ED LABOUCANE A DRIVING FORCE IN EFFORTS TO RECLAIM INNER CITY FROM DRUG
BARONS

EDMONTON - TV star Dakota House knew Ed Laboucane as a stepfather who
inspired him to work hard at his acting career.

But most people knew Mr. Laboucane as a force dedicated to bringing
sweeping change to Canada's inner cities.

"He did a lot of work for communities," House said Sunday.

Mr. Laboucane, who died in hospital Dec. 28 at age 63 while awaiting a lung
transplant, was the driving force in the 1990s to close down drug houses
and promote the renovation of decaying slum properties in the inner city.

"I had a lot of respect for the man," House said. "He was a trooper."

House, best known for his role as TeeVee Tenia in the North of 60 show and
related television movies, said Mr. Laboucane clung to life through
Christmas in the hope of seeing his grandchildren open his presents.

"Unfortunately, he couldn't make it home but we had him on the speaker
phone," House said.

Mr. Laboucane had a long history of community activism in Edmonton,
Winnipeg and Toronto. His biggest impact locally was in the 1990s when he
rallied residents to shut down drug houses in the neighbourhoods of Boyle
Street and McCauley.

The drug houses had become common in the inner city, often doubling as
"trick pads" for prostitutes and their clients. Individual residents would
sometimes complain, but little was done.

Mr. Laboucane, hired as a grassroots community organizer, launched a
door-knocking blitz and called a public meeting. Police and officials who
attended had to endure a grilling about what they were going to do about the
problem.

The issue became increasingly heated over the following weeks and Mr.
Laboucane called a second meeting.

"At the same time we were meeting, the police were raiding a drug house
that we had targeted," he recalled in 1999, when ill health forced him
to retire at 59 as staff director of the residents' Community Action
Project.

"There was so much continual publicity and pressure that it was an
embarrassment to the whole city of Edmonton."

Over an eight-month stretch, police, working with city departments and
community leaders, shut down 24 drug houses, including the notorious Twin
Fortresses, adjacent houses near 95th Street and 103rd Avenue. In raiding
the two houses, police needed acetylene torches, battering rams and
steel-cutting saws to break through.

Mr. Laboucane, originally from Spruce Lake in northern Saskatchewan, had
a Metis father and what he termed a "socialist mother." He once spoke of
how, by the time he was 10, he was steeped in Metis history and was aware of
social issues.

He got a job as a drill-blaster, but moved to Toronto in the late 1960s
and got involved in social projects. He later landed work in Winnipeg,
heading a pilot project for social underdogs that included helping them
file for tax rebates.

He headed another Winnipeg project in the mid-1970s that made news by
helping inner-city residents demand better city services and decent
housing. Under continuous pressure, authorities fined slum landlords and
forced them to demolish derelict housing or fix it up.

When he moved to Edmonton, Mr. Laboucane went into construction but
eventually found himself drawn back to agencies with a record of
helping others. "That's what being a community organizer is really
about," he said in 1999. "Helping people recognize that they can make a
difference, that they can control the destiny of their own
community."

Inner-city resident Anna Bubel, who hired Mr. Laboucane in the early 1990s
as a community organizer, praised him after his retirement as someone who
didn't create an "us-versus-them dynamic" except when it came to people
abusing power. "He was hypnotic when he was working to help the
community," his wife, Noreen, said Sunday. "He was the greatest."

She and family members are inviting friends and relatives to pay
respects today at 4:30 p.m. at Sacred Heart Church of the First
Peoples, 10821 96th St. A Christian burial mass is Tuesday at 10 a.m. at
the same church.