Crime rate in Prince George much higher

than provincial average

For all the beauty in the surroundings Prince George has a few problems with crime. In fact statistics put the crime rate in the city of Prince George, BC, as much as 71 percent higher than the provincial average in 2006. Prince George had 195 crimes per 1,000 residents whereas the provincial average case load per RCMP officer is 122.

The city of Prince George is a forestry city. As the Ranch Motel in downtown Prince George wrapped up another summer season with the tree planters, the hosts of the downtown motel, Brian and Debbie Caudle, begin to provide accommodations for cone-gatherers in the autumn. The cone gatherers work to provide seed to supply millions upon millions of seedlings that compose the replanting industry of British Columbia forest resources.

The city of 70,000 (sic) occupies a pristine spot of earth full of lively people. The crime stats hardly describe the city a’ centre a northern-oriented position on the map where the mentality of people borders on the northern mindset some Canadians are known to possess. This attitude is outdoors related where people are active in the area and many are highly motivated to demonstrate mastery of the rugged domain.

Prince George has a frontier spirit; an outdoor adventure waits at every corner. And economically it is sound, and amazingly the smell of cedar wafts in the air from the forests that line pathways in numerous parks combing the city. Indeed, the forest owns all of Prince George and will always do it. Meanwhile Prince George has long been developing into a crossroads for travelers to all points in Canada and the world.

The city experiences a Canadian tourist season in the sense that interest in the place is contained to the most summery times. This doesn’t mean Prince George wraps up and goes to sleep for the winter. Locals will tell you, only the bears do that. The city is alive in four distinct seasons, although a lot of the complaints on the local lips of this year have been about a lacklustre summer. Summer never seemed to arrive at a summer, although the autumn is proving highly temperate.

Prince George has between 70,000 and 75,000 depending on to whom you speak, and because of location and demographics the city is host to northern Interior prostitution and drug problems, and these have gravitated to the downtown, and during the past decade have escalated out of the valley to older neighbourhoods. Furthermore, Prince George is the centre of concern for lost and murdered women from Highway 16 West on the now known Highway of Tears which runs across the vast and rugged province of British Columbia to the Pacific Coast.

This stretch of lost highway has become a scene of murder and mayhem upon primarily First Nation women, and many times now those who step onto it to hitchhike seem to be disappearing. The overwhelming majority of disappeared or found murdered has been First Nation, and the racism has a killer or killers showing a preference for snatching First Nation victims off lonely stretches of Highway 16.

Indeed Amnesty International estimates 32 women missing or victims of unsolved murder in 30 years on the Highway of Tears Prince George to Prince Rupert. (In the larger picture women have disappeared from Edmonton to Prince Rupert, an accumulating number of them, and largely these are First Nation women the farther west the highway is traveled.)

Lisa Krebs works for Carrier Sekani Family Services in Prince George to create awareness about the missing women and murder victims of unsolved crimes. When Lisa discusses the Highway of Tears she immediately moves the discussion to a higher level. “Prince George is in Lheidli Tenneh,” land, and as such, Lheidli Tenneh hosted a symposium last Mar 30-31, 2007, at the CN Centre, “with well over 500 people.”

What Lisa does is a difficult form of community service work because it intersects the despair of dozens of people, and will again, and again, if dozens of people continue to suffer tremendous bouts of post traumatic stress disorder, and these people will suffer PTSD if another girl goes missing on this Highway 16 fraught with tears. The last time a girl went missing the whole territory exploded with the news of it. Meanwhile the search for missing and miscreant goes forward.

Despite this deeply troubling issue, the city of Prince George is remains bigger than the problem, huge in fact, with an amazing array of neighbourhoods off in several directions except due east which is railroad and pulp and paper. The city contains problems and runs extensive security programs around the Prince George Bus Depot and municipal services buildings that end up a feature of parks peopled by drug addicts. In the face of urban issues the city is growing up and contains one of Canada's newest universities.

The local population is an amazing amalgam of people of multiple nations, races, colours, creeds, backgrounds, and mosaic with a capital Z. It has First Nation in the mosaic as a profound part of the milieu, partly tragic, partly seeking triumph, a mosaic player that rivals the presence of any extant Aboriginal milieu in the world. It is a fact, said my friend Pierce Ambrose, the First Nations in the regions throughout BC, by and large, live outside any charter-like treaty conditions that designated surrender to Aboriginal Rights and Title.

Other than those living the exceptional lifestyle created by the government for their race, few First Nations people are actual subjects of the Indian Act, as they would be if they lived on reserves where with a few exceptions they must live by Indian Act rules. In a world less trammelled by systemic racism First Nations should run important parts of the mainstream economy in cities like Prince George. I am not sure they are there yet.

They may be gradually moving into positions and the UNBC may be an important facility making these changes in the local economy, where First Nations come to be managers of the big chain hotels and airlines holding down the big paying jobs.

The First Nations happen to be prevalent at the street level, but are not alone there, and poverty is multicultural and diverse as well, but First Nation are the visible majority and it is likely this will remain a familiar pattern in many cities in this province of BC, because 1/5 of Canada’s population of Aboriginal people resides in this province.

Indeed the actual nations exist in some instances, like Nisga’a. Certain places contain the languages.

The Prince George Native Friendship Centre is renowned in BC and Canada for providing a level of services for all citizens. It is a large and indeed impressive six storey office building overlooking the downtown and the Nechako Valley. It is an older office building in the style built late 1960s in western Canada, was formerly the Court House.

The Prince George Native Friendship Centre is The Gathering Place and here is an organization tasked with many responsibilities in the central-northern hub city of Prince George, BC, explained Barb Ward-Burkitt, Executive Director of the centre. They operate an excellent website at www.pgnfc.com, where they inform, “Over the past thirty-eight years the Friendship Centre has grown steadily, the organization currently employs 150 full time staff with numerous part time positions, and is the largest Friendship Centre in Canada!”

A quick read of the panel on the left side of the index page at www.pgfnc.com informs readers of the essentials, and these include: community-wide employment services, catering and space rentals, and a wide number of social developments like camps and events like pow-wow and various public awareness programs. Furthermore the operations of the centre include a multiplicity of social events and public services.

In fact the PGNFC runs a monthly program and Bobbie Koll’s newsletter for September ‘07 informs the local area to join in the Community Night every second and fourth Tuesday at the PGNFC building on 3rd avenue at the 1600 block for a bunch of cool activities including computer use, then there is more on the page, (among other things) like a pain control dental clinic, a regalia building night each Weds, and an Elder’s luncheon every third Weds. of the month. You cannot miss it because it is a big building befitting the large tasks facing these community developers.

The current situation in the city, which is creating major interest in the city and is directly related to the PGNFC, happens to be a project called Friendship Lodge. Connaught is a neighbourhood beside downtown, sitting on a high bluff above the downtown core, and Connaught is firmly established as a middle class neighbourhood in a middle class oriented city. The problem for Connaught is the downtown of Prince George has fallen into a state of disrepair, partly due to poverty, worsened by a rash of miscreant drug-related behaviour, and sewn further and deeper into a state of general social discord in the manner of many downtowns in Canada.

It so happens that over the course of time the inner cores of some cities have not regenerated quickly enough to surpass the social problems of poverty and drug epidemics that also result in general mayhem and sex trade. Prince George may be an excellent example of one of the problems of urbanization, and it so happens that the PGNFC is one of the principle agencies besides the illustrious RCMP put in place to deal with it.

Indeed the PGNFC is a proactive organization in dealing with the social milieu of downtown Prince George, for it was PGNFC’s proposal that met acceptance with the province to fund a building project called the Friendship Lodge. Barb said the centre has been leading the way forward since 2004 to get this particular mental health facility built and running for a population that exists on street level because they are disabled or struggling with mental illness.

The facility proposal by PGNFC and the province will face Prince George city council in Oct. ’07 for the last time, having passed first and second readings by the city council. So here in the preceding month of September the pressure is now rising from the surrounding community expressing predictable concerns about a population of mentally ill people put into a building in the downtown. How many people? Thirty units will hold up to 60 people in a facility functioning under the auspices of “The Prince George Native Friendship Centre, Northern Health & BC Housing.”

As of the past weekend the letters to the editor described many concerns along the lines of people who aren’t sure what to expect from Friendship Lodge. A stroll in the area and one or two questions of the local entrepreneurs and store owners also informs of concerns for the directions taken in downtown Prince George. The historic properties surrounding the 10 year old court house beckon to a brilliant future for downtown Prince George. This much is true. The court house is a magnificent building, architecturally perfect fitting in the strange surroundings of the bluffs and sharp sandy walls of a unique geological importance

On another day one should pay a visit to the University of Northern British Columbia. This campus is new and of course has a multicultural student composition, and students come from Northern BC communities like Smithers or Hazelton or Prince Rupert. It is a new university with brand new and First Nations departments new along with it. Two big powerful rivers run through the city. The Fraser and the Nechako meet, more accurately; the smaller Nechako enters the larger Fraser at the east end of Prince George, converging from the north. The pulp and paper industry uses some of the Nechako’s abundant supply of water to produce paper. Be sure to visit http://www.firstnationscanada.com for more details about Prince George.