I’ve made a study of our cat, West, and feel I’ve taken some valuable lessons from him.

1- He is always right in the present and where he wants to be. I’ve noticed this about cats, and have often said if reincarnation is a thing, I’ve like to come back as a cat.

2- He is playful, even as an old cat he seems to forget he is older, running around like a kitten and is always up to play. I often wonder if it is because there are no other cats around him to remind him of what old looks like.

3- He only reacts and doesn’t over-react. When I play-fight with him, he only reacts to what happens, and not to what he thinks is going to happen. If I reach toward him, he only reacts if I grab him. And if I grab him, he only reacts with the exact amount of force that I use. If I act like I am going to grab him, he doesn’t react at all. It’s a state I’ve worked toward in martial arts and tai chi. Focusing on the present and not worrying about the future or potential problems is a great lesson learned from this. It is a perfect balance.

Mindfulness and being in the present are great lessons I’ve taken from observing this cat. It reminds me to worry less about things that might happen in the future, or things that happened in the past that I cannot change.

Working in law enforcement for over 40 years, I’ve seen a lot of death, and was always aware that I might be in a position to capture a person’s dying declaration. I’ve always held that it could be a honour to be there, and ensure that a person’s last wishes are at least carried forward. I did not know this columnist, Shawna Forrester Smith, but when I read this last article she wrote, it struck me that it is not often that someone knows they are going to pass on and can write their last thoughts with time for thought and consideration. This is such a dying declaration, and I wanted to use my tiny platform to share it forward for Ms. Smith.                                                                                                                                                                             

‘I had a wonderful life despite all the hard stuff’    Chronically ill, disabled Free Press columnist Shawna Forester Smith died last week, three months after writing thisCompass for LivingBy: Shawna Forester Smith

Posted: 4:53 PM CST Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025        

This last column I won’t ever read because if you’re reading this, it means I have left this Earth for whatever is next.

Someone I knew left a Compass for Living when she died and I thought it was brilliant, so I am stealing her idea. Thanks, JoAnn — may your memory be a blessing.

So here it is.

Shawna’s Compass for Living
Collect people, not things. Things offer fleeting happiness. Relationships are what give our lives meaning and purpose, not stuff.
Choose love. Love the shit out of your family and friends. Tell people that you love them. Show love towards strangers because we are all connected.
Choose kindness. It’s actually less effort to be kind than it is to be an asshole. Perform acts of kindness every day. They don’t have to be big or expensive. It can be as simple as giving a hug or listening to someone.
You’re never too old for a stuffy. This I was told by a wise beyond her years nine-year-old who died far too young.
Don’t be afraid to do things because of the word ‘no.’ Because what if they say yes?
There’s no such thing as too much education or wasted learning.
You can have more than one soulmate.
Family is also the people we choose.
Every stranger has the potential to be a friend.
Help people if you can — it’s the right thing to do. Help as many people as you can. Help your family and friends and help strangers, too. You will rarely regret helping someone.
The best gift you can give someone is your time.
Visit the sick, elderly and isolated people who you know. Visit them often. It means more than you will ever know.
Write people letters and send people cards. It’s a delight to get fun mail.
Be grateful. Be gracious. Remember to say miigwetch.
Leave the judgment to the Creator. Try not to judge others — we don’t walk their path.
We get out of life what we put into it. If you want love, love others. If you want to be treated with respect, respect others. It’s pretty simple really.
We’re all creative. Find your outlet. Creating is medicine.
It’s not so much what happens to us that matters in life, it’s how we react to what happens to us that really matters. That is what weave control over.
It’s never too late to forgive or ask for forgiveness. Don’t leave the Earth with unfinished business. Make right the wrongs.
Find your person. The person who gets you better than anyone else. The person you feel safe with and trust. The person who you can bare your soul to. The person who loves you warts and all. The person who will always be there for you. We all need a person like that.
I had a really good life despite it being really hard. I loved so many people and I was loved by so many people. I fell in love and remained in love with my husband, Brent, for over 20 years. I also found my “person.” I had the love of not one, but four families because of adoption, finding my birth families and marriage. I had a huge chosen family. There are so many people who called me their daughter, their sister and their auntie who I didn’t share blood with.
There are a lot of people who called me their bestie. I had more than one-person I considered a kindred spirit.
I made connections with so many caregivers over the years. People who shared laughter and tears with me. People who worried about me. Some of them told me their secrets and asked me for advice.
I have so much love and gratitude for all the caregivers who looked after me on my journey. Without them, I would have been dead years ago. They gave me the gift of time. And what a wonderful gift that was.
I’d like to thank all of you for being there, too. So many people have reached out to me to tell me how much my writing meant to them and what an impact it made. People also honoured me by sharing their stories and struggles. It truly was an honour.
I was inundated with cards, letters, emails, phone calls, messages on social media, gifts, homemade gifts, flowers and even people surprising me becoming in person to see me. I made friends because of the column. People asked if they could visit me.
Never in a million years when I started this column in February 2024, did I expect any of this. I didn’t plan on writing that much about me. My plan was to write about health-care issues. The paper initially didn’t commit to anything either.
Writing about my life was a surprise but those were the columns you readers seemed to enjoy the most. And I really enjoyed writing them. Chimiigwetch for all the love and support you gave me. It was a great gift.
I also want to thank the Free Press. Editor Paul Samyn took a chance on me. I made sure to thank him for that.
My fearless editor, Scott Gibbons, was a pleasure to work with. He had the gift of being able to edit my writing without distorting my voice. That is not something that every editor can do. He always understood the importance of what I was doing.
I was allowed to write about whatever I wanted. That’s pretty much every columnist’s dream job. They helped make a lifelong dream come true from. It never felt like work. I enjoyed writing every word. I also enjoyed writing back to everyone who wrote to me.
I’ll end this by reminding you the most important thing in life is the people we choose to share it with. You can never have too many people. Strangers are just people we aren’t friends with yet. Don’t get so preoccupied with living life that your relationships suffer.
Make time for the people in your life. Don’t put off spending time with your family and friends. The laundry will still be there.
Make sure your people know how much you love them. If you put love into the universe, you will be showered with love in return. And isn’t that wonderful.
Life is hard, but life is also amazing. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. I’d appreciate fewer health conditions if I had a second kick at the can, but I had a wonderful life despite all the hard stuff. The good stuff made it worth it.
If there’s a newspaper in the afterlife, hopefully they will let me write for it. I won’t let fear of ‘no’ stop me from asking this time. Because what if they say yes?

Stepping into a new year, I’ve reflected on my failings and successes in the last, feeling a renewed sense of purpose and resolve, striving to stay the course, embrace the obstacles that life offers up, and keep my eye on the horizon. Placing one foot in front of the other, my goal, both long and short, has been to contribute something useful in society, and to those around me. My hope and plan are the same in 2025, perhaps with a renewed sense of determination as I’ve had a deepening wisdom with age, that our time is limited, so we better get on with it.

Some famous words of George Bernard Shaw resonate more and more with me; “This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations” (George Bernard Shaw, 1856 – 1950).

Compassion in the front-line and Winnipeg’s new Community Safety Team

Ten years ago, I wrote an editorial, which was published in the Winnipeg Free Press and highlighted the humanitarian culture in our city, and the heart that front-line emergency responders invest in protecting our vulnerable. As the cycle of things go, we seem to continuously revisit social issues and solutions to them. Perhaps the lesson in this is that we need to find solutions for the urgent issues, but then we have to sustain them as well. One constant has been the compassion and devotion of front-line emergency services, police, fire, paramedic, medical staff, and social workers who all carry the burden of dealing directly with social issues and community safety on the front-line. I see now, more than ever, the passion that public safety personnel have for the vulnerable, and the burden they bare, the moral injuries and operational stress that they carry always striving to do more with less. Having completed 34 years in front-line policing, as-well-as my post-doctoral fellowship with the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment, I am acutely aware of the emotional burden that is continually imposed on contemporary emergency services.

While social justice is not their primary mandate, emergency services are the ones who, day in and day out, strive to help homeless people get in from the cold, protect people suffering debilitating substance-abuse or mental-health issues and advocate for them. In the vast majority of cases, they do their best for people in need. This phenomenon is not unique to Winnipeg, but our history has a particular social-justice character. We are a compassionate city, perhaps because of our diversity and the deep social issues we have struggled with as a community. Ten years ago I wrote (Free Press, 2014),

It is no accident the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the first national museum established outside the Ottawa capital region, was opened in Winnipeg to serve as a beacon for human rights and social justice. This intellectual underpinning is part of our compassionate culture. However, it is the people at street level who actually look out for vulnerable peoples’ basic human rights. It is the people who do the right thing for fellow human beings when nobody is looking that are our real protectors of human dignity. It is the businessperson who volunteers at a soup line and the child who stands up for a bullied peer at school. Each of us plays a part in our own unique ways, but we are all a part of our community. The thing we know for sure is working together we are all stronger. As long as we continue to have problems in our community, we all must ask ourselves what we have done today to help make the situation better. “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.” (Khalil Gibran). We all know ways we can contribute, but until we act, we know we haven’t unleashed our full potential.

Now we have the City of Winnipeg’s new Community Safety Team, stood up to help take the burden along with existing resources, to improve a feeling of safety in the city. With Transit as our first priority, it seems fitting as many of our community’s problems are intensified in our public transportation system. The more we all collaborate and find collective multi-sectoral, multi-faceted ways to combine and focus our efforts, the greater synergies and momentum for peace and brighter our future will be. The Community Safety Team was built with a culture of compassion for our most vulnerable citizens, with a goal of connecting people with the right resources, but also with the tools to protect them. Coming from a lifetime of over 40 years devoted to law enforcement, this new team feels like the perfect element to fill many of the system gaps that I’ve watched grow over the past two decades.

JCSWB-9-60

Screenshot

FIRST CLASS GRADUATION

Winnipeg Free Press

Finding applicants for a tough job

By: Editorial

Posted: 2:00 AM CST Friday, Dec. 8, 2023

AT first glance, it seems like a job nobody would want. The City of Winnipeg is seeking recruits for its Transit security force, whose officers, unarmed, will be tasked with protecting passengers and drivers from the myriad threats and disruptions that have become commonplace aboard the city’s besieged public-transit system.

It’s a role whose complexities would be daunting to even the most ambitious and qualified of applicants — performing what are essentially law-enforcement functions without access to many of the tools (such as firearms or Tasers) available to actual police officers, with the expectation that their mandated non-violent crisis intervention will be coupled with an emphasis on linking those causing the often-violent disturbances on buses with the resources and supports necessary to address the mental-health and addiction issues that motivate their actions.

Officers will be outfitted with protective body armour, handcuffs and slash-resistant gloves, as well as batons which could be used in emergency situations, and will be authorized to arrest and detain.

Despite the inherent difficulty of the task set out in the job description, there does appear to be significant interest. According to Robert Chrismas, the former Winnipeg Police Service officer hired to lead the security force, more than 60 applications were received in the first 24 hours after the posting appeared online.

In a radio interview this week, he estimated more than 100 applications had been received for the positions of 20 full-time safety officers and two supervisors, with the expectation that hiring and training will be completed in January and the “community safety team” will be installed aboard Winnipeg Transit buses in February.

That’s a welcome measure of good news for a public-transportation system whose operators and passengers are desperately in need of encouragement. While this relatively modest initiative — 20 officers dispersed across a transit fleet whose daily rush-hour complement exceeds 500 buses — cannot possibly address all the ongoing issues, a strategic response targeted to areas of greatest concern could be an valuable first step toward confronting Transit’s ills and beginning the long process of rekindling public interest in public transportation.

The question, of course, is whether the propitious early interest will deliver a field of recruits truly suited to the formidable task at hand. Chrismas describes the safety-officer job as “not an extension of the police force; not purely a security function,” but instead “a heavy emphasis on the authorities that being a sworn peace officer bring, and compassionate, trauma-informed, non-violent crisis intervention (including) how to draw on all the mental-health and addictions resources in the community.”

It remains to be seen how officers’ in-the-moment actions to resolve on-board crises will lead to longer-term interventions and connections with resources and services. There will doubtless be an evolution of the security team’s functions as it becomes a permanent and (one hopes) expanding feature of the transit service, but its immediate goal must be to provide those who ride and drive the buses with a level of confidence that they are safe from harm.

City council was wise, in formulating this crucial initiative, to set pay scales that should attract candidates who view these new roles as a serious career option. Safety-officer salaries will range from $78,000 to $99,000, while supervisors will earn between $85,000 and $115,000.

This will not be an inexpensive undertaking for a city whose budgets are forever constrained. But since it now appears these are jobs that somebody really does want, it’s imperative that this effort to make public transit safer is rolled out in a manner that ensures it’s money well spent.