Last Wednesday morning was unalarming.
I was covering the Estevan Chamber of Commerce's Coffee Talk, where a group of community leaders was discussing the Estevan Safety and Well-being project.
At first sight, Estevan is a very safe community when compared to how things are in most other places. Our crime severity index is good, meaning that we are far away from being a high-crime city. When my family gets worried about safety issues, measuring them by big-city standards, I always give them an example of murders with one happening in 2008, then in 2014 and the next one not until 2021. (Of course, that's not perfect, but gives them an idea of the level of safety in our community).
In most cases, the police reports here talk about drugs, impaired driving, domestic conflicts and interpersonal arguments. Nothing major.
So that Coffee Talk might have felt a bit excessive at first glance. Shortly, life proved it wasn't.
After an hour-long event, I was heading home thinking about how safe I feel in Estevan and what safety is, when two ghost trucks with lights on blocked the intersection of Fourth Street and 13th Avenue. An ambulance went flying by towards the hospital, accompanied by a fully lit-up police car, greeting another EMS vehicle, loudly heading in the opposite direction.
My first thoughts were things like that don't happen in Estevan. But what exactly were those things?
As soon as the intersection cleared, I followed the route of emergency services and dived right into what was happening here on Nov. 1. I soon learned the hospital was on a lockdown – something I've never seen here or anywhere (not counting the pandemic measures due to the different nature).
And as minutes were going by and we were able to gather more information, the tragic incident started gradually unravelling.
I'm sorry to the family who lost their loved ones, and I'm sorry to the family of the Estevan police officer and the entire service for having to go through what they did and are still going through. I'm also sorry to the community. During the first hours, when people didn't know what was happening and if the situation was dangerous to the public, I saw too many terrified eyes – something I'd never seen here before either.
As the day came to a conclusion, I couldn't resist but return to the morning Coffee Talk.
How ironic! During the talk, such issues as addictions, anxiety, depression, homelessness, the youth mental health crisis and work accessibility were discussed within the framework of well-being. Those issues were discussed not in a vacuum but in the context of Estevan. All those problems were named as something that Estevan sees an increase in, as something that affects people's well-being here and as something that, if it isn't addressed, could and will turn into safety issues.
Unfortunately, in this particular case, it did before anything had been done. Mental health, addictions, criminal history, domestic violence and struggles with employment were later brought up in conversations about the struggles of the family that died in the incident. There is probably more to the story that I don't know about.
I feel that as a community with a lot of resources, with many people who care about everyone's well-being here, we failed them. We failed to understand the needs and provide the help they required.
There are a lot of questions to be answered about this case. The investigation is ongoing. And I keep thinking about how many other people are currently fighting with their demons here, in Estevan, in the southeast, in rural Saskatchewan, feeling that the system let them down.
The problems we are dealing with here are not unique to Estevan. But it's absolutely our duty to bring those struggles up. Most things we end up fighting with have roots in the system, they are not personal weaknesses or laziness. And they need to be addressed systematically.
To have problems fixed eventually, the issues that people are experiencing here need to be highlighted over and over again, brought up at different levels, have money allocated for potential solutions and then worked on.
So, please, take three to five minutes to fill out the Estevan Safety and Well-being survey (www.surveymonkey.com/r/NSGQ3QG). Ask your partner, your parents, your kids and your friends to do it as well. It's not rocket science or a knowledge test. We are the same community and might be going through the same storms, but our boats are different, our equipment is different, our skills vary and our teams are not the same.
Our experiences differ, and if you don't take a tiny step towards your own well-being, don't blame the system for being deaf and blind to your problems. It's your responsibility to make existing issues vocal as much as everyone's else.
