What the?

So, I gave out Halloween candy for the first time tonight since I moved out of my parents' house, 7 years ago. I've either lived in university residences or apartment buildings since then, but our current apartment is in an old house, so we actually have a front door that kids can come to. So fun!

Our door is actually shared with one of the other apartments, so the neighbour gave out candy until I got home at 6:30 and then I took over so she could take her little daughter out trick-or-treating.

It wasn't that busy - maybe 25 kids in an hour - so I got some reading done.

But the weirdest thing....we had at least six grown-ups who came to the door, in costume, with candy bags, and no kids with them. At first I thought, "oh, their kids must be sick at home and they're out getting candy." But by #6....nope, I think it was just fully-grown adults capitalizing on an opportunity for free candy.

Most of them were in their forties, I'd say. One notable exception, and by far the scariest "costume" of the evening, was a woman about my age, who was good and pregnant. She had rolled her shirt up and tucked it under her breasts, and painted a huge pumpkin on her belly.

No, I'm not kidding. I couldn't make that stuff up if I tried.

I was so shocked that I was actually at a loss for words (yes, a rare occurrence for me). "So, uh, you're trick-or-treating...." I finally stammered out. "Yup!" she responds, "next year, I'll bring him." she says, pointing to her belly. I told her we'd looking forward to seeing the baby next year. Then she showed me the Eeyore tattoo on her ankle and said she'd probably dress the baby up as Eeyore. And then she was gone.

Weird.


I was tempted to get all judgmental about all this. Then I did some thinking.
This past Saturday, the local newspaper published the paper with the front page blank. Apparently, they explained that the blank page was in honour of the 100,000 people in this city who live below the poverty line but never make the front page. I was really impressed when I heard about it. This is a working-class city, and half the city works in the steel industry. It follows that if the majority of your population is one step out of poverty, you're also going to have a high poverty rate. We also have the 2nd or 3rd highest population of recent immigrants in the country, many of whom are refugees. There are a lot of reasons for the high poverty rate, but it's still shocking to me.

In tutorial today, we somehow ended up talking about the fact that poverty is the #1 determinant of health. Genetics be damned, the best thing you can do for your health is to be rich. The second best thing is to be happy. They are not the same thing.

There's an overwhelming body of evidence that shows a direct correlation between socioeconomic status and health. We ended up musing today about how much more impact a physician could have on his or her patients simply by taking half of his or her salary and giving it back to the patients, in the form of anti-poverty initiatives. We concluded that it would probably make more of a difference than all of the drugs and fancy tests we could hand out.

I have a lot of guilt about living in one of the richest countries in the world. Even as a "starving student," I have a higher standard of living than the majority of people in the world can even dream of, and it bothers me. But sometimes I forget that I also have it a lot better than many of the people in my own country...my own city....my own neighbourhood.

There's currently an enormous uproar in Ontario about an aboriginal reserve in the far north that has had a "boil water" advisory for years. Their water is grossly polluted, and their people are ill as a result. Somehow, this got into the media recently, and the resulting public outcry pushed the provincial government to evacuate the community. (This in itself was quite the big deal, because aboriginal affairs are generally the exclusive domain of the federal government.)

Sounds like a good thing, right? It is, but here's the catch: over one hundred aboriginal reserves in this country currently have drinking water that isn't safe to drink. Many have been that way for years - I heard one chief from a community in northern Ontario on the radio this morning. His community has been on a "boil water" order for ten years.

It disgusts me that in one of the richest countries in the world, we can't even provide clean water for our population. And don't even get me started on the fact that the particular population that is suffering as a result is the aboriginal population - our very own "third world country," right at home.

It makes me sad that I don't do more to make a difference. I wear my white wristband, and I talk a lot about poverty, but what do I actually do? And what will I do when I'm a doctor, a "respected member of society," who has a "responsibility to speak out against injustice"? (Both phrases quoted from a scholarship application that I submitted today.) Will I know then what to do?

Tonight, as I came inside after the trick-or-treaters had slowed to a trickle, it occurred to me that maybe all of those grown adults at my door tonight were there because they don't have other food to eat. Or maybe because they don't have enough money to buy themselves a treat, even once in a while, so they'll capitalize on any opportunity that comes along to get something for free. I can't say I blame them. And I hope they enjoy the cheesies.