The letter sent to the St. Albert Gazette was truly inspired and convincing! I wasn’t aware of the degeneration about to engulf our lovely city, so truly a thousand thank-yous for opening my eyes.
I was hoping we could discuss and expand on your ideas, in hopes that I can gain some further clarity, but also so that we may enlighten fellow residents to the 100 per cent serious problems that our little utopia is facing. For example, I thoroughly enjoyed the points you made in regards to the effect of low income housing on our public schools. However, I don’t think you went far enough. I for one think that all of our public schools should be made private. On top of that, there should be restrictions to who can apply for these schools. Children from Akinsdale or Braeside should not be allowed to take school with children from Oakmont or Erin Ridge because those neighbourhoods don’t meet the same standard of excellence as the others. These children need to understand that where you come from determines where you will end up in society for the rest of your life. We all know the troubled youth corrupting our schools now with drugs and froshing are from these lower income neighbourhoods. No child from Oakmont or Kingswood would ever participate in such deviant behaviour. Those children are cut from a different cloth and they should not be subjected to the perverted musings that come out of the original St. Albert neighbourhoods, herein after referred to as the Slums.
Of course I understand that those children aren’t as terrible as the unruly masses presiding in Edmonton, but I fear the unenlightened public (everyone but you, Karleena and I) won’t be able to tell the difference between a lower class St. Albert child and an Edmontonian. I believe we should devise an official scale or ranking system that is government mandated. This system would involve an equation that multiplies a family’s annual income by their genetic superiority divided by the square root of their work ethic. The resulting number would correlate to a letter. An “A” letter grade would be for people such as your family, hard working, pure St. Albert residents. A letter grade of “B” would be for well-off families residing in the Slums. A “C” letter grade would be given to a lesser Slum family and a ‘D’ or less would signify the degenerates of Edmonton/Habitat for Humanity families. Now I know what you’re thinking: letter grades might be a bit offensive. I am willing to switch letters for symbols (i.e. stars, moons, triangles, what have you). If we enacted this ranking system, not only could we keep tabs on every St. Albert resident but we could also introduce more tax cuts to families who are succeeding. This in turn would instil a nature of change in the Slum families to try and break free of their social constraints (an obviously futile task, but at least we are giving them hope, right?).
This ranking system would also allow you and your family, along with all other superior families to partake in local events without a fear of being murdered or robbed in broad daylight. We can approach public events in two ways. One, we segregate all classes of people in public so that none of them have to worry about violent outbursts from the other. Or two, we have the police watch the B or lower families so that us As can enjoy our lovely city!
Actually, now that I think about it, St. Albert should build a giant wall around the outside of it, one which doesn’t allow evil to enter or goodness to leave. The wall can be made out of the supplies that would have been used for Habitat for Humanity and we can enlist the poorer families of St. Albert to build it. We won’t pay them, instead taking a small percentage of what they should be earning and using it to install overseers who ensure they are working. Then we can keep the extra profits for ourselves, thus perpetuating our wealth and allowing us to raise our letter grades from As to A-plus’! And then we can buy this town and force everyone who isn’t worthy of its beauty, of its undeniable grace to pack up and climb over the wall into the darkness that is everything outside of St. Albert and we can be happy and live the life we deserve.
Now, I fear you may misinterpret this letter. I am actually kidding. Those are all terrible ideas. To live in St. Albert is to be part of a community; it’s not a right, it’s a privilege. If you and your family don’t like it here, for whatever circumstance, then feel free to leave. I would rather have a kind, welcoming lower-income family in my city than another exclusive, supercilious one. Good luck fitting in now.
Ethan Sawyer, St. Albert
