EDITORIAL: Stopping the killing

This year can’t end soon enough.  Last Friday the city witnessed its ninth – and most public – murder of 2014.

Twenty-year-old Daniel Levac of Sachigo Lake First Nation lost his life, yet another student from a remote community to die in Thunder?Bay.
Aboriginal murders this year have become an epidemic. Of the nine murders, eight invovled First Nations victims.

At least one high-placed politician in the city has suggested a mentoring program for youngsters arriving in our community.

If the current schooling system is going to be kept in place, something has to be done at the grassroots level to prepare young Aboriginal students for what life is like in the big city.

Coming from small communities, with the benefit of parents and other relatives to keep watch, they’re dropped into Thunder?Bay, where a whole new world of pitfalls await. And often the proper supervision just isn’t in place.

Clearly, many aren’t ready. Education is the future, but not at any cost.

The residence being built in town for students attending Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School is a good start.

Teens of any background are too young and often too naive to try to survive on their own. It’s too easy to make bad choices. As a society, it’s time for us to step up and fill the cracks they’re falling through.