forums
new posts
donate
UER Store
events
location db
db map
search
members
faq
terms of service
privacy policy
register
login




 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21-40 41-60 61-80 81-100 101-120 121-140 141-160 161-180 181-200 201-203  
UER Forum > Canada: Alberta / BC > Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. (Viewed 1883571 times)
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 100 on 8/9/2005 8:32 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
Getting through solid rock in those days meant drilling the holes for the explosives by hand, (single or double jacking using sledgehammers and drill steels), loading then setting off the charges. How could a network of tunnels be built just under the city without everyone knowing about it? And with Victoria being the colonial, then provincial capital, where the Department of Mines (with all of its inspectors, technicians), Police headquarters and a myriad of Provincial officials lived and worked, do you really think that this vaunted web of subterranean homesteads could be created without being noticed, and/or stopped? Doesn't this seem just a tad farfetched? All these rumours just make me wonder: isn't "real" history interesting enough? Why do people seemingly always embellish and exaggerate? A few storm and sewer drains built from brick in the 1890s aren't interesting enough - so now we've got underground graveyards, catacombs, tunnels, even homes?


Apartment-like dwellings. Not homes.

True enough...it all seems very farfetched. And exceedingly difficult.

However, these stories have been around for about 100 years. They have historical significance in and of themselves. They are part of Victoria's collective historical narrative.

There are living eye-witnesses to some of these places. They were city engineers during the 50's and 60's, back when the city was a decaying relic of colonialism. They have been inside these places.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 101 on 8/9/2005 8:36 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
All these rumours just make me wonder: isn't "real" history interesting enough? Why do people seemingly always embellish and exaggerate?


History is nothing if not embellished and exaggerated.




"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
Jester 


Location: Vancouver,B.C. Canada
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 21 likes


Always just out of sight...

 |  |  | Wraiths
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 102 on 8/9/2005 9:58 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
They dug the tunnels through solid rock with spoons. I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who knows a person that knew someone froma family that knew about it, and had talked to a guy who's grandfather had known a guy who's father did it.





It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 103 on 8/10/2005 12:21 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by Jester
They dug the tunnels through solid rock with spoons. I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who knows a person that knew someone from a family that knew about it, and had talked to a guy who's grandfather had known a guy who's father did it.




Well...not quite. It was a flattened tin can. And it was his great aunt's son's friend's cousin's kid brother who told me that it was in fact his grandfather's brother's son's wife's sister's husband's brother and his two boys, Clyde and Sam, who did the actual digging. And a dog named Butch hauled out the debris on a sled.

Sam was killed when a mule kicked him in the head, and Clyde never got over it. He stopped digging soon after they buried Sam. That spot is at the end of the last tunnel they dug.

With the flattened tin can.

Butch got run over by a fire engine that was on it's way to rescue the great aunt's cat, Britches, who was stuck in a tree planted by Clyde and Sam's father and his business partner, Mr. Stoogle, who was a miner from San Francisco...and it was HIM and HIM alone (Stoogle) who commissioned the whole tunnel thing in the first place.

The flattened tin can is now in some private collection, along with a bunch of Free Mason stuff that was discovered buried under an old church that was built on ancient sacred burial ground.

Butch was buried in an apple orchard.




"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 104 on 8/23/2005 12:27 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
I met an elderly woman who lives in a trailer on her son's property just outside Victoria.

She told me that when she was a little girl, she and her older brother (now deceased) used to play in what she described as a "long underground passage that had brick walls and 4x4 beams supporting a slat-board ceiling." There were old lamps dangling overhead, but they didn't work.

She said that the passageway led to a larger room, and inside that were a heavy wooden table carved with ornate figures that she said reminded her of dragons and snakes. Besides the table, she said there was a large stone bowl "that must have weighed a ton." It was stained inside, and she thought it might have been rust "or something dark." The bowl was in front of the table and in one corner of this room, there had been a pile of charcoal from a wood fire.

She said 'had been,' because on the last time she visited this place, it was no longer there. It was as though "someone had come in after us and cleaned the place up."

She said that her brother had become so agitated that he instructed her to "never come back here again," and she didn't.

When I asked her where that place was, she pointed up the street (Quadra/Broughton) to where the old cemetary is, and said that the hole where they slipped in had been covered. There's a building there now, but she remembers exactly the spot where they entered.




[last edit 8/23/2005 4:53 PM by KublaKhan - edited 1 times]

"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 105 on 8/23/2005 3:13 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
My point wasn't dealt with - solid rock can't be tunneled through without using explosives - and you can't blast just beneath a city without alerting a whole lot of people to what you're doing. If it was done, it would have been noticed, documented, and most probably, stopped. It wasn't noticed, it wasn't documented, and it wasn't stopped - because it didn't happen. I'll ask again - how do you think that this tunnelling occurred without anyone noticing?

I don't think that history is "nothing if not embellished and exaggerated. Well done history is verifiable, referenced and checkable - all history is presented from a particular perspective, it is always biased to some extent, but "good" history sticks to territory that is based on verifiable evidence/sources. The kind of history you're talking about is nothing more than fantastic conjecture.

Ethographic research - the old lady who remembers the secret catacombs with the bloodstained bowl and the pagan statues - can be useful, and valid - but it must be assessed, analyzed and weighed for its potential merits and shortcomings. Eyewitnesses are moderately reliable at best - children are the most imaginative witnesses going, and add to that the effects of six or seven decades of time that has passed (the tendency to romanticize the past, forget certain things and invent others) - and just how much credence do you place in a story like that? Find documentation, or pictures or anything to support what she told you. Find five or ten more people who can back her story up (with details -not just more stories vaguely describing tunnels or rooms, etc.) - independently of course - and you might have a case. How about the meth head homeless guy who'd sell his own mother for another hit - how trustworthy is his testimony about the Janion Hotel?


Where are the living eye-witnesses that were city engineers that saw these things? Produce them if they exist. How come their stories haven't been published anywhere?



[last edit 8/23/2005 3:16 AM by anvil - edited 2 times]

KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 106 on 8/23/2005 5:37 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil


I don't think that history is "nothing if not embellished and exaggerated.

- the old lady who remembers the secret catacombs with the bloodstained bowl and the pagan statues -



Precisely my point here.

Nowhere did I mention anything about a 'bloodstained bowl and the pagan statues.'

Thank you for illustrating my point so eloquently.






"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 107 on 8/23/2005 5:06 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
My point wasn't dealt with - solid rock can't be tunneled through without using explosives


True enough. But there are a bunch of very large structures at the opposite end of the globe...Egypt, I think...that are made of stone. Large, massive, huge, giant blocks of stone...BLOCKS, for Christ's sake...that were extracted and then moved and then stacked etc. etc....maybe you've heard of them...and that, unless they (blocks) came fully formed from the ground, then they must have been formed by hand.

Now, I don't know much about Egyptology, but I'm pretty sure they didn't have explosives when these things were being built.

Or maybe they did. Maybe the Aliens gave them dynamite with the blue prints.

There are other places on this little blue dot of ours. Places that were carved into mountains (apparently by hand, unless they used dynamite) that are ancient structures...ancient meaning before the advent of dynamite...or even gunpowder, for that matter.

My point here is that if humans could figure out how to extract iron from rock, then apply heat (lots of heat...shitloads of heat) to make this weird goop (molten iron [or whatever...I'm not a metallurgist, either]) into something hard and pointy (like my skull) and then use it to either kill animals or other people or to use it to carve through rock, it's not that far a stretch of imagination to suggest that maybe they used this technology (crude as it is...though it hasn't really changed all that much in the last several thousand years) to create a tunnel network under a city built on bedrock.

But I could be wrong.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 108 on 8/23/2005 5:41 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
"Nowhere did I mention anything about a 'bloodstained bowl and the pagan statues.'

Thank you for illustrating my point so eloquently."

No, you didn't state it explicitly. You said she described a bowl that was "stained inside, and she thought it might have been rust "or something dark." (Ooooooo, scary stuff. Could it be blood stains?) and
"ornate figures that she said reminded her of dragons and snakes." Sorry, not pagan statues. Just pagan carvings. Again, you don't come right out and say it. You just dance around the edges, and let others fill in the rest. And if anyone calls you on it, you fall back on the argument that you never actually said that there were bloodstains in the bowl, and you never actually came right out and said that they were pagan figures. Lame.

The reason I focussed on dynamite was that a previous post introduced the idea that there were many miners in Victoria at the time, and that this supported the possibility that the tunnels might exist. That the expertise was here to do it. And my answer to that was that miners of the 19th century used drill steels and dynamite to get through rock. Not spoons. Not the technology of ancient Egypt or Meso America. Dynamite. So if the miners in Victoria didn't do it, who did?

"maybe they used this technology ..... to create a tunnel network under a city built on bedrock."

Without anyone else finding out? Without alerting the attention of the newspapers, the police, the department of mines......? And this has been basically kept secret for more than a century. Never photographed, mapped or discovered during all the excavations, public works, construction, etc. Not a single credible shred of evidence. Improbable, if not impossible.


The pyramids and other ancient monuments were built by thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands) of workers, over the course of decades, even centuries. In secret? Don't think so. And unless you're suggesting that the first nations were involved before Europeans arrived, we have a window of maybe a couple of decades in which to make these tunnels. Not that many people here during the 19th century. Small labour pool. The analogy to Egypt and other ancient monument building civilizations is pretty flat.

I'll repeat (as the aliens might have blanked your memory of when the question was last asked, as you have neatly avoided it):

Find documentation, or pictures or anything to support what she told you. Find five or ten more people who can back her story up (with details -not just more stories vaguely describing tunnels or rooms, etc.) - independently of course - and you might have a case.


Where are the living eye-witnesses that were city engineers that saw these things? Maybe your aliens abducted them?
Produce them if they exist. How come their stories haven't been published anywhere?





KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 109 on 8/23/2005 8:47 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
Sorry, not pagan statues. Just pagan carvings.


I didn't even say 'pagan carvings.'

You added 'pagan.' Not me. You have embellished the story. I suppose if we toss this story around a few more times and add what others have to say, eventually we will have something along the lines of ancient Egyptians carving tunnels through bedrock with spoons (or a flattened tin can).

In any event, the woman with whom I spoke told me a story. I recorded it, and posted it on this site (with her permission, by the way).

The details of her story are not mutually exclusive: other people have told me similar stories, and their details corroborate with details I've collected from other people.

I couldn't care less whether there are tunnels or not. I care (deeply) that there are stories of tunnels. This is an experiment (of sorts) of socio-archeology. Simple. Fact and 'truth' are incidental.

There are other examples of these kinds of stories, passed on through generations, where living witnesses die off and 'proof' of them die with the witnesses. Moose Jaw Sask. is another city where tunnels existed before being officially acknowledged. I believe these are part of the city's tourism industry now. Meaning that it took someone a while to figure out how to make a buck from them.

The same applies here: tourism is MAJOR business in Victoria, and plenty of people make an honest living (over 3 billion dollars was left behind by tourists last year) telling...rather, selling...these stories. Tourists eat this shit up. And they don't care if the stories are true.

So if some elderly woman wants to tell me a story about tunnels, and I have other accounts that corroborate the details she has told me, I'm fine with that.

If it's pictures you want, you'll have to wait.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 110 on 8/23/2005 8:53 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
And unless you're suggesting that the first nations were involved before Europeans arrived, we have a window of maybe a couple of decades in which to make these tunnels. Not that many people here during the 19th century. Small labour pool.



Actually, there were plenty of people here. Europeans simply managed to get rid of the 'folks' who'd made this part of the world home for thousands of years.

And the labour pool you so casually dismiss? Chinese (illegal) immigrants were smuggled into the area, and these (hundreds of them) are the original source of the tunnel stories.

Check your (lame) history as well.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 111 on 8/23/2005 9:04 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Read:

'They Came Out Like Ants: Searching for the Chinese Tunnels of Mexicali.'


by William T. Vollmann
--Harper's magazine, October 2004.




"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 112 on 8/24/2005 7:40 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
You know what - you're right. You want to tell stories, that's fine. Oral histories can be wonderful sources. I just think that the tunnel story has been discussed, investigated, and dismissed, many times over.

Your stories are great stories. But they do little to either prove or disprove the existence of tunnels. You may not care about whether or not tunnels exist.
But others do. And your stories feed into these discussions. My problem is that you introduce these tales, and they seem to support the "yes" side of the debate. But they don't amount to much more than a fart in the wind, really. They are merely tales. Give us evidence, facts...some shred of solid evidence to go on. Not just another story.

Chinese immigrants weren't "smuggled" into the area. They immigrated legally. Nothing illegal about it. They came in as workers for the CPR, to set up businesses, to work the mines. The head tax didn't come in until the 20th century, and immigration from China wasn't stopped until even later. How much history have you actually studied? What are your sources (not just old ladies telling stories, I hope)?

"If it's pictures you want, you'll have to wait." Why? Because they don't exist? Because you can't find them? Or because you can't take a photograph of something that isn't there?

"Moose Jaw Sask. is another city where tunnels existed before being officially acknowledged. I believe these are part of the city's tourism industry now. Meaning that it took someone a while to figure out how to make a buck from them." Oh, Moose Jaw, where they've woven Al Capone into their history to make it more saleable. Yeah, the same entrepreneurs that butchered BC history to bring us "Storyeum," where history and drama are woven together into one big dramatic production, where tourists can be entertained - but not educated - by a spiced up (many say to the point of being outright fabricated) version of history. Because the facts just aren't exciting enough. How pathetic. This is something to strive for, to be proud of? This is what history should do? Bring in tourist dollars - no matter how inaccurate, or tarted up?

"Tourists eat this shit up. And they don't care if the stories are true."

"Fact and 'truth' are incidental."


Thanks for so eloquently presenting your philosophy as it pertains to history. Your honesty is refreshing.



Read:

"The Forbidden City" by David Lai.

A bit more relevant than an article on Chinese tunnels in the southern U.S., I think. Deals specifically with Victoria, and more specifically, with the urban mythology of tunnels in Victoria. Lai is consider one of the pre-eminent scholars on the Chinese in British Columbia. He categorically dismisses the rumours of tunnels. Is he wrong?



[last edit 8/24/2005 8:45 AM by anvil - edited 1 times]

KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 113 on 8/24/2005 4:44 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
Read:

"The Forbidden City" by David Lai.

A bit more relevant than an article on Chinese tunnels in the southern U.S., I think. Deals specifically with Victoria, and more specifically, with the urban mythology of tunnels in Victoria. Lai is consider one of the pre-eminent scholars on the Chinese in British Columbia. He categorically dismisses the rumours of tunnels. Is he wrong?



I'm familiar with Dr. Lai's book.

I was referring to the head tax (a racist project if there ever was one) that was set in place in the early years of the last century. It was initially about $50 per person, but by 1911, it was up to about $500. Few if any Chinese who came to Victoria then could afford that amount. So the newly arrived Chinese went underground, so to speak, and that's about the time the tunnel stories first started circulating. At least widely. There were rumours of them before that.

Basically, the stories I've heard all trace back to the head tax, and are therefore rooted in a racism that is now denied by even members of Victoria's Chinese community.

The moment I get some actual physical evidence, I'll share it with everyone on this site. Until then, we'll all have to make due with fables, lies, untruths, conjecture, imagination, propoganda, etc. etc. etc.

Or you can just trust me: there is at least the possibility that a tunnel network once existed beneath the Garden City.




"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 114 on 8/24/2005 4:59 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
You know what - you're right. You want to tell stories, that's fine. Oral histories can be wonderful sources.

Your stories are great stories.



I truly appreciate that and I'll take it as a compliment. Thanks.

Now...about unsubstantiated tales of wonder...let's talk a bit about transubstantiation. Let's talk about rising from the dead. About virgin births.

No way to prove any of it, but about a billion people worldwide accept these as articles of faith. It's REAL real...this wine into blood, this bread into flesh business.

Widely different, and probably not a fair comparison (maybe I'm grasping at thin air here...but a boy's got to make his case however he can).

Or, to bring this into a modern context, Shithead in the Whitehouse says that, just because he hasn't found WMD's, it doesn't mean that they don't exist.

And this is getting way off in some weird direction and isn't making a whole lot of sense now.

So instead I'll revert to an earlier analogy: two guys go into a rain forest. They're chemists...botanists, really...and they are looking for some weird protein. One wants to isolate it so he can make some new drug and get fucking wealthy. The other wants to hang out with the people who have used this plant in their religious/cultural lives. He doesn't care if he ever finds the actual plant, or if it really exists, for that matter. Instead, he's interested in the oral narratives concerning this plant, its place in the histories of these people etc.

That's what I'm about here. I am more interested in the oral cultural artifacts.

I look for stories. I collect them. These are the important artifacts of my city, and they have value in and of themselves beyond what proof can provide.

I'm glad you like the stories. I really do. They are fascinating, and they reveal aspects of this city's culture, it's treatment of both immigrant culture, and of indigent culture. As I have said elsewhere, tourists pay big bucks for these stories, and they leave behind shitloads of money every year. The people who live on the streets earn nothing from the telling of their versions, and that's a shame. They are excluded from the economic benefits that others enjoy as a result of the telling of these stories.

The tunnel thing is really a metaphor for this economic disconnect. That's why I'm persuing them.

I trust you will understand this position.



[last edit 8/24/2005 5:00 PM by KublaKhan - edited 2 times]

"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 115 on 8/25/2005 5:30 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
It's REAL real...this wine into blood, this bread into flesh business.
But no matter how hard people believe, no matter how many believe - if you tested the wine, it would still be wine, and the bread would still be bread. Believing really hard doesn't change physical reality.
No matter how much people want to believe that tunnels exist, if they don't exist, their faith won't change that. And the problem I have here is that while you appreciate these stories for what they are, others take them as gospel. People who are truly interested in the tangible history of Victoria, trying to answer the question of whether or not they exist are diverted by stories told to appease tourists and generate revenue.

Billions of kids believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don't change the fact that I have to go and buy presents for my kids, and sneak them under the tree each year, and hide a bunch of chocolate eggs.


As for the street people - there's really nothing that prevents or bars them from participating in this economic activity, except for their own decision not to do so - their own issues. This is not a case of anyone preventing them from doing something. They exclude themselves. John Adams and others like him just take the initiative, and sell their stories in the form of ghost tours, heritage walks, etc. This doesn't require a particular degree, level of expertise (though John has a great amount of experience in the field). The tourist industry is one of the most egalitarian groups I've seen - everyone from young to old, from all corners of the world, performing in a vast array of ways. Jugglers, musicians, acrobats, tour guides, kabuki drivers. I'm curious - how are they "excluded" from these economic benefits?

In fact, these same people, either directly or indirectly, contribute to the destruction of the heritage that we deal with on these forums. It may come out that the Pandora Street fire was arson. It may be even have been someone connected with plans to develop it (as was most likely the case with Haslam Hall in Nanaimo in 1977). Most likely, it was the fact that the people who were illegally staying there were the cause. Just another reason to properly secure abandoned places against unauthorized entry - which means that you and I might find ourselves unable to get in and document these structures as well.




KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 116 on 8/25/2005 10:20 PM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil

As for the street people - there's really nothing that prevents or bars them from participating in this economic activity, except for their own decision not to do so - their own issues.


...their issues being mental health (or lack thereof), poverty (aesthetic notwithstanding) and the general unease people often feel when confronted by someone who smells of urine/booze/etc. etc. etc.

People don't 'choose' to live in squalor of their own free will. Something transformed these people into indigent 'no-fixed-address' marginalized outcasts.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 117 on 8/26/2005 1:31 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
But to say that they are "excluded" is misleading - they are not excluded in any way. I disagree - people do choose to live in squalor. This society is too rich for people to use that excuse. If we were in a developing country, in Latin America or Africa, I'd agree. But here in Canada? Don't think so. I just moved away from Victoria - where street people from all across Canada come to stay, and I have to say that the experience has left me rather jaded. Two years of vandalism, break-ins, problems - I'm a lot less sympathetic than I used to be. Life is hard - get a helmet. If you have mental illness, then the government should fund proper care again. If people are dangerous, institutionalize them. Drug addicts should be put through rehab - whether they want it or not. Don't subject my children to sick people running around swearing out loud, taking their clothes off, beating their heads against walls - which is what we put up with for two years. If you're sick, get help. And if you aren't capable of voluntarily getting help, then we should step in, intervene, and make sure that our society is safe. `




KublaKhan 


Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Total Likes: 207 likes


With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.

 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 118 on 8/26/2005 2:13 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum:
Posted by anvil
But to say that they are "excluded" is misleading - they are not excluded in any way. I disagree - people do choose to live in squalor. This society is too rich for people to use that excuse. If we were in a developing country, in Latin America or Africa, I'd agree. But here in Canada? Don't think so. I just moved away from Victoria - where street people from all across Canada come to stay, and I have to say that the experience has left me rather jaded. Two years of vandalism, break-ins, problems - I'm a lot less sympathetic than I used to be. Life is hard - get a helmet. If you have mental illness, then the government should fund proper care again. If people are dangerous, institutionalize them. Drug addicts should be put through rehab - whether they want it or not. Don't subject my children to sick people running around swearing out loud, taking their clothes off, beating their heads against walls - which is what we put up with for two years. If you're sick, get help. And if you aren't capable of voluntarily getting help, then we should step in, intervene, and make sure that our society is safe. `


Agreed...for the most part.

I have enough trouble keeping an eye on my son when he's scampering around in the playground without having to worry whether he discovers a used hypodermic laying in the grass. And those scabby folks who mutter obscenities under their breath had sure as fuck better keep a safe distance from my son, otherwise addiction will be the least of their problems.

That said, I do feel a certain empathy for those very unfortunate people who suffer in their lives because of either poor education, broken family, addiction, etc. etc. etc....you know, the usual cliches. And I disagree (for the most part) with your contention that people do choose to live in squalor. Not everyone gets as good a start in life as you obviously have. Or I have, for that matter. There are plenty of examples in Victoria where people didn't so much fall through the cracks as much as the foundations you and I take for granted were simply never there.

My syntax is slipping. Sorry.

Anyway...we're (you and me) running the risk of actually agreeing on something here: our children are priority #1, and the sad-assed crack head (if that's still in vogue...probably not) who interferes with my son's safety is in serious danger, should he/she get wiggy and freak-outish.





"The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible."
--Don DeLillo
PICS
anvil 


Gender: Male
Total Likes: 0 likes




 |  | 
Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels.
< Reply # 119 on 8/26/2005 8:08 AM >
Reply with Quote
Posted on Forum: UER Forum
I worked for the school district in Victoria, doing grounds keeping. Used to find hypodermics all the time around Vic High and Central. My coworker nearly got stuck twice in the space of about an hour at Vic High. I do have empathy for these people , don't get me wrong. I've just researched many places where people experience true hopelessness and I have a bit of trouble feeling sorry for those who choose not to access the myriad of support services, opportunities, etc. that are available here. How bad is it here, really, compared with the slums of Mexico City, or Darfur, or a thousand other hells on earth, where there is literally nothing - where people dig through garbage dumps to eat. I have a whole lot more empathy for those millions than I do for the homeless Canadian snowbirds vacationing in Victoria for its mild climate.

That being said, I think it's unfortunate that the trend in recent years seems to be to cut back on funding for things that could help the less fortunate - a trend that I'm sure will prove to be a huge mistake, down the road, when the ghosts return to haunt us.

As for agreeing or disagreeing - I happen to agree with much of what you say - I just like a bit of lively debate to keep us all on our toes. Gotta keep it all above board, honest, etc. I don't want to see these forums become places where ghost stories, rumours of satanic cults and the mythological tunnels dominate the discussion, all the time.....




UER Forum > Canada: Alberta / BC > Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. (Viewed 1883571 times)
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21-40 41-60 61-80 81-100 101-120 121-140 141-160 161-180 181-200 201-203  


Add a poll to this thread



This thread is currently Public. Anyone, including search engines, may see it.



All content and images copyright © 2002-2024 UER.CA and respective creators. Graphical Design by Crossfire.
To contact webmaster, or click to email with problems or other questions about this site: UER CONTACT
View Terms of Service | View Privacy Policy | Server colocation provided by Beanfield
This page was generated for you in 125 milliseconds. Since June 23, 2002, a total of 737001954 pages have been generated.