Man who died inside recycling bin had a name and a story

We must educate ourselves on root causes of such tragedies, Lori Campbell writes

When we learned about a man being crushed in a recycling bin on July 5, our minds were both distraught and sympathetic. We thought about the life that was lost. We thought about the workers who found him — how awful to have that happen during your workday. Many of us would have come to some quick conclusions about the man and his tragic death: homeless, drugs, alcohol, mental health, and more.

The news stories that followed identified him as an unnamed man with no fixed address. We learned that he did have a name. He had a life. He was remembered for his smile. It was left up to those who intersected with the tragic circumstances of his life to name him: Lenny Bowman. It was left to the street eulogies to make Lenny real for us. While his friends and peers looked for ways we could see his humanness, others chose to focus on his unfortunate history with the legal system: the various charges and convictions over the past six years that shaped the perception of Lenny’s life.

This loss hit close to home for us at NorQuest College because Lenny Bowman was here with us for a short time. He was a client of our Alberta Indigenous Construction Career Centre (AICCC), a facility that succeeds in placing Indigenous community members in construction jobs with corporate clients. The manager, Ruby Littlechild, guides that difficult balance of compassion and realism — knowing not all are ready to take up the opportunities they can offer, but setting the standard that everyone who walks through the door leaves with some hope.

NorQuest builds resilience in the community by empowering minds through education and supporting career-building, no matter who you are or what your background is. The AICCC’s clients are sometimes the most resilient of people, many of whom have faced unfathomable obstacles such as intergenerational trauma and the fallout of addictions, violence and sexual abuse.

At NorQuest College, we are committed to learner-centred education in a unique and inclusive learning environment. A pillar of this commitment is our Indigenization of the college, inspired by the Cree concept of wahkôhtowin.

The concept outlines our interrelatedness: “That all of life, including all humans, are connected together in a complex web of relationships, and what happens to any one part of the web of life affects everything else.” This is fundamental to our role in helping people and organizations become more inclusive as the diversity within our province continues to grow.

At NorQuest, the loss of a student — no matter how briefly their lives intersected with ours — is a deeply felt loss, and strengthens our commitment to provide an inclusive learning environment for students and employees where we all seek to understand the odds that people like Lenny face.

The AICCC describes itself as a powerful ally for the people it serves, but the centre is also an ally for the entire college. The employees teach and guide us to not turn our minds away when we hear stories like Lenny Bowman’s. We must redouble our commitment to be that college where we all want to know his name. In order to build a more inclusive community, we call on everyone to not become desensitized to these unnecessary losses of life and educate themselves and others on the root causes of these losses.

But it goes further than this. We all have a role to play because we all have much to learn from this tragedy.

We cannot ignore what happened or jump to conclusions. We must educate ourselves and others on the root causes of these losses.

Only then can we become an inclusive community that truly embraces diversity.