Daybreak reveals no easy fix for Galt Gardens

By Lethbridge Herald on August 4, 2023.

People are seen with their belongings after an encampment cleanup began Thursday morning at Galt Gardens. Herald photo by Al Beeber

This story is the first in a series that will run over the next days, as the Herald takes an on-the-ground look at the issues of homelessness, addiction and crime affecting the city’s downtown.

Al Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

People huddle under tents, or near the pergola, they slump on park benches or lay on hard concrete, fentanyl and meth pipes in their hands, butane cans nearby.

Garbage and discarded clothing are strewn everywhere from tables to the grass throughout the park. A man sits nearby at Festival Square watching closely as a reporter and a city councillor survey the scene, a person with a distinct resemblance to someone who a reporter saw recently dealing drugs downtown.

About 30 people are in Galt Gardens on this morning before dawn, shadowy figures who are either unconscious or lulling out of consciousness after inhaling their choice of drugs, mostly likely methamphetamine or fentanyl. One person lays flat in the seating area near the space used as a stage, barely responding when a police officer later tries to rouse him.

Others can be seen semi-standing in a slouching position, which a reporter is told is the effect of fentanyl on an addict’s muscles.

The base where the Cenotaph once stood before being moved to City Hall is covered with garbage and discarded clothing of varying sorts.

One person, the only one actually moving, methodically wanders around the southwest corner of Galt Gardens picking up litter and carrying it to garbage cans.

This is Galt Gardens, a park that is the subject of a contentious debate over public safety. 

A proposal to look into the feasibility of building a fence around the perimeter was recently shut down by city council in a narrow 5-4 vote. Before that official business motion presented by mayor Blaine Hyggen and deputy mayor John Middleton-Hope was discussed at council’s last meeting, a large and vocal protest was staged outside City Hall.

Opponents suggest the fence would stigmatize and discriminate against park users. 

Others feel money spent on fencing would be better used to provide housing for those who need it, housing being a provincial jurisdiction.

Galt Gardens was donated to the City of Lethbridge by the Galt family in 1909 and has long been the site to public events and gatherings of many types, casual strolls in daytime and evening, or just quick lunches.

Now it is a home to the unhoused, a place where tables are covered in filth, where the bathrooms by dawn have to be fastidiously cleaned by City workers who deploy at the park around 6:30 each and every morning.

That team of employees – 10 on Thursday – spends a couple of hours in Galt Gardens with pails, cleaning supplies and tongs to pick up needles and other debris. They spread out across the park before the Clean Sweep team hits the park as the sun rises.

Each day they have a huge job, cleaning up the enormous amount of detritus left behind for others to see during the day.

The cost of the cleanup efforts is hard to determine because according to the City, it fluctuates daily “as there are many variables, just as there are in any City park or facility.

“City staff perform a variety of tasks, comprised of planned and reactive activities. Daily planned activities include garbage collection, washroom cleaning and litter pickup. The park is mowed once per week and trimming is performed two-three times per season. Other planned activities that occur less frequently, include tree pruning, furniture inspections, shrub bed maintenance and irrigation startup/winterizing. Reactive activities take place when repairs are needed,” said the City in response to a question about how much that daily cleanup costs.

“These include graffiti removal, irrigation repairs, furniture repairs and responding to broken tree branches. Staff also prepare the park before a special event and clean up after the event. Parks & Cemeteries staff work collaboratively with the encampment team and the rest of Community Services to meet the changing needs of the community. Staff’s ability to pivot as needed, helps to ensure parks and green spaces are welcoming for everyone to enjoy,” added the City.

A fence, which would be bolted into the concrete sidewalk around the perimeter of the park, would allow Galt Gardens to be closed at night for the safety of all users including the homeless, says Middleton-Hope. It would not impact any of the trees along the perimeter of the park, he said, referring to a letter read to council when it addressed the OBM.

And while Middleton-Hope acknowledges there would be displacement of some unsheltered people, the hope is with increased shelter space to be available in north Lethbridge where the Blood Tribe Department of Health now runs the city shelter, then many of those park users would conceivably migrate to that area where they will be able to get a safe place to sleep and also gain access to the addictions and other services that will be available to them.

“Cities across North America have got this done and the reason that they do it is precisely because of this type of abnormal behaviour. What they want to do is ensure the safety of the park and that includes for anybody. This isn’t safe for these people to be here overnight anyway. So at the end of the day, we’re hoping to create an environment in here where normal users are allowed to come into this park and enjoy it. Whether we have soccer in the park or whether we have people playing bocce ball or there’s a lemonade stand, there’s the kids playground, there’s the spray park, there’s the pergola,” Middleton-Hope said.

“Don’t come through here at night,” he noted because there’s a very real chance people can get robbed or beaten up.

“A good portion of the property crime in Lethbridge is caused by drug addicts. They’re stealing property so that they can get money to buy drugs. The violent crime is predominantly drug addict on drug addict or the people that are living on the street to protect their drugs, to protect their property. That’s where the violent crime comes from.

“Yes, there is other violent crime and let’s not diminish the fact that we’re one of the highest centres in western Canada for domestic violence,” added Middleton-Hope.

“But at the end of the day, the reality is we have violent crime in this city but a lot of the violent crime we have is this. He’ll rob her or she’ll rob him or they’ll rob somebody else.”

He said the present Galt Gardens situation is an improvement over it was in the past, pointing to last year when the city allowed encampments there.

“There were 10 or 15 tents in here every night,” he said.

“The purpose of the park is to create a safe environment and that’s for everybody. So we put up fencing, we make sure that the public is protected, the park is clean.”

On this particular day, only four tents/structures are present in the park before a scheduled camp cleanup begins, one against the wall of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Out front, a boarded up window space greets visitors to SAAG. Near that same wall just a few months ago, a body was discovered early in the morning which attracted not only onlookers wondering if they knew the person but also a throng of media.

 Some days, says the councillor, there are as many as 20 sleeping structures visible in the park.

He says other communities have built fencing around public spaces for the same reason he wants to – for safety. And that’s for the safety of the homeless themselves, says the councillor, who reiterates that park inhabitants are at risk of violence from each other.

“It’s not safe for these people to be here” overnight, says the councillor during a pre-dawn stroll through the grounds.

A police officer who shows up later points to a pile of branches and mulch piled up on an transformer box, behaviour caused by the use of methamphetamine which has  users almost obsessively engaging in such activity.

Recently, a reporter saw that same behaviour in an alley where a person was sweeping away a section of driveway, totally consumed by his activity, oblivious to others or anything else around him.

Most activity in Galt Gardens involves ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl with only a few alcohol users anymore, said Sergeant Ryan Darroch of the LPS downtown policing unit just before he tries to rouse an individual laying on the ground. Fifteen years ago the park was Ground Zero for alcohol use but now booze is too expensive and meth is what most users are taking.

There aren’t many needle users left, either with addicts now more often inhaling meth or fentanyl. They’ll put a coat over themselves, said Darroch, and use enough to overdose, passing out in that position. So police check on them to make sure they’re still breathing.  

At the north wall of SAAG along a newer addition, police sometimes come across fires in a concrete trough that basically is formed by a sidewalk leading to a door with a short raised wall.

“This was not what the intent was” when the Galts donated the land, said Middleton-Hope who is a popular target of some on social media.

“One of the ways in which you deal with abnormal behaviours is you create normal behaviours so that’s one of the reasons why we’ve got the playground going in, we’ve got the spray park, we’ve got the extension on SAAG. But you can’t just put those in and expect people to use them. You have to create an environment where they’re going to use and unfortunately the environment down here is not hospitable to normal users, it’s hospitable to abnormal users.

“These people that come into the park, sleep here and do drugs and leave refuse and so forth, those are referred to as abnormal users. And that’s the kind of problem we’re dealing with and it’s an ongoing issue,” said Middleton-Hope.

With a long law enforcement career behind him including time spent as Chief of Lethbridge Police Services, Middleton-Hope knows the issues of homelessness and addictions are complex and there is no easy fix.

But he also believes all members of the public deserve to feel safe  – including the homeless whose plight, despite what some may believe, he does have compassion for – and the activities of a small number of people are impacting that safety for all including the vulnerable who sleep, do drugs, overdose and sometimes die in the park from their addictions – deaths the possible drug dealer getting into the back seat of a taxi at Festival Square may not care about as he finally leaves the area still eyeing the two unfamiliar faces standing on the edge of the park.

“If we don’t control access and egress, then what?,” asks the councillor.

“If we don’t put fencing up, this won’t go away,” he says.

It’s a question that may yet come up again in council chambers at some point.