Israel Kruger

A Homeless Resident of Edmonton, AB

On a quiet Tuesday night— at the very same time that the American election was unfolding back home— I stepped out from an Uber onto the downtown streets of Edmonton. I was in the middle of a road trip from Alaska to the States in order to visit family. Having beelined already through Yukon and BC in Canada, I found myself (for no particular reason) in Alberta where the drinking age was 18. I had no intention of getting drunk, but rather I had this idea in my head that a CNBC or MSN feed had to be playing in some bar in Edmonton, where I could sit down, enjoy a pint, and hopefully talk about American politics with Canadians.

While walking the streets, looking for a lively place, a man in a heavy down-jacket stopped me. “Excuse me, sir. Would you happen to have any change?”

“Sure!” I reached into my pocket and scrounged maybe two American quarters, “Will these work?”

“Yes, yes! Much appreciated, thank you!” He took them from me, and for just a second there was a glimmer in his eye, and in a hoarse voice he asked, “Where are you from?”

“Alaska.” As I tell everyone abroad.

“An American! I grew up in Los Angeles… Are you for Trump?”

Most people I would’ve been weary of answering that question to, but he said it with enough anticipation that I was already able to terse out his opinion. “Duh… Of course!” I responded. He reached out and gave me a high-five saying, “He’s my man!”

This gentleman, Israel was his name, had a great interest in the election and asked how it was going. I pulled out my phone and showed him the map. He scrolled and picked through the states, divulging his own political theory on the swing states and what Trump needed to win, with about as much fluency as the average American. Yes, Israel was homeless- he was a plainly handsome man with dark hair and a good Roman nose, but fentanyl had obviously warped this late-twenty-year-old man into a stuttering and weary untouchable that most would pass up on the street.

Admittedly, I only continued to listen originally out of politeness, but I very quickly became seriously interested in his opinion. Soon another man approached the two of us, who on the homeless spectrum mentally and physically, was the opposite to Israel. Jackson was easily taller than six foot, overweight, probably in his late forty’s, hyper, and clear-spoken as day. “What’s up, guys?… I’m only trying to buy a meal at Denny’s… twenty dollars… it will last me awhile.”

I was all out of change at that point, and still wanted to talk with Israel, when a new idea brewed in my mind…

The seed of this idea was planted about six months earlier when I was working for the tow-truck driver in Seward, Alaska. In one of the local trailer parks there was a dapper fella named “Billy”, who walked around in a trenchcoat and a high-cut cossack combover that just made him the coolest methhead I’ve ever seen. He was notable. His ex-wife was the woman who begged outside of Safeway. Several months earlier his car had been abandoned and then impounded by the tow-truck driver. I helped to clean out his car of the human filth- of cigarettes, receipts, needles, diapers (yes, they had a kid at some point… I don’t know the story) and helped the tow-truck driver resell the car to some poor bastard on Facebook Marketplace.

Amidst the junk, I found his old driver’s license… and the face of a rather respectable citizen of Washington looked back at me. He once had a normal life and along with this and everything else in the car, they were tokens of this fact. Since then his brain had utterly been fried by meth, but I wanted seriously to know what happened and concocted a plan to approach him at a good time, sincerely talk to him, and offer him $20 or more to simply go through his life story. I never did make time to do this and I regret it.¹

Though with these two interesting chaps and a completely free evening in front of me, I took advantage of the opportunity and offered them both $20CA to talk away! We first tried convening in a sports bar to talk, but as Israel didn’t have his ID, we ended up just talking on the outside.

To preface, Jackson was a difficult character to read. He seemed too well-spoken among most homeless and especially after he shared that he just left prison after 13 years for an “unspeakable crime” I made sure to stand on the street side of him. He blurted through his story very quickly, without saying much of anything notable and putting a lot of the blame of his condition on this crime he wouldn’t dare utter. He was impatient. He obviously looked down on Israel while listening to him mumble his story and ultimately, after checking the time on his phone once or twice, he just asked if he could get his money and leave.

I obliged. He did actually prove useful in shooing away rougher beggars who came our way (and telling him “no” for a lack of effort would for certain have gotten me stabbed) and this allowed Israel to thoughtfully explain himself, from high school to the present day almost without interruption. But Israel in his humble condition was who I was truly interested in, and over the course of a little more than an hour, this is what I gathered from a God-fearing man…

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From the Life of Israel Kruger…

Israel was originally born in Edmonton, AB as the oldest of five. Though most of his adolescence was spent in Los Angeles, USA after his father moved the family for work. According to Israel, he did work for the Canadian CIA or the CSIS and supposedly after 9/11, he was posted in Pakistan for some amount of time.

Throughout high school, Israel competed on the school swim team. He said he felt ostracized due to his Canadian accent, though because of this he found friendship with a Russian kid who had recently immigrated, and this same Russian kid in 2008 supposedly was training for and almost made the U.S. Olympic swimming team. (And after hindsight and further research, he’s describing Olympic swimmer, Vladimir Morozov)

As we were talking, he seemed to relish in this part of his history- I was frankly worried that he was going to dwell on high school and his friends for the remainder of the evening. He seemed weary, as if he had been without sleep for a day or two and while we talked- he opened up and finished two Red Bulls. By the end, however; I appreciated all of his detail, and he soon broke into different territory…

He by all means was living an incredibly normal and happy childhood, until his mother had an intuition about her, and in his words: “she up and left my Dad and took us back to Edmonton… she said she got married too young and just wanted to party and have fun.” Israel and his four siblings were relocated back to Canada, while his father remained distant in Los Angeles.

Very soon upon returning, Israel’s mother, Colleen, found a new boyfriend. “I knew from the first time I saw him, he just wasn’t a good guy…” His name was Paul Jacob and as Israel described he ended up being a deadbeat. Under his influence, Colleen began smoking more until it was impossible to hide her habits from the children. Paul couldn’t hold a job and would “sit around all day in the bathtub, smoking weed…”. There was often a white substance Israel found on the bathroom counter. After telling this to his father on one of their calls, he instructed him to lick it off his finger to test if it was bitter and numbing to taste; he confirmed it was cocaine.

Over time, Paul became verbally abusive to not only Israel and his siblings, but also to his mother. It escalated to the point that at his worst moments before they separated, he held a knife up to Colleen’s throat. Soon after, she filed a restraining order against him. It was during this tumultuous time in Israel’s life, that a friend first introduced him to dope and pills, and got him hooked on oxycodone.

Over the next 6 months, Paul could be seen in clear violation of the restraining order, driving by the house to see what was happening. On a typical day, October 2nd, 2015 (the date was well imprinted into Israel’s mind), Paul waited outside for Colleen Sillito to emerge, before he shot her dead in the front yard and then killed himself. It was evidentially a day that became a turning point for Israel- he never did recover from the burden of the tragedy and in the darkest corners of the city he turned to harder drugs- to crack and to fentanyl which twisted him and most simply ruined his life.

Today

Israel then asked me for my phone again, he had something to show me. He typed in the name of a woman and pulled up a series of articles about the murder of his mother. A smiling black-haired woman greeted me on the page, with a seemly resemblance to her son. He claimed that most never believed his story- though I saw no reason not to believe even from the start. He was honest to the core.

Out of curiosity, I did want further confirmation, and in order to really earn my stripes as an amateur investigative journalist, I had to do some Facebook snooping. Colleen Sillito still has a Facebook account assembled with the last words recorded from her over the years before her murder. Her page is full of care-free banter between friends, pictures of her rock climbing, and of course her kids:

Israel pictured in the middle with the rest of his siblings. 2013.

I’m not going to lie, when I found this image and recognized Israel as a younger man— I jumped out of my seat and did a victory lap. I had no idea that Facebook was this powerful of a tool and from there I could’ve contacted and tried to reach out to his siblings and uncles and aunts and cousins… but at the end of the day, the focus I wanted was purely on this man’s point of view and his connection to the world that’s forgotten him.

His oldest brother, according to him, has a fiance and still lives in Fort Saskatchewan around where they lived with their mother growing up. His relationship with him is still distant, but on occasion, Israel says he has a place to stay with them.

His oldest sister, according to him, got a “gay and retarded” gender studies degree “that is so stupid…” They do not see eye to eye on anything and they appear not to have talked in at least a few years. I don’t remember him giving any comment on the whereabouts of his younger sister.

His youngest brother is currently 18 and is living with his uncle. Israel has heard that he has been slacking in school and is concerned for him, though he has no communication with him.²

His father died back in 2018.

I even found Israel’s own Facebook which hasn’t been updated since April of 2024. I never asked him when he hit the streets, but now understanding how young of a man he is, I’m convinced that he only found himself homeless within the last year. He’s an incredibly average young man by most respects, with just the right amount of edgy humor and political dissidence to fit right in among most of the kids back home. He’s posted pictures of him shooting guns, hanging out with friends, his girlfriend, posing with his younger brother, and everything I would expect out of a pre-Zoomer on the internet.

Though- after 2020 and the Pandemic, something seemed to have cracked in him. His posts lose their innocence and become full of religious conviction and cries for help. He’s struggling and has been struggling for years and from somewhere among his internet presence, one could piece together a sublime yet powerful story about the turmoil that has been going on inside this man’s head:

The absence of his mother and father have bothered him the most of course. They and their former unity represent the good times when the family was together, their “American” dream looked bright, and he functioned without the use of drugs.

I can’t speak with certainty on the factors behind his parents’ divorce. Considering, his father had some important role in the CSIS, I could speculate that he might fall into the category of men with an improper work/life balance that would leave a woman estranged and feeling without support. Though this is speculation, and I can’t speak on the unremarked character of a dead man.

On his mother’s side, the late grip of liberalism among mothers is a real phenomenon— one of my good friends just went through the divorce of his parents at the age of 23 under the same circumstances. After 25 years of happy marriage, she became possessed by feminist attitudes and sought to cast off the shackles of her responsibilities and sacred devotions, simply wanting to have fun and to do her own thing… just as Israel described of his own mother.³

Considering the path of Morozov, had he not been displaced and removed to Edmonton, he could’ve had high prospects set aside for him even or had a seat next to friends in higher places. There is no certainty in how far he would’ve gone if his family stayed together and none of his tragedies transpired, but undoubtedly there was nothing good that came out of his parent’s separation.⁴

He felt his father’s pain and I can almost guarantee on some level that same pain, even if not expressing itself in resentment, was a feeling of unwantedness. If his mother said she was married too young, and she actually just wanted to have fun, well then what were he and his siblings, but in the way? Any young man of even the most minor rational and right-wing persuasions, with this understanding, might come to these conclusions and resent what bare threads of an ideology stuck out from his mother’s reasons. That’s why his sister’s liberal degree was “so retarded” and why he looks to Trump so much- projecting his own situation on the state of the world.

People have often said that young men especially have been estranged from their own society. I present to you a young man who is very estranged— not only did his family tear itself apart, but his mother was taken from him by a lunatic and from there the remaining pieces were shattered and scattered. He couldn’t have sounded more distraught, than over the fact he had no way of communicating with his younger brother.

From there he fell even further. He fell into the cycle of substance abuse and developed a seizure condition. For weeks at a time, he’s susceptible to random and intermittent seizures that have at large kept him from holding a job, and he lacks the money to buy medication. This strong young man withered on the vine. His fair skin grew sickly and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. When perhaps once he could clearly speak and project himself, he slurs and mumbles and struggles to stand upright. From there he lost whatever housing he had, and fell to the wayside on the streets.

And for those on the streets, they live a day-to-day existence, where future often seems intangible due to the mere urgency of food, water, and shelter. Imagine sitting in filth in the blowing cold, seeking attention but being denied hundreds of times every day, by people who look down upon you, while living lives you could’ve had if only fortunes and matters of self-control turned out different— it is the closest in the Western World to having a true class of untouchables. It’s the ultimate rejection— it feels inescapable, and combined with the turmoil of his family it’s weighed down on this man’s soul.

I asked him what would be his message to the world: “It hurts. I don’t want to make it about me, I’ve never been so low in all my life…” It was the exact same sentiment I later found on his Facebook:

Tomorrow

I asked him of course what was his plan moving forward. On this he seemed incredibly hopeful- his #1 priority was rehab which he said he had scheduled himself a place in as of late, he’s just been waiting for that date to come around though. There is an apartment he wants to get. Edmonton housing is of course not cheap, though he claims he’s found a flat for $600CA a month. He just needs to find a job that he can manage.

Swimming is still on his mind. He wants to get back into shape, to start eating right, and to swim again just like he did in high school. It is an honest hope, and the optimism he told it with was infectious.

That night, he’d spend the $20CA to stay the night at the Salvation Army where through begging he could keep a warm room there for a few weeks if he could keep clean. I actually gave him $40CA, because I had the cash to spare and he was overjoyed! He could barely imagine how far this would get him— how many days off the street this would spare him. Many are opposed to just giving the homeless money, and I understand this concern, though in that moment I genuinely believed his repentance and believed that with that $40CA, God would take care of him as He willed.

He asked one last time to look at the election map, and in that time we were talking, Trump had excitingly won Georgia. It was another good note to part on and with a new hope for the future, we both went our ways.

Danke,

ABSURDISMUS

1. If Billy is still alive whenever I have time in Seward again, I would like to try this.

2. With the resources of Facebook, I could’ve further identified these people and given deeper backgrounds, but it’s also not my place to dox random Canadians.

3. I say something more certain of his mother and not of his father, because according to Israel that is why she left and that’s the character he observed of her. He didn’t speak of the quality of his father and as a result, I try to give both the benefit of the doubt. Israel’s own sisters might see it differently for example… I haven’t asked.

4. First of all, they moved back to God-forsaken Canada…