I don’t hear many visitors to cities such as Copenhagen or Amsterdam or the many livable cities like them in Europe that are more Victoria-sized come away saying: “What this place needs is more cars and parking.” For far too long, the automobile has been king in our cities, causing air and noise pollution, injuries and deaths, and contributing to inactivity and climate change. It is time it was dethroned. Victoria council is also trying with humaneness and compassion to deal with a perfect storm of homelessness and mental-health and substance-use problems, aggravated by COVID-19. These are problems that were not created by the city in the first place, but by other levels of government over the past decades.
She suggested that her heritage was advantageous, given the diverse nature of the Commonwealth’s members. Her majesty is reputed to have a small number of Black ancestors. The best known may be Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), said to be a princess from the African branch of the Portuguese royal family. Queen Charlotte was an amateur botanist, a patron of the arts and a promoter of social welfare in Britain. Why do humans need to vilify those we perceive as being different from us? Racism, sexism, ageism, religious fanaticism and all the other isms hold us back from being all we could be.
I worked in psychiatry in Victoria in the late 1980s and it was a revolving door for those who returned to the community without a stable and secure environment once their hospitalization ended. The victimization and criminality that is being experienced today had not materialized to today’s levels, but then, as now, it was inhuman to watch the never-ending cycle: hospitalize, stabilize and release. Governments and society must acknowledge that there are those among us who do not have the capacity to care for themselves and we as civil society must care for them. We have allowed this social experiment to continue over the last 40-plus years under the guise of self-determination and mitigation of structural costs.