On a recent trip to Victoria, I was walking along the seawall of the outer harbour enjoying the sights – float planes landing and taking off to Seattle or Vancouver, water taxis, whale watching boats, pleasure cruisers, the Seattle passenger ferry. Glorious day, sun shining, water sparkling, stateside mountains in the distance. I passed quite a few people on that pathway – dog walkers, joggers, strollers and it didn’t take long for me to notice something very strange about all these people.
No one made eye contact, no one talked to anyone. At all.
So what is strange about that? Well here in small town British Columbia if you were to walk a similar route along our beach, or anywhere else for that matter in our town, people are always making eye contact, always saying hello, and sometimes even stopping to chat with total strangers. Admiring a pet dog often leads to hearing their entire life’s story. It’s a very noticeable difference to street life in the city. Which makes sense I guess – in the city if you were to say hello to everyone you passed as is the norm in small town, you would be exhausted by the end of the block and perhaps even arrested. Different world.
However there are people who do speak to you on the city streets.
I remember talking to a Kiwi friend when I was in Manila who had recently been on vacation in Victoria. When I asked her how it went, her face clouded up a bit and she said that she had been shocked at how many homeless, street people there had been there. What a first-up memory that is! Of all things to make an impression and I must say I felt somewhat ashamed on behalf of this True North strong and free. But it’s true. Downtown Victoria is not very big and the street population IS very obvious, which says I don’t know what about our society. Where we stay over in Vancouver, the West End neighbourhood is the same, lots of street people.
And some of them do talk to you as you pass by – asking for “spare change”. For a long time this bothered me. Default reaction is just walk by, don’t make eye contact, ignore them. Even if it does occur to pass along any spare change, the awkward logistics of stopping and digging around in a purse just don’t work. So, the whole experience gets framed as “what pests these people are”, “you can’t walk a block without getting ‘harassed'”,”how dare they ‘bother me'”, “they’re just going to buy drugs”, “why don’t they go somewhere else” or the worst of all “why don’t they get a JOB”. That kind of thing. Every time I did walk on by, ignoring someone who was talking to me, I felt bad, at least till the end of the block. It made me uncomfortable, it made me feel rude, it upset my peace of mind, and all in all it interfered with my enjoyment of walking the city streets.
Until I found the answer. For me.
“The problem is all inside your head” I said to me. Time for an attitude adjustment. So now, before I go out on my big city walk, I put a bunch of loonies and toonies in an easily accessible pocket, and whenever anyone asks me directly for spare change, I’ll stop for a second, make the eye contact, nod or say hello, and give it to them. Do I have spare change? Of course I do. And when you look in someone’s eyes, they are no longer strange. I continue on my way, forget it in a couple of steps, my mood is no longer negatively affected, everyone is “happy”. No need to make a decision with each encounter, just give the (usually, not always) man a buck, who cares what he wants it for, no need to think about it at all (except of course, to ponder the much more important question of why we have homeless in our hugely wealthy country, which is a post (not) for another day). 
We’re off soon for another big city hit in Vancouver – me with a pocket full of change.
P.S. The federal election draws near – dear me, who shall I vote for? Should it be our current Prime Minister’s conservative party, salivating over the prospect of a 3rd 4th term? The same Prime Minister who just last week said, and I quote, “Marijuana is infinitely worse than tobacco”. Fucking moron. And a liar to boot.
Cartoon Michael de Adder