When I connect with someone with roots in Sault Ste. Marie, our conversation usually lands upon an inescapable topic.
We’ll discuss the depressing transformation of the city over the past couple decades, and lament what ought to be done and who’s to blame.
“This isn’t the same city I grew up in anymore,” they’ll say.
It’s impossible to disagree.
For the past two decades, I’ve often moved back and forth while pursuing educational opportunities elsewhere.
That time away has given me an interesting perspective
In a sense, it’s allowed me to see the city devolve in a large scale time-lapse.
In addition to conversations about the direction of the city, another type of conversation has become common for me these days.
“Did you hear about [insert name here],” the text message will read.
Since I’m not often surfing social media and I’m in the city infrequently lately, I convey my ignorance.
“No, what happened?”
In this moment, my stomach wrenches.
I already know what I’m about to read.
“They’re dead. Heard it was an overdose.”
While everyone recognizes the gravity of the problem with addictions, there’s less than agreement about what to do in response.
According to Mayor Matthew Shoemaker, one of his major ‘marching orders’ from constituents is addressing an epidemic that’s spiraling out of control.
Municipal social services have seen a climb in their budgets and planning for a supervised consumption site continues.
That’s despite the province pausing new applications for the latter, and established ones in Northern Ontario fearing imminent closure.
While it’s possible for most locals to avoid and ignore the social struggles all around them, there are others bearing their brunt every day.
Many of us have friends and family members consumed by addiction.
Finding a humanizing portrayal of these people is relatively rare.
What’s not so rare is complaints about a derivative problem fuelled by addiction: a wave of petty crime gripping the city.
A perusal of social media shows daily reports of property thefts and shoplifting.
The community seems to be at a breaking point.
There have already been incidents of vigilantism.
When the namesake of H.R. Lash confronted a would-be thief in his clothing store, bedlam ensued.
Herb Lash was injured in the altercation and the thief allegedly threatened to stab both him and his son.
Then there’s the case of ‘Coyote Moto,’ who made headlines in 2021 uploading YouTube videos of his vigilante encounters with ‘junkies’ around town.
These aren’t exactly positive examples of justice in action.
Nonetheless, they’re connected to a simmering community frustration that could boil over at any moment.
A revealing window into that frustration is a Facebook group titled ‘Keeping the Soo Safe.’
Part neighbourhood watch, part rage farming, many of the group’s posts are focused on the city’s battle with addiction and related social dysfunction and petty crime.
It boasts over 36,000 members.
It’s typical to see some members of the group encouraging vigilantism.
Dehumanizing language is normalized.
Image Credit: Keeping the Soo Safe (Facebook)
While the above example is extreme, the post garnered hundreds of approvals from group members, including a supportive comment from an administrator.
The most extreme members advocate for a type of social Darwinism, viewing overdoses as a natural form of deviant population control.
The dehumanization and armchair vigilantism doesn’t always go unopposed.
On occasion, dissenters will contest such things, and there’s always the occasional goodwill story.
The latter are often wayward dogs beating all the odds and eventually finding their owners.
It’s hard not to notice the difference.
Wayward dogs elicit an outpouring of sympathy.
Wayward people, not so much.
And every person struggling with addiction in the city is one surveillance camera recording away from social death.
Image Credit: Keeping the Soo Safe (Facebook)
A single Facebook group doesn’t embody an entire city, but given its size and popularity, it provides a damn good look at how some people feel about the community’s challenges.
And these responses foreshadow what might be an epic showdown.
Supervised consumption sites are often ground zero for that simmering frustration in communities struggling with addiction.
Those in proximity may worry about how their neighbourhood may change.
Other critics feel as though they remove stigma that’s warranted for destructive behaviour and, in effect, provide it with social license.
Although the City hasn’t done much work communicating this to the public, supervised consumption isn’t a radical idea.
In places all over the world, variations of supervised consumption have been a part of health care that addresses addictions.
However, finding an appropriate approach to the problem is dependent upon how the problem is understood.
If the problem is primarily social dysfunction flowing out of the margins of the city and into the downtown, the solution is simple.
The city can find ways to push those struggling with addiction away from shoppers and tourists.
These solutions are less about addressing the root causes of addiction and healing the community at large.
They’re all about creating a conducive social, cultural, and business climate in the downtown, which is key for City’s public relations efforts.
If, however, the problem is primarily about the people struggling with addictions, the potential ways to address the problem are quite different.
These solutions include asking difficult questions about what underlying factors in the city may be contributing to a spiral of social decline.
First and foremost, these solutions concern the mitigation of harm.
From there, it involves designing social support systems to allow as many people as possible to rehabilitate themselves and sustain healthy relationships.
Contrasting these two different understandings of the problem begs the question: what happens if there’s some distance between what the community believes (based on its own experiences) and official City policy (based on best practices)?
Similarly, what will the City do if it doesn’t have permission from its citizens to embark upon a policy that’s grounded in evidence?
Thus far, the City has provided the impression that the greatest obstacle to movement on this file is an obstinate provincial government.
Mayor Shoemaker recently used the word “despicable” to describe the provincial government’s present approach (in pausing applications).
But what if the greatest obstacle is (parts of) the community itself?
If that’s the case, addressing the problem is going to require much more than health care.
It’s going to involve a significant shift in community perceptions of addiction.