Part seven of a series of stories submitted by members of the Slave Lake Homeless Coalition.

Jule Asterisk
For the Lakeside Leader

Alice Laboucan Loyie has been homeless in Slave Lake since the middle of July 2021, when she got out of the hospital. This is the first time she ever stayed outside.

She says, “my parents are probably rolling over in their grave.”

Alice has been in a wheelchair since a car accident in 1988.

Alice is from Whitefish Lake First Nation, where she had a home on reserve and her family didn’t need to pay rent. In Whitefish, Alice had nuns for teachers, and some of them were mean. Alice moved to Slave Lake when she was 14, and now has children and grandchildren here.

Slave Lake is considered a hub for a very wide area of our region, from even before contact with European settlers.

Alice’s mother was in residential school, and she told Alice what happened to her there but Alice will never tell; that’s between a mother and a daughter.

Alice said there were people trained to talk with residential school survivors, but they never did follow up to give people closure.

Alice says, “Those @$$#/$ opened a can of worms by getting her to talk about it; then they were gone and she went to Alberta (psychiatric) Hospital and only lasted a year after that.”

“I’m the queen bee around here,” Alice says as a young man brings her a hot beverage. She has lots of help, not because she yells at them, but because they know she can’t do some things on her own. Sometimes when she goes to do something, they even yell at her to let them do it. Alice doesn’t need pity, and she likes to help others.

Alice’s hope is to have a place of her own where she can feel safe and no-one will come and try to kick her out. She has money to pay rent, and has been trying to get a place, but feels labeled as a ‘homeless person’ now, and that means landlords won’t rent to her. She also wants to fight for custody of her grandchildren.

“Child welfare is the second coming of the residential schools,” she says. Children’s Services are supposed to have family enhancement and support people, but it seems to Alice that sometimes, they don’t go through their own steps, and instead of supporting families, take the children right out of the home. Then they pay other people to take care of these children.

Alice wants our community to know that homeless people are here. She claims they are homeless sometimes because landlords won’t rent to them.

Alice says, “Just because they see a homeless person, they assume we are alcoholic. I have money to pay rent but they label us. If they have the money, they have the control.”

Alice also said that if she doesn’t get a place to stay, she will go call CTV and blast Slave Lake. Alice has experienced racism here in Slave Lake … and it becomes even worse for her now because she is in a wheelchair.