Public Bathrooms and Lack of Access-A Conversation Transcription.

The below account has not been edited other than for anonymity's sake of the community partners. This account is a personal reflection based on lived experience and opinions. It is shared for the purpose of documentation, awareness, and critique of institutional practices. This story is not intended to incite harm or harassment toward any individual. Names and identifying details have been omitted or altered where appropriate to respect privacy and safety. All incidents are allegations not proven in a court of law, and the Archive does not investigate or vouch for the veracity of reported incidents.

Transcribed by Otter.AI the above has not been edited for clarity.

We're here on like, Whyte Ave, and there's businesses that are always just like, all these homeless people, like peeing on the back of our stores, breaking our windows, causing a scene, and it's like, and how much of that, though, is because it's like, you know, how many times can you be told, No, you can't go to the bathroom here before you break like, I think about that all the time that you know we have the privilege of being able to go in to private to do our business. This is like, sometimes we just can't. And, yeah, and it's just like, how many, how many little, tiny indignities could you suffer before you were like, fuck you. And I think a lot of people actually have a pretty short fuse for that. And like in my day job, I interact with public quite frequently. And it's staggering how many people have like, freak outs every, every single day. But they have their freak outs at home, or they're, you know, they're freaking out, but they have enough money that they can get in their car and drive away once things get heated, like they don't have to have these crises in public. And so no one really notices or cares, but someone has a crisis in public, and suddenly they're getting thrown into the concrete face first by a police officer and. It's just like this ridiculous double standard, and from a harm reduction perspective, it really doesn't need to exist. Like one of the campaigns that we had a few years ago was like potties, not police that think about how much better our communities would be, especially like white Avenue downtown, if we had public bathrooms everywhere. Like, how much less conflict would there be if people weren't being turned away from businesses all the time? If they weren't, like, forced to take a poop behind a dumpster because they wanted, just like, any kind of privacy whatsoever, our streets would be way safer. Like, people would be like, much nicer to one another, and it would also be nice even for just like everybody else, but it's not provided. One of my favorite little things that I found in the archives is that in 1921 the city council passed like a little like construction passed a budget item to build a public rest house on Jasper avenue of 100 bathroom stalls. This was in like 19 the 1920s the population of Edmonton was like 10,000 people. But the what they identified was that there were lots of people who are just now getting cars, and like driving into Jasper, Ave from outlying communities, and they didn't have anywhere to go to the bathroom, and so they said, We will build a rest house so that all of these people coming into Edmonton, and like anyone who is just like coming to Jasper, ave to do their shopping, has some of that they can go to the bathroom, and they don't have to bother a shopkeeper to use the bathroom in the Back or something like that, if the shops even happened at the time. And like, we don't have that many public bathrooms in the entire city of Edmonton in 2025 like, there is not 100 stalls of public bathrooms in the entire city. And 100 years ago, we had that many on Jasper Avenue alone. Yeah. And it's just like, It's little things like that where you're like, This is what would make our community safer. This is what would reduce tension, what would reduce anger, what would make people, just like, have a nicer time being in public with one another.

I think about that sometimes too, because like, conflict does happen when we're doing street outreach, and a lot of that conflict happens because there is, like, it happens over the use of public space that it's like, there are people who just, like, want to be here for some other purpose, and then there are people who are forced to live here in public and like, of course, that's going to cause friction. Like, if you had someone who had to walk through your house every day in order to, like, get to work, you would also probably be pretty pissed, like it would feel like a violation and and so it's like we are forcing people to navigate those just like constant small level conflicts and constant small level frustrations, and those build up over time, and then they explode. And you don't need a police officer to prevent that from happening. A police officer is going to attend way too late when all of those little frustrations have already built up and now someone is freaking out in public. And from a harm reduction perspective, what if instead, we just didn't have all those frustrations like, what if, instead of people having to deal with someone smoking meth on the train. We had adequate amount of supervised consumption sites for inhalation, which we have literally zero of in the city. There's nowhere that you can do supervised consumption of inhalation drugs. Does not exist. And so people are like, why are people using on the train? Where else is there? Where else is there to go? And it's like, and then again, so the police officer has to attend and get this person who is just trying to survive in public to go somewhere else. And like, that's yet another frustration is that it's like, once again, like, Oh, great. Someone has called the cops on me for just fucking trying to have a normal day and building up more and more of those little like points of anger and frustration between people who are housed people are unhoused.

City of Edmonton

Jasper Avenue

anonymous

Recording of conversation with harm reduction community organizer - includes description of multiple incidents and general impacts of police violence.

Public Bathrooms and Lack of access-A conversation Transcription.