A night on Victoria Street when good people pitched in to clean up somebody else’s mess

COLUMN — Wednesday night about 7 p.m., somebody went on a tear down Victoria Street. A garbage can at the corner of Fourth Avenue was emptied, leaving a gross assortment of paper cups, wrappers, newspapers, cigarette butts and such all over the sidewalk and crosswalk.

My immediate reaction was anger. Some people simply have no sense of community responsibility. Such an act of vandalism was an affront to all those who put so much into making our community a good place to live.

Several people walked by, simply sidestepping the mess. Maybe some of them were tourists, gaining their first impression of Kamloops.

But then, something interesting happened. Seemingly out of nowhere, people appeared and started picking stuff up and putting it back in the garbage can. One after another they began to help. And then there was another. And another. And then a restaurant employee came out with a broom and dustpan.

In a few minutes, the sidewalk and the street were clean again.

But a short distance away, the culprit had dumped another garbage can. That, too, was cleaned up.

And at the other end of the block, on Third Avenue, yet another garbage can. Two McDonald’s employees were out there busily scooping it all up and putting it back in the can.

A half block away, on Victoria Street, a fire truck sat with its flashers on. In front of it was a police cruiser, likewise blinking away, and the firefighters and cops were gathered around dealing with somebody who was having a bad night.

I figured it must be just another night in the core and another street person who had been behaving badly. The next evening at another event, someone told me the presence of the first responders wasn’t connected to the garbage-can tipping. The latter was indeed the work of a street person but it simply somebody who was looking for food and not being at all careful about it.

So, I suppose we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about why people do things, but the big take-away from the evening was that everyday people take pride in their city and won’t stand idly by letting anybody mess it up.

They’ll pitch in and get the job done. It’s a pretty cool thing to see.

AROUND THE TOWN — Ran into former KDN reporter Jason Hewlett in the cash-bar lineup at the chamber mixer the other night, and not a moment too soon — I was cashless. He bailed me out…. April is an anniversary month for a couple of well-known locals. Josh Keller has been at TRU for 26 years; Gwen Kreps has been with Mary Kay Cosmetics eight years…. I enjoyed talking with NL’s Jim Harrison on his show this week. Big renovations going on at the station, with operations being centralized on the second floor… Great evening at the Distinguished Service Awards and a chance to catch up with former mayors John Dormer and Cliff Branchflower.

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