Alien Abduction in Calgary

Go downtown on any weekday and you’ll find it easy to spot the aliens.

Courtesy: netclime.net

(CALGARY, Alberta) - I recently spent a morning as an observer at the provincial criminal court in Calgary. There were the usual run of the mill cases-some individuals were clearly bad news; some individuals were clearly confused about how they got there-when a woman in custody appeared in the prisoner’s box and changed my entire perspective on the proceedings.

She looked used and abused, making it difficult to guess her age, but I would say about 30. She was charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. The prosecutor said she had a lengthy criminal record. She called the Drop-In Centre home. Obviously no bail money and no one to bail her out. I’ll call her "Margaret".

Our perspective on the world around us depends entirely on our psychological vantage point. We are all familiar with the glass half empty/half full analogy. As Margaret sat in the prisoner’s box, I had a sudden paradigm shift and was able to see the world from what I would reasonably guess to be Margaret’s vantage point-a glass much less than half full.

Picture the courtroom in your mind’s eye (the spectators are irrelevant to the proceeding). At the front we have the judge, lawyers, prosecutors, sheriffs and clerks of the court. Who are all these people? They are, without exception, middle class and upper middle class people.

From Margaret’s point of view, it is psychologically and physically equivalent to her having been captured by aliens. It doesn’t matter whether they come from expensive Calgary neighborhoods, or the Andromeda Galaxy. They are, from her vantage point, aliens.

Consider Margaret’s experience. By being taken into custody by the police, she was "captured". The pros and cons of her offense, and previous offenses, are not at issue. I suggest that the more fundamental issue is that she, and thousands of people like her, are living in the equivalent of a world inhabited and controlled by aliens.

Again, in your mind’s eye, picture the activity of these court officials. Margaret is just one more "specimen" passing through their ken. They take turns standing up and speaking in a language that she recognizes as English, but probably understands only dimly. Throughout the proceeding, they also bantered among themselves-smiling at some comments, perhaps making plans to get together outside the court for coffee, lunch, golf, etc. They move in the same circles, see each other socially, live in the same neighborhoods, with their children going to the same schools together. In other words, they live in a material culture that Margaret has never seen and can only imagine, if she were to try, from scenes she would recall from TV shows.

She is being held under the complete control and at the complete mercy of these aliens she can barely understand. They can even, if they wish, subject her to physical and psychological tests. (In an earlier case, one prisoner was sent to the Peter Lougheed Hospital for a thirty-day psychiatric examination.)

Margaret is only one of many thousands of Calgarians who are-probably permanently-outside the money culture. She is a case number and will soon be a prisoner number. At her bottom level of our stratified society, she has no access to the things that count in our city-home, car, money, job, social status, wardrobe, etc.-and essentially has no prospect of ever attaining any of these signs of alien membership.

Having none of these things Margaret feels, no doubt, alone and afraid in a world she never made. I am a second generation Calgarian and this was a great city in which to grow up and to live in until about ten years ago. Then the decline began as Calgary shifted to being a less livable city to more and more people. We live in the one of the richest cities in the world, but your experience depends entirely on your position in the money structure.

Go downtown on any weekday and you’ll find it easy to spot the aliens. They are the ones onto whom the money is dripping. It will certainly be awhile before you see Margaret on the streets, again-however briefly.

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Daniel Johnson was born near the midpoint of the twentieth century in Calgary, Alberta. In his teens he knew he was going to be a writer, which explains why he was one of only a handful of boys in his high school typing class—a skill he knew was going to be necessary. He defines himself as a social reformer, not a left winger, the latter being an ideological label which, he says, is why he is not an ideologue, although a lot of his views could be described as left-wing. He understands that who he is, is largely defined by where he came from. The focus for Daniel’s writing came in 1972. After a trip to Europe he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Alberta, and Calgary in particular, was extremely conservative Bible Belt country, more like Houston than any other Canadian city (a direct influence of the oil industry). Two successive Premiers of the province, from 1935 to 1971, had been Baptist evangelicals with their own weekly Sunday radio program—Back to the Bible Hour, while in office. In Alberta everything was distorted by religion.

Although he had published a few pieces (unpaid) in the local daily, the Calgary Herald, it was not until 1975 that he could actually make a living from journalism when, from 1975 to 1981 he was reporter, photographer, then editor of the weekly Airdrie Echo. For more than ten years after that he worked with Peter C. Newman (1979-1993), Canada’s top business writer (notably a series of books, The Canadian Establishment). Through this period Daniel also did some national radio and TV broadcasting with the CBC. You can write to Daniel at: Salem-News@gravityshadow.com