Helping those who need it

In fact, there are more of them than you think. These homes already dot the West Island, and most of us don't even know they’re there. Some of the residents fighting the notion of the home do so, because to allow a home for adults with developmental delays would be the first step on a slippery slope to all kinds of miscreants. Other residents have decried a drop in their property values – a cry heard from the ignorant when neighbourhoods were first beginning to integrate racially in the years following the Second World War – and further concerns came up about the homeowner profiting from the home's 'institutional' use.

To this, we say: nonsense. Property values are not going to decline because six developmentally delayed adults live down the street, and it doesn't mean that the neighbourhood is going to decline quickly into inner-city Detroit. Put the shoe on the other foot; what if it was your son or daughter whose quality of life depends on living in an area they are familiar with, near their families, and with peers. What's troubling is that in the year 2008, otherwise right-thinking adults are working themselves into a lather over their own quality-of-life concerns while attempting to deny the same to others.

The not-in-my-backyard sentiment has been rearing its ugly head more often since last September's Sunnybrooke train-station parking-lot fiasco.

In Dorval, much of the same fuss is being made by a couple of Dorval Village merchants opposed to the addition of a crematorium to the funeral home that has been there for 50 years. Apparently, the 'creepiness' factor of the crematorium is upsetting to some.

In a world that is increasingly specific, and where we can order our coffees with a double-soy-nonfat-cinnamon-extra foamy-cappuccino with a shot of espresso, many of us are guilty of thinking we can order our neighbourhoods the same way: exactly the way we want them, always and forever.

Let us remind the good people opposed to these moves that some Kirkland residents said the same thing about the West Island Palliative Care Residence before it opened in 2001.

We can safely call the groundbreaking residence one of the best examples of a community taking care of the people who need it. Let's do the same here.