ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – Fifty years ago, the ‘riff raff’ were a problem downtown

The terminology, drugs of choice, degree and our own tolerance level may have changed but downtown Kamloops had the same kinds of problems in 1976 as it does in 2026. The following Mel Rothenburger column was published in The Kamloops News on Oct. 1, 1976.

CONCERN EXPRESSED this week by the Downtown Business Association about “riff raff” in the downtown shopping area is well taken. Both before and after the meeting at which the subject was discussed, a reporter for this newspaper was approached on the street for handouts.

A drive down Victoria Street after shopping hours can be a disconcerting experience. On the street you have an assortment of vans and souped-up Dusters and the like, and on the sidewalks you have a strange collection of dirty, slovenly, drunken . . . well, riff raff.

This herd of night creatures spends many a waking hour in the local pubs and bars, when there is enough change around to afford it. Otherwise, the paperbag set inhabits the alleys and sidewalks.

It is easy to pick out the traditional Skid Road bum. In his fifties or sixties, he wears a crumpled up raincoat which would make Peter Falk envious, dirty brown pants and scuffed-up shoes and shirt, and he carries that paper bag. His puke-covered, graying hair is topped with a beat-up felt hat. He walks stooped. He spits. He smells.

But perhaps more disturbing is the sight of kids in their early teens well on the way to the same fate. Equally dirty, they, too, hang around the streets. They booze and fool around, but it isn’t that they’re people who couldn’t handle life. It isn’t that there “isn’t anything to do.”

It is, quite simply, a lifestyle.

It’s a frightening thought, but a lot of our so-called social problems are no longer the result of inability to cope, but of inheritance and conditioning.

In downtown Kamloops, the night creatures are starting to come out during the day. Drunken fistfights are not uncommon in the middle of the afternoon.

Just what the DBA or anybody else, including AA, Adonis House etc. etc. can expect to do about it is a good question which isn’t going to get an answer easily.

You can’t “cure” a lifestyle, any more than you can cure a religion or a culture. It’s been tried.

As for the hopes of creating something attractive downtown, it may or may not help. The mall idea has been around for years. Vancouver created a beautiful atmosphere out of a crumbling Granville Street, and that brought back the riffraff which had gone down to Gastown.

Efforts at sprucing up the downtown area have been met with absolutely no appreciation. Between the pigeons, the riffraff and the plain old juvenile delinquents, things haven’t gone well. The delinquents have broken off seedlings and dumped garbage in the bushes. Sort of takes away the incentive for improvement.

Yet the Downtown businesses are meeting more and more competition from shopping centres. The Kamloops shopper must have at his disposal the greatest selectivity in the world. As more centres go in — the spectacle of a new one between Valleyview Shopping Centre (recently experiencing financial problems) and the K-Mart centre being the most recent and interesting example — the situation for all businessmen gets tougher.

Small businesses have been folding in this town like there was no tomorrow, yet more pop up to fill the vacancies in the centres.

For years, the businessmen of Vernon successfully lobbied against allowing a single shopping centre in their city. Finally, they lost, and it may be the city’s loss.

In Kamloops, all we can do is give up and try to stimulate growth to bring in the business to keep everybody alive. And then, when things are back in some kind of balance, somebody will come along and decide there’s room for more shopping centres and industries, and the circle will start again.

And meanwhile, the riffraff will be doing their thing on Victoria Street.

Mel Rothenburger is, among other things, a retired daily newspaper editor. He’s been writing about Kamloops since 1970.