"So put me on! Don’t be afraid!"

There’s nothing hidden in your head

The Sorting Hat can’t see,

So try me on and I will tell you

Where you ought to be.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Today at lunch I went to the bank to get some cash for an upcoming getaway to the Okanagan Valley with my partner Karli and her squad.  I work near Vancouver's Downtown East Side, and in order to get to the nearest branch of the CIBC, I have to pass Main and Hastings - possibly Canada's most notorious crossroads - walking past addicts and beggars, people selling drugs or selling their bodies, and people who have lost their grip on reality due to mental illness of some sort.

Every time I walk past that particular intersection, I wish that I were Harry Potter, armed with the Sorting Hat and a magic wand.  Everyone in the DTES would line up, and the Sorting Hat would look into their minds to discover the real reason for them being where they are.

"A regular person, a little bit stuck

All out of money and down on their luck." 

A tap of the magic wand, and they've got an entry level job and a decent place to live.

"Addiction to drugs is a terrible curse

That takes the afflicted from bad into worse."

Tap of the wand, and poof, rehabilitation - then a job and a home, just like first group.

"Mentally ill and right out of your head

Lost in the dark when off of your meds."

Magic wand:  proper medical care and a safe haven for those poor souls who wander the DTES screaming at a world that they can't understand.

"Criminal, villainous, evil and cruel

Refusing to follow the civilized rules."

Unfortunately, there may well be people who should not pass GO or collect $200, but rather should go directly to jail. Some of this last group needs rehabilitation and redemption as much as addicts or the mentally ill, or may just need a job and a new start, but the hat will tell us exactly what is in everyone's heart - if you're just a bad person, you pay the consequences.

And then, when everyone had put on the hat and been tapped by the wand, Hastings and Main would just be another address.  How sad that it would probably take magic to make that a reality.

- Sid