When Marta Rogers arrived to the News offices to speak about her run for council, she brought one of her children with her in a baby carrier.
Rogers said parenting has taught her balance: every member of her family has different needs, she said.
“You don't make everybody happy. It's not possible. So, it's really, what are the needs?”
If Rogers bid for council is successful, she’ll be balancing chamber meetings with her family demands. Rogers has seven children, and said she’s investing her time raising them right now, having worked as a hairdresser prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her own father, a survivor of residential school, was unable to raise her.
Born in Inuvik, N.W.T., Rogers came to Whitehorse as a baby. Then, from ages nine to 12, she lived with her family in a village in the Central American country of Belize. There, she was subject to lashings from teachers and taunting from other students.
As an adult in Whitehorse, she lost her brother to an overdose.
“You're sad that you'll never see him again, but to know that he was in so much pain, and now he's set free from his life of trauma," Rogers said.
"But he'll never show up for spaghetti dinner again."
Rogers said she believes society as a whole is traumatized.
“We don't even want to go next door for the sugar, like we're so dysfunctional, like it's the trauma really is our root cause,” she said. Isolation exacerbates that, she said, and she wants to encourage connection among Whitehorse residents. She gave the examples of neighbourhood associations and tool libraries as ways of creating connection.
A country residential resident herself, Rogers said she’d also like to see transit service further along city limits. She said it could run during rush times, so people could drive out to the bus stop and take the bus into town from there.
“There's so many options, and we're wanting people to be more active and think about their footprint,” Rogers said.
She is also concerned about crime and safety in the city. She said she was assaulted as a twelve-year-old girl in downtown Whitehorse. RCMP told her they were too busy to respond.
“It took me years to go downtown again without my parents. I joined boxing. I learned how to fight. These are all things that we shouldn't have to do in order to feel safe,” she said.
She said she’s aware the impact that crime has had on local businesses, and said she supports trespassing laws to allow business owners to reject certain customers who have stolen from the store before.
“There needs to be consequence, and whether that's like connecting with justice to establish those trespassing laws and giving people the right to protect their livelihoods,” said Rogers.
Melissa Brodhagen has known Rogers since high school. They were also coworkers at Rogers’s hair salon. She said Rogers would bring a lot of insight to council.
“She's very knowledgeable. She would bring such an amazing perspective. She's a very well-rounded person with such a good heart,” Brodhagen said.
Contact Talar Stockton at talar.stockton@yukon-news.com
