AYLMER, QUEBEC | It only takes a PD day and a sunny afternoon to bring the kids out to Aylmer's main mall. There are always a few hanging around the back doors, and I had assumed they were waiting for the cinema to open. It's just been pointed out to me that there's more going on there than that.

There's often the smell of dope in the air, but it's hard to tell where the scent is coming from. Who cares? Kids lighting up before a movie seems as natural as adults needing a half-dozen beers to get through a football or hockey game.

"Look around and you'll see more than kids toking up," a twenty-something told me. "They're selling it there, and they're selling other stuff, too, worse than weed."

What's passing hands just outside the back doors of our town's biggest mall are small straws full of white powder, and white pills. Stand out there inconspicuously and you'll note this is not an adult trade; the kids buying the straws look to be as young as ten.

Where do kids that young get the money?

Where do the bigger kids get the product they sell?

Why are there are so few police around, and if they are there, why do they come in obvious as a tuba player in a swimming pool?

I wonder why kids want to try this stuff and I wonder why there isn't more for teenagers to do? Why the teen centre isn't in their face, designed on standards from other countries where teen centres work. I wonder why there's no money for all this?

I wonder why there is money to attract thousands of young athletes for a week (the 2010 Games), but not enough money for our youth centres? Are the youths at the Games feeling just as desperate and trapped?

I wonder, if we value sports and recreation so much, why we'll invest millions, and pay for it for generations to come, in an Olympics-like spectacle, but we won't fund our local sports teams adequately?

I wonder why as we start spending more for these wonderful Games, we are cutting 25 percent of the local teams' budget this year Ð with a 100 percent cut next year?

I wonder how a baseball organization that occupies and stimulates 300-plus kids, can survive on zero-funding from the city, or minor hockey, figure skating, and our splendid gymnastics club?

Aylmer has produced super athletes. Are they supposed to hold bake sales, while the big shots cut the ribbon and enjoy the fire works at the opening of the 2010 Games Ð an opening ceremony which should cost about what the soccer clubs need for a full year's operation?

I wonder why we are so expensively enamored of the high-flyers, while back at our mall straws of white powder are being sold to our kids who say there's nothing to do here.

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Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/04.08