You are obviously new here so let me explain how the world works. Parents raise their children to accept everyone for who they are. When the children head off to school they take the values and morals taught to them by their parents. Your children obviously won’t have the same values and morals as the rest of the children in St. Albert.
If your teenage son had trouble fitting in before, wait until the kids at his school read your letter, that is if they can read seeing as some of the kids probably come from low income families.
Neither my sister nor I have ever been made to feel badly about where we come from or what we have by our friends, ever. If your son had problems fitting in it was probably due to the fact he was raised to act better than everyone else. Is there some super elite private school here in St. Albert you can send him to? No, so the sooner you accept the fact that he is going to be attending classes with low-income kids, the better off you will be. In St. Albert we have four high schools that are both Protestant and Catholic and anyone is welcome to attend whichever school they choose regardless of their income.
I have lived in St. Albert since the age of two and have been the daughter of a single mom since the age of six. We were moved to St. Albert because it’s a great and safe place to raise a family and it’s the city my mother was raised in. Should she have been made to move to Edmonton because her marital circumstances changed? Do you believe a single mother with two daughters should have been made to move to the Edmonton inner city where, according to you they have ‘drugs in the elementary schools?’ My mother is the hardest working person I know and she deserves to live in St. Albert because this is her hometown, where she can fall asleep at night knowing her daughters are safe.
On another note the daily drop-in fee at the YMCA in Edmonton is $15.50 whereas Servus Credit Union Place charges $9.
And just let me add this one last fact — low-income families are not the cause of rape, murder, theft, guns, ‘a police presence,’ etc. Drugs are the cause of all the problems that plague this city and cities worldwide. If any ‘high-earning’ parents in St. Albert think their kids aren’t ever going to fall victim to drugs because you have money, you’re dead wrong. Ask any young St. Albert resident and they will be able to tell you that St. Albert by far has the worst cocaine and crystal meth problem in Alberta and we all know poor people aren’t the ones fuelling that expensive fire.
What I want is for St. Albert to remain as it always has been with very few bigots.
Danelle Hartley, St. Albert
