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Story humanized homeless man's death

Dear Editor: Thank you for James Weldon's story on Doug Lalonde (A Man With a Name, Jan. 15), and thanks to his brother David for sharing it. I have so often heard, from surprising sources, that homeless people on the North Shore "are not from here.

Dear Editor:

Thank you for James Weldon's story on Doug Lalonde (A Man With a Name, Jan. 15), and thanks to his brother David for sharing it.

I have so often heard, from surprising sources, that homeless people on the North Shore "are not from here." Doug's story reminds us that they often are from here. They are our neighbours, whom we have too often ignored. We leave it to "the system" to take care of them, but systems are always short of resources and looking for reasons to exclude. We foster that with our emphasis on keeping taxes down for ourselves and our avoidance of people with problems. Of course Doug bore his own share of responsibility, but the article helped us to see the bigger picture.

Not long before Doug died in the container fire, another homeless man ended his life in a public place on Lower Lonsdale. It upset me that there was no attention paid to that event at all. Thank you for the attention you paid to this troubled man.

Donna Stewart, North Vancouver