Posts tagged saskatoon
A StarPhoenix Community Blog
Graduation Pow wow at the University of Saskatchewan
The Trouble With Alvin
By Charles Hamilton and David Hutton, The StarPhoenix
Less than an hour after Alvin Cote is released from the drunk tank, he is back on the street, trying to bum 15 cents so he can buy another bottle.
“It’s open at 11: 30, right? I gotta get there,” Cote laughs, slouching on a green metal bench across the street from the police station’s detention cells. He spent the night there after being arrested for public drunkenness.
The stench of booze still hangs heavy on his breath. Cote’s teeth are rotted or missing, his lips swollen. As he talks, remnants of food are visible between the large spaces on his teeth. Crumbs spill onto his filthy sweat pants, and his oversized parka.
Alvin Cote has been arrested for public drunkenness 843 times, more than any other individual in Saskatoon in the last two decades, according to records confirmed by The StarPhoenix.
In 2009, he occupied the drunk tank 109 times. The police detention cells have become his makeshift shelter. There are nights or mornings when he shows up banging on the police station window at the tail end of a bender, looking for a place to sleep.
“I give Alvin a couple of years at the most,” says Staff Sgt. Brian Mitzel, a veteran cop who has come to know Cote well over five years as a supervisor at the police detention cells. “There have been nights where I thought he was going to be dead by morning.”
Alvin is a character of the streets, his hunch noticeable even at distance. He has a stringy grey beard and moustache, and wears large glasses. All cops working downtown know him by name.
Alvin (Taken with instagram)
#moon over #snow drifts #yxe (Taken with instagram)
Canada Post today issued three new stamps as part of the Art Canada series. These particular stamps are based on the work of Saskatchewan sculptor Joe Fafard.
Fafard has received numerous honours for his work, including being named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. He is well known for his cows and currently lives on an acreage near Lumsden, Sask.
Andrew photographed a snowy owl near Colonsay at dawn on Sunday morning.
I photographed a snowy owl at dawn today near Colonsay, Saskatchewan.
Unfortunately this is as close as I could get, with a 300mm plus 1.4x extender. Stalked him through a farmer’s field, and fortunately it wasn’t a typical frigid prairie morning.
I read it in The Star! Bridges!
Read The StarPhoenix #yxe (Taken with instagram)
Some more archival photos i shoot for @persephonethea play called the 39 steps
It is a great show.
Heres the pitch on http://www.persephonetheatre.org/
“The Tony Award winning vaudevillian spy comedy The 39 Steps is a wacky mixture of mystery, mayhem and murder. Richard Hannay is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime: a beautiful woman, an accusation of murder, a missing finger and wild chase across the moors of Scotland. He just doesn’t know it yet. Don’t miss this hilarious nonstop caper!”
#yxe #citypark (Taken with instagram)
Dropping Colours: Breaking from gangs is a matter of life and death.
By Charles Hamilton, Bridges
Photos by Andrew Spearin
One frigid January morning, Brad Christianson woke up in his own bed, knowing he would fall asleep that night in the confines of the Saskatoon Correctional Centre.
The evening before his sentencing, he had a tattoo inscribed on the inside of his right forearm that read: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
The tattoo is a permanent resignation, a symbolic end to his life as a Saskatoon gangster.
Christianson joined his first gang when he was 14-years old. Six months later he was doing his first stint in prison.
He has a sordid history of selling drugs and possessing weapons. He has been charged at least five times for break-ins.
“You can be a good gangster, you can be good at stabbing people, you can be good at robbing people; no matter what you want to do you can be good at it,” he tells a group of Grade 11
students, many of them noticably emotional as he gives his presentation. “But if you are going to gang bang you are going to jail. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.”
At age 23, he barely looks older than a teenager. He wears baggy clothes and a baseball cap rests loosely on top of his head. This, despite the fact he has spent six of his last nine years in prison — first in Kilburn Hall then the Saskatoon Correctional Centre, where he was transferred on his 18th birthday.
It’s the day before his court appearance and Christianson is sitting on a couch at the back of a classroom at Holy Cross high school. He is spending his last day of freedom with these students, hoping to convey to them the brutal reality of gang life.
“I used to drive over here and park behind the hockey rink and sell dope out of my car,” he says, almost beneath his breathe, before making his presentation.
He pulls up the sleeve of his baggy skateboard hoodie to reveal another of his recent tattoos. In jagged script is the moniker of his new-found brotherhood, Str8 Up.
“It’s all or nothing,” he says. “It’s either you’re 100 per cent gang banger or 100 per cent working man, trying to make his life better.”
-48 windchill #yxe #winter (Taken with instagram)
