not looking (grassroots and institutions alike) at why this exists in this framework and also harnessing it at our own levels. There has been a spirit of alienation from top to bottom, bottom to top, and across the board. Our community doesn’t identify with the institutions. They are not beloved by enough folk. I am not counting myself into that measure, because I love all these three, as well as the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery that saw its own financial turmoil last year, but I don’t represent the larger population of the region who are tired of hearing how yet another arts facility isn’t doing well.

Centre in the Square has asked for money for marketing for three major institutions. Please give it to them. These three hit the demographic, but we need to start driving audiences!

FUNDING. Again, we need funding. Centre in the Square may have to raise their rates which would be a shame, but funding needs to be placed entirely into all levels of the arts, and we need to start really working together…. and I mean really… with each other. The local arts scene is separated from the institutions. We have amazing innovation here at the ignorance of each other. These institutions need to deliver the big ticket products alongside developing a place in the hearts and minds of the region and inspiring the innovation that already exists. There is no arts development here. There is no fostering, no growing, no watering the seeds that have some how blown into this wasteland. As it is now, dancers, artists, musicians, and performers are more likely to hit stages and galleries in Toronto and Montreal long before they ever do here.  It’s from our cafes, to their stages and galleries, and pockets. I will say again, it need symbiosis.

“People will love a place when it’s part of their lives” – The Unknown Artist

Hey folks, don’t shoot the messenger here.

The practice of making craft requires the honing of skill in a particular medium. There is not doubt that there is great skill in the knitting of a cabled aran sweater or a a well sewn quilt or garment. A beautiful cake, or fine jewelry are not things without artfulness either, but it is where one weighs in more than the other. A cake can be a functional object, it can also be a sculpture. A piece jewelry can be more than something worn as an ornament for the body. Herein lies the difference: intent. Even an artful wedding cake is a crafted and methodical item made to be eaten. A wedding cake placed in a gallery as an exercise in watching the decomposition of a symbol of modern marriage is far more than just the crafting and eating of cake.

Add yet another dimension: There is craft in art, and there is art in craft. Great art is reinforced by the artist’s skill within their craft processes. A truly good sculpture requires that the artist has honed their skill within the craft of their particular medium. The art making process requires that the artist becomes specialist in the craft of their medium.  On the other side, a good craft item requires artfulness, and can be one of a kind. A well knitted aran sweater (to bring this example back) requires a fine skill in determine a certain aesthetic layout for the cables that are to be crafted to create the sweater. A beautiful and artful craft is more marketable. The difference is that the crafters intent is that their item is meant to be worn, ate from, eaten, or functional in some other way.

Another key difference between arts and crafts are the economic benefits to the creators. Craft will always have a market because its purpose is to be functional. Therefore if a craftwork is determined to be artful, skilled, and well designed, it will generate an income for the crafter. Art, however, is not created to be functional, necessarily. It is created as a tool of communication for ideas. This is a critical aspect in a cultural landscape and generate revenue, but not necessarily an income. Culinary arts, design, artisan crafts, and other craft oriented areas have a viable consumer product whereas art isn’t necessarily so. It doesn’t mean that one isn’t more or less economically important, just that the places where they drive the economy are not the same.

Examples:

Sue Sturdy knit a cover for the Main St bridge in Cambridge. Is this art or craft?

Janet Morton knit a 50ft toque. Is this art or craft?

A hand painted tea cup in ceramic. Is this art or craft?

Can you identify where this line is broken or becomes scattered even more? This discussion is really a slippery slope in our conforming definitions and elite arguments in what constitutes art. How the heck can a knitting be art… and yet it is.

There are still many many more differences. These are some main highlights and I bet you could identify more. This certainly isn’t an elitist argument, but just why one needs funding over another.

Truth is, when it comes to contemporary art, people aren’t as interested or engaged in exploring the meanings in this city. How do we, as a community of artists from all disciplines, start to engage our audiences? In a city that continues to market itself as a traditional German culture city, where is there room for the truth of who we actually are or what we really do especially to the more suburban of our region? Keep in mind that thousands of these more suburban people will in fact jump in their cars and drive to Toronto for Nuit Blanche. Where are we going wrong?

When you break it down, Waterloo Region, and downtown Kitchener especially has shifted dramatically away from its German roots. One just needs to look around and open their ears to see and hear the diversity of voices that make our region (and make our region strong). The development of this city has also moved us beyond a collection of landscape painters (the city made famous by Homer Watson), quilters, and craftspersons and has seen a major rise in contemporary arts. These exist across the board from several avant guard installation artists, an enormous interest in movement and contemporary performance, abstract painters, and sound, noise and contemporary musicians all seeing rise out of this community. It has been a birth place for major creative innovation in art. So where is there room for the continued fashioning as a traditional small town with the emphasis on primarily ancient Germanic culture? I used to chuckle with some of my young German friends that even the most remote Bavarian cities focus more on the cultural development into the contemporary than this city that celebrates traditional Bavarian roots. Berlin is one of the avant guard capitals of the world.

Funny how our focus in innovation still only stays with the technological aspects of the city, as well as our major city sponsored festivals all focusing on the more traditional forms of entertainment especially when the grass roots culture industry is in direct opposition ideologically, much like our tech industries, with a focus on innovation and growth.

So again, where are we going wrong? We have three major festivals focusing on the three major branches of the arts, several institutions and more artists than most could even imagine living, working, struggling, and ultimately moving away. The institutions have almost all seen major crises in funding and staffing in the last few years yet innovation and growth still somehow continues. Where are our audiences?

One only has to glance at many of the regional arts websites that are meant to serve as portals (Cultureblast.ca, explorewaterlooregion.com, artsportalwr.ca) to see how they reflect very traditional tourism based culture industry and in no way are useful to the innovative, exciting and new things happening in this city, or they are just unaesthetic, and some are even outright dysfunctional and broken.

Problems in the arts

1. Marketing – we are not traditional and the marketing focused on mennonite, agriculture and the pastoral are not reflective of the exciting innovation in our contemporary practices across the board. This exists at the highest level of the city government to how we position the region from a tourism point of view. It’s not working anymore. Oktoberfest is fun, but it isn’t drawing the market it used to.
2. Marketing- many of our local artists have been in Nuit Blanche or similarly large festivals. Some have even toured the world. Why isn’t the region aware of its regional talent?
3. Marketing- Several organisation and institutions need to change their communication focus to make art accessible to the masses. It’s the masses that pay taxes and attend festivals, openings, and shows, thereby generating attention and much needed finances for regional arts. These organisation and institutions need to keep their high quality, and not “dumb down” but establish a productive and educational dialog that is accessible.
4. Consistency- Art programming goes from high art to low art. When cake decorating is taught in galleries, and yet we struggle to be taken as serious practioners of art, there must be some disconnect. The problem isn’t cake decorating but what kind of dialog are we setting up about the arts? Why is the focus on craft and entry level art in a city where we have enormous innovation in arts and technology?
5. Why aren’t we pairing artists with hubs? The innovative art here matches the innovations in the tech industry. We are seriously losing an opportunity to create a real and unique vibrant arts scene. What a shame.
6. Artists as educators- Institutions hiring people with degrees in education as opposed to visual artists to teach art. Why not offer cutting edge programming taught by a famous regional/Canadian artist? Instead of cake decorating, why aren’t we teaching installation work? Why aren’t we teaching contemporary drawing? How about contemporary dance? Where is our movement theatre training?
7. There is no work for artists in this community other than the banal. Why would they stay and create a vibrant arts scene in a location where rent is high, studios are dirty, dangerous, and scarce, and there is no capacity to earn a wage? Well, they aren’t staying thus the C grade in the Vital Signs report.
8. No space- there are so few affordable safe studios. Again, why aren’t we pairing artists with hubs?
9. Art as exclusion- if art is only for the most educated and the elite, we are missing out on almost the entire regional population. Organisations need to focus on how to communicate with the larger population without alienating them.
10. Funding for grass roots collective- money from large organisations are not trickling to the regional artists and culture workers. Artists cannot earn a wage in the arts in this region. There is no capacity for work here and artists are disempowered from even basic living.

So, here is my question to you: How do we transcend these and develop a vibrant contemporary arts scene?

“

I have two problems with this article.

First:

This may be a case of bystander effect, somewhat. However, I can tell you from living in a noisy neighbourhood now, and having lived in even noisier ones previously (Uptown Waterloo, Metro Toronto, and so on) that you often hear noises that sound like calls for help or like fights, and they almost never are. Even so, if you live in a circumstance where you know that someone is being cared for who may be prone to calling out, or night terrors, or using various vocalisations, your assumption lies in that very thing. I have even been witness to loud and raucous verbal battles that I haven’t called in as domestic disputes because these things do happen, and police support is rarely needed when a couple just needs to have loud words. (Some people sulk, some people fight loudly… heck some people sound like they are being murdered when they are having sex.) So first and foremost, let me be the advocate on behalf of the neighbours in what could be a noisy part of a city, who also live near a woman known to have dementia. Blaming neighbours in this case and in this way is reactionary and doesn’t really look at where the problems in such a neighbourhood, or even in our broader society, really do lie.

People with dementia have difficult times. I cannot imagine the turmoil they experience with their slides in and out of lucidity. I know the difficulty of being a person who is around people suffering from degenerative conditions, and how difficult it is to make choices, or to assist a loved one in even the most basic parts of living. Families and support people of those who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s truly need the weight of a community behind them as they care for their declining loved ones. Even more than community support though (as in this instance which is truly tragic) they need structural support. Not every one will move a loved one into a home. There are so many reasons for this. Elderly who move into care are often separated, and after years of sleeping in a bed together, this is traumatic. Also, in this particular case, this woman was 66. It is safe to assume her husband was of similar age, making him very able to care for her at home. Whatever the reason, she was at home, and should have been safe there.

So why wasn’t she?

He isn’t to blame. There are so many reasons to care for a loved one at home and one of the biggest aside from the obviously romantic ones (knowing your loved one, and wanting to care for them and be around them) is financial. Homes that aren’t state care cost lots of money, and state care is known to be in many cases sub-standard. I will not get too far into that point. Often it is due to lack of funding, lack of resources. People are crammed into wards, and someone at the age of 66 could spend 30 years in a ward shared with 5 others. Even if nursing is superb, combine poor resources, cramped conditions, understaffing (yes, nurses have been cut to the bone), and you get circumstances that if you possibly can, you avoid for your loved one… but only if you can afford to do so.

Brimley and McNichol isn’t known for its wealth. It is busy, poor, and scary. The neighbours claimed they didn’t want to get involved out of fear. That would be the ones that they interviewed. Some likely didn’t get involved because they hear noise all the time. People who live in Uptown Waterloo who hear women screaming likely think nothing of it either (and frankly, I certainly didn’t when I lived there). Spare me the “poor people are immoral” rhetoric. In fact, poor communities that are healthy communities are more likely to be true communities (cooperative housing, rural communities, urban communities) than are suburbs with their unaesthetic garage fortresses surrounded by 6 foot tall “KEEP OUT” fences.

So where should blame be placed? We have a man who likely isn’t aged, taking care of his wife, who isn’t aged, in a poor neighbourhood. Safe to assume he is poor too. This leads me to my second point:

For the cost of a used iPhone 3, or a Nintendo DS, or a good cooking pot, or a dinner out, this man could have had proximity sensors installed in his home. Alzheimer’s and dementia patients are known to wander off and in Germany they have even placed fake bus stops to confuse patients into waiting for a bus that will never arrive, only to be encouraged back into the facility. Why are we living in a country where we have the most resources in the entire world, one of the strongest economies (stronger than Germany’s), and are one of the most wasteful, yet we can’t afford to care for our elderly folk?  Our population is aging fast. We have a  reverse population bubble where older people now outnumber the younger, and if a 66 year old woman (that is really not old) is dying in the cold because of a system that could cost under 100 dollars can’t be installed in her home (the bill for the public institution would extravagantly outnumber that figure) to save her life, we are going to be in real trouble in the coming 15 years. Access to technology, especially one that could spare this kind of tragedy, and one that is so utterly cheap, should be a given in the strongest  economy in the world.

People who care for their loved ones at home are saints. They get very little help in the way of nursing support (again, this is something that should have never been cut, and I am certainly not making a comment on the excellence of nursing care), and very little financial assistance despite the fact that they defer hundreds of thousands of dollars of spending on full, out of home care. They are also often isolated, and decline financially and in health due to the pressures. From a “bleeding heart liberal” perspective, this is awful, but it is also just plain stupid from an economic perspective, especially in a rapidly aging population.

Another institution in Germany uses cutting edge research to care for their patients, creating a wonderful place to live instead of what often looks like the torturous life of a person suffering this degenerative conditions. I am dismayed at the condition of things here. I look at my aging parents, knowing full well that I will never be able to support them, and knowing that despite their long years of labour, that their hard earned monies are more likely to land in the hands of a greedy corporation in the form of welfare or a spendthrift government, I get angry. The US economy failed and their society is failing. Why are we insisting on matching theirs instead of looking for progressive solutions from countries that are succeeding – like Germany, and Sweden.

If this woman freezing to death makes you angry, instead of taking it out on her poor, scared, and equally badly off neighbours, get ready for more of it.  We have cut our healthcare to the bone, and we are about to start feeling it.

• Jamie Grant kicked off with a short welcome done by video as he was engaged at an event in Toronto. It is always lovely to hear his kind words. He also introduced and welcomed Genevieve Twomey as the new chair for the Alliance.
• There was a short video of 15 local arts and culture workers answering the question “What’s great about arts, culture, and heritage in Waterloo Region?” This feature was a lovely and positive way to start the night.
• There were 53 invited, but the announced headcount was 96 in attendance. Arts and culture are obviously on the public agenda.

We moved on to discussion. It was set up in conversation cafe style, which is a good way to start discussion. The questions were:

1. What’s great about arts, culture, and heritage in Waterloo Region?
2. Waterloo Region is evolving rapidly. What does your Waterloo Region look like in 2020 and beyond?
3. What could we do individually and collectively to promote what is great about arts, culture and heritage in Waterloo Region?

First thing: this was set up to be a celebration of arts and culture in the region. This was a lovely thought but not at all what the arts and culture workers had on their minds. Over the several tables where I sat, and in debriefing sessions afterwards, I found out that the false positive structure of the questions was subverted to instead talk about things that affect our ability to grow and develop as workers in the region. No one wanted to celebrate our almost failing C grade from the Vital Signs report.
Some issues identified:

• no space for work, no affordable circumstances for producing work. Studios, venues, and even housing is out of price and increasingly so, as well as disappearing through gentrification. Artists move to Toronto and other communities. Little difference in price, more possibilities.
• regional non inclusion of all cities. Roger Farwell brought up at my table the uselessness of the elitism of the different cities in the region and how we need to view ourselves more holistically. Put behind the old divisions.
• many untapped markets here. Should not compete with Stratford or other festival cities, and don’t have to. We have our own scene.
• the product exists, it’s really great, but we are not pulling audiences. Why?
• a city that develops excellent avant-guard work, featuring three major festivals focused on contemporary art and yet a city government that continues to frame itself as traditional.
• little support from City and Region for arts, culture, and development thereof, especially in the grassroots development
• elitism and exclusion in the arts community itself. There is a spirit of collaboration, but it doesn’t extend into the structure. There is little to no support for emerging local visual artists. Some for performance due to outstanding grassroots, but larger organisations, and some for music. Gatekeepers are stopping development. Snobbery forces exclusion of the masses. Art isn’t accessible.
• monies not accessible to grassroots or individual artists. If not in a large organisation, starting is almost impossible.
• snobbery in art makes it inaccessible to audience, even if the rest is fine. Art still semantically phrased as something for the elite. IE: most of Kitchener will not recognise our own world class festivals by name, yet all know Nuit Blanche.
• no accessible workshops, dialog, information about arts in the region
• little to no focus on regional art within region. Several Canadian and world class artists can’t get a stage, a gallery or even a news feature for their success – again, no spaces, and no dialog. No wondering we are failing.

Solutions were presented:

• free grass roots art events, better advertising for major events and have a critical mass of art happening at these events
• more educational development, and workshops
• festivals collaborating for critical mass of audience (is happening this year!)
• grassroots collaborations
• focus on inclusion instead of exclusion
• change granting process to allow for development grants or operational grants for artists
• focus on arts residency programs with technology, corporate hubs – defeat the hyperreal – instead of displaying work in a space, why not just let the artist work there for a year? No payment, just space within your corporation as a residency. How avant guard!
• theoretical think tanks like the PI but for the arts
• start working with more digital online web advertising and interactive websites – hubs and centre points for artists as well as audiences
• develop resources for new artist such as free web pages through existing channels, or even better access to information
• develop and advertising alliance with organizations, collectives and art galleries to have a page with an events calendar

Ultimately, as usual, the community came out in grand force in a loud voice.
Dear Alliance for a Grand Community,
You asked us what we thought was great about arts, culture and heritage in Waterloo Region. Maybe we didn’t all follow in the positive suggestion of the questions asked, and maybe we didn’t pat ourselves on the back for our hard, thankless, low paying work that keeps our city from turning grey, but what we did do is really prove what is great about arts and culture here:

• We came together in HUGE number – way larger than expected
• We shared ideas
• We worked hard
• We examined critically and sought to solve problems
• We collaborated
• We thought creatively, and expressed openly
• We subverted the evening and made avant guard suggestions
• We played together enthusiastically
• We created a scene within our own community that drove a great conversation, establishing new allies, new ideas, new innovations, new interest, deeper understandings…

That is what makes is great. That is what drives us to labour and continue and push harder and harder despite the road blocks and frustrations. Thank you, Alliance for a Grand Community.
Now I challenge you, as a structure: we grassroots folk are the lifeblood, we are the ones who will ultimately lead this city, and drive your audiences. Centre in the Square is opening The Studio. THEMUSEUM is pushing for more involvement. Many of the large institutions are seeing where they can tap into new areas. Why don’t you take a serious look at us tireless workers, us tireless creators and innovators, and see what talent you have here?

I tried to be hopeful and wrote a bitter-sweet blog about it. I tried to detail a bit about how people only think of art in the abstract, and how frustrating that can be for those of us who work even in the most abstract of worlds. I then got a response from another attendee which I published in another blog entry. Arguably, the only beneficial thing to both me and that letter writer (two very active participants in the process of these “unconferences”) is that we founded a studio together. Mostly, I saw just a lot of talk, very little action, and a lot of self-aggrandising. I see now a condition where the arts are becoming more difficult with more organisations in trouble and yet art still transforming this city into something much better. Even the rich will leave if your city is boring. All those Google, Communitech, RIM, and startup folk need to be entertained, and artists at a point very near in the future won’t be able to afford to live and work in this community. The organisations are also struggling. The rent is sky-rocketing, and space is disappearing. Those Google, Communitech, Manulife, Rogers, and RIM folk are going to spend their money somewhere, and we are creating the condition to force them to Toronto, Stratford, and the other many cities that have vibrant arts. It certainly isn’t the fault of the Google, Communitech, Manulife, etc, folk who are bored here, so where is our city falling behind? Talk about bad economics. People earn money here to spend anywhere but here.

Harsh eh? I wish I was being anything but honest.

Culture is made daily, and art has to be at the forefront of public discourse all the time, not because “it is the right thing” or even for any ethically based or sympathetic argument, but because it is art that makes the difficulties of urban living something more than a grey wasteland. There is a reason why only seniors and boring folk live in quiet places and people flock to art places to spend their money, and be entertained (seniors and boring folk included). Really, I hate talking turkey, but artists and culture workers get paid shit (or nothing at all) for making cities into the grand places they are. Artists barely feed themselves, never mind the families they may have whilst they create the city people want to live in.

We are at a cusp. The city is poised to strike and really create a vibrant scene. The three major festivals are culminating, teaming up, staying unique, but working together to cause critical mass. Artists are pushing harder than ever. Empty spaces in the most rat infested shit hole post-industrial buildings are teeming with people working hard just to be able to work. Guess what… those studios represent fewer empty rat infested shit holes in general. Studios are filling these spaces, making vibrant commerce and innovation out of nothing. Those studios drive a whole sector of the economy, never mind the knock on (HUGE) effect they have. I am no fan of Richard Florida, but a simple read of his books describes how arts regenerate even the worst urban areas, and keep them vibrant. Even better is Jane Jacobs. Now even these studios are being driven to the brink with large urban gentrification. Both Florida and Jacobs warn of this condition. Welcome to it, Kitchener. Big companies buy these places to mimic the “cool” created by artists. They even put arts display spaces in the places that used to be art creation spaces that are accessible only to their closed corporate communities. How hyperreal. Even still, their employees’ pocket monies for entertainment is more likely to go to Stratford, or Toronto. They catch shows, go to restaurants, drink in lounges, check out art, shop all day in kitschy stores, stay in hotels, go to galleries and museums, spend hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in a single weekend as individuals, and we as an urban community, renovated but still grey and hardly bustling, lose.

We are reaching a point of untenability without even hitting a stride. Kitchener is hardly known for its scene yet, unlike Hamilton, or Toronto, or Montreal, or even Windsor, and the artists and culture workers are already hitting major walls.

It is with apprehension that I walk into this “rally” tomorrow. I see everyone from the “cool” folk, to the twitterati, to artists, to culture workers, to organisations on the list. My only hope is that this will be different from the many other meetings. My hope exists because it is the The Alliance for a Grand Community organising this particular conversation.

I love this city. Gosh, I love this city. I moved here for its burning below the surface vibrance. I chose it deliberately from a potentially infinite list. I hate that as a culture worker, a writer, an artist, that I feel under the gun every time we all get pulled together into one room. I swear that if I have to explain the importance of theoretical art (art that can’t be bought and hung on your living room wall) to one more accountant or some other person who’s only place in arts and culture is strictly as a blind consumer, I am going to go through the roof. Tell you what, dear accountant who doesn’t get it: you deal with the numbers we make for you from our dealings with hearts and minds (and pockets… with additional knock on effects on pockets spilling into other markets). No one will hang your ledger on a wall either.

“When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.” -Jane Jacobs
“Even the rich will leave… the rich will leave first. They’re the most mobile.” -Jonathan Bezeau

“If I were a woman especially, I would be terrified” – I overheard this as an elderly gentleman was being interviewed on the Iron Horse trail today by 570 News. If you didn’t hear, late on New Years Eve, a local man and his son were walking down the Iron Horse when they entered into an argument, and the elder of the two was stabbed. Yes. Murdered.  So why can I saunter down this path at a comfortable stroll on my regular commute without shaking in my boots?

Let me first start this off by saying that this is a great tragedy and my blog post about this has nothing to do with the devastation that faces the family and friends of this man. I also think that this needs to be investigated in all due order, and justice be served in whatever form that may be. This isn’t an argument about the justice system but more about how fear mongering does none of us any good.

I travel the Iron Horse trail over a thousand times per year. This is a major commuter highway for those of us who choose not to drive. It is also a great spot for exercise or a casual stroll. During the day, the trail is a non-stop stream of folk travelling from point to point or out just having a walk. On the fourth of January, I counted 3 different types of finches, chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, and even a woodpecker. I also counted far fewer commuters, strollers and exercising folk than I have ever seen on this trail. The police have already nabbed two youths (this merits another discussion) who have been charged with the crime.

Now here lies my real concern. A murder on the Iron Horse is truly a rare thing. I will not be fearful to walk there because of a rare crime. It is a heinous crime, but violent crime is not a usual occurrence. What does make me fearful is the desertion of urban places. The reason why this urban trail has been safe for so long because many feet make safe streets. Busy places are far less crime ridden. This horrible attack occurred late at night on a deserted, dark trail. One item of interest: even hardly travelled streets have lights. The Iron Horse is very dark, despite it being a very busy trail – and it is busy 24hrs per day. One thing I can tell you is that I never travel this trail by myself at night, even though it is busy. This being said, lights don’t prevent crime. Nor do they address the root causes of crime. Maybe we need to look deeper than just let fear get to us.

Some residence and the mayor chime in on Iron Horse Trail safety in The Record.

What are your thoughts?

A great resource on crime, its causes and what can be done: Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council. This is an important agency. I recommend having a good look at their website, and think rationally, rather than reactionary about what has happened.

The Iron Horse Trail - quiet

Police searching the river for evidence