When I started thinking about certain topics I would be able to write on for my columns, I had about three ideas that came to mind.

I started by thinking about my passions.

Sports are at the forefront of what came to mind but I wanted something that would cover a larger audience and that wouldn’t have people skipping over my columns.

The second idea that came to me was to talk about politics.

Now politics isn’t really one of my strengths or something that I enjoy writing on too often, so I moved on again.

Then a third idea hit me.

That idea is to write about the kind of culture or society we currently live in and to use an example of something I read or saw to back up my thoughts.

I thought about this idea for a while and decided that it is both interesting enough and can vary enough week to week that I chose to pick this as my column topic.

This week, I want to discuss the cold snap we’ve been stuck in and how that affects how we help other people.

Winter finally hit us over the past couple weeks and that includes temperatures regularly around minus 25 to 35 degrees.
Now I love Lethbridge.

I spent the large majority of my youth in that city and it has and will always be home to me.

But something happened recently in Lethbridge that shows the negative side of our society in a big way.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across a post about a women who was taking her son to the University on the city’s west side.

On her way there, she notices a man that was lying on the sidewalk in the downtown area.

She said that there was one man that was trying to help the man lying down and she could tell that the man helping was homeless.

She said that she worried about the situation but kept going.

Then, taking the same route back from the university, she saw the one man had left and the other man was still lying on the ground.

This time she decided to stop.

She grabbed a couple blankets from her car and went over to help the man, who was folded up in the fetal position, and called 911.

She then stayed with him until the ambulance arrived and then proceeded on her way.

In her post, she fully acknowledged that she hadn’t stopped to help the first time, but was still clearly upset about the fact that in the close to 30 minutes it took to drive to the university and back, no one else had stopped to help.

Now something like this happening is probably upsetting to a lot of us and I hope that we could say that we would’ve stopped and helped the man who was struggling but the facts are that with our busy lives, we might just drive by like most of the people did.

But there was also a story on the flip side of this equation.

Residents of Chicago were also feeling the cold side of winter recently and a beautiful story came out of that city.

Chicagoan Candice Payne knew that the below zero temperatures would be too cold for the over 100 homeless people living in a small camp in the city.

Without hesitation, she decided to charge 20 hotel rooms on her American Express card to give some these people a place to stay out of the bitter cold.

Once word got out, more and more people started donating food, money and transportation to get many more homeless people into the hotel to stay warm.

When all was said and done, enough money was received to cover 60 hotel rooms, which accommodated over 100 people.

After seeing these two stories, I though about what kind of community we would all prefer to live in.

I think it’s pretty clear that all of us believe what happened in Chicago is more closely aligned to how we want our community in the Crowsnest Pass to be like.

Now it’s up to us to truly create that kind of community and society here and with the people I’ve met since living here, I believe we are well on our way.