If find it appalling if the city is even remotely considering taking action against convenience store owners who opened their doors in the days following last Friday’s enormous blizzard.
As someone who had run out of vital supplies, let me tell you of the poor people who were in many of those lineups.
Not everyone in this city has money to cram their shelves with enough food to last several days. Some are barely surviving on paltry wages, feeble government assistance, old age pensions and outright poverty.
So, they had to somehow come up with a few dollars to replace the canned beans, Kraft Dinner, and other poverty foods that they and their families had gone through (snow-shovelling turned out to be a godsend for many).
Seeing the lineups at these stores on Sunday reminded me of the scenes from the Second World War, and the gas shortages in the U.S in the ’70s.
Not everyone in this city has money to cram their shelves with enough food to last several days. Some are barely surviving on paltry wages, feeble government assistance, old age pensions and outright poverty.
And yet, here was the city sending in police to disperse those who were in desperate need.
In particular, the power holders seemed to focus on one of the poorest sectors of the city. Officers were dispatched to get rid of people who were calmly and peacefully lined up to get into a tiny shop on St. Clare Avenue. Worse, the mayor comes on TV to tell the frail and elderly owner that she might be fined $5,000 for serving her customers in the way she has served them most of her life: with grace, kindness, and understanding.
St. John’s council has been on a gluttonous feed of expansion for many, many years.
Some questions for you: how many pieces of equipment — and staff to run them — did the city have 10 years ago?
How many now?
Why hasn’t the city had sense enough to create several subdepots? (In the meantime, is it really true that a snowblower working in the east end must traipse all the way back to our only depot in order to gas up? Please tell me that’s not true, that city vehicles can gas up at local service stations.)
The people of this city have endured relentless assaults on their streets (the Empire Avenue/Allandale Road years-long project), and local construction companies have been given free reign with this infuriating scratch ’n’ patch approach to street repair.
I would caution council to resist any power trip that seemed to be evolving during the emergency period. People will not stand for punishing these convenience store owners who provided help to those who were in desperate need.
I believe that if the city persists with this callous, low-minded approach, there will be consequences — politically and socially — for each and every councillor.
Bob Woolridge
St. John’s
