A Five Minute Car Ride Apart

I have struggled of late to pen something in-depth for the site. I do my usual daily reading, but I feel exhausted with regards to providing commentary. Over the weekend I did write a piece for a local publication called ‘Street Corner’, though I’m not sure when it will appear. I have, of course, written about this subject before, so some of what I wrote on the weekend may not seem new to avid readers of the site, but I thought that I would post it anyway.

A five Minute Car Ride Apart

It’s an odd thing to walk out of one’s front door and realize that the reason that you’re not amongst those huddled in doorways or wandering the streets in the morning mist is because you can afford medication for the illness from which you suffer. I walk my two dogs down Cordova to the corner at Carrall each morning and quite often engage in brief conversations with those waiting outside of the methadone clinic, most of them overjoyed to play with the dogs and share in a few seconds of polite conversation before I continue on to the coffee shop around the corner. It is never lost on me that the similarities between us are greater than our dissimilarities. In truth, that is a universal principle here on the Lower Eastside, despite the fact that many Vancouverites believe that that isn’t the case.

It takes a blow to understand the ramifications of one. The Lower Eastside is a veritable living museum of victims of blows, in most cases far more than one. In my life I have had to deal with my fair share (as have we all), the most severe of which, for me, is the mental illness from which I suffer, one that is shared by a variety of individuals that call the streets beyond my front gate home. In their case, unlike that of my own, they haven’t the realistic ability to have their conditions properly addressed, their demons tempered, the darkness of their thoughts poured over by $300 dollar an hour psychologists or, for that mater, even psychiatrists that work within the system itself. There are, of course, outreach and counseling initiatives that exist down here, but they remain massively under funded, their volunteers and permanent staff taxed to the limit.

We are, all of us, more alike than not, despite the fact that many in this city would disagree when it comes to comparing themselves to those that inhabit this neighbourhood. I have always found it bizarre that humanity is so easily overlooked, but I am never surprised by it. To see others, those we think beneath us, as equals, is not something that most are willing to do on a routine basis. Perhaps that is why those who drive down Hastings on their way to and from work lock their doors if they happen to get caught at the lights. Not because they are afraid of what is beyond their windows, but because they are afraid of what is presented in the reflection of their rearview.

No matter views to the contrary, the civility and compassion of every society on this earth is measured by how it confronts the worst of its problems: poverty, the care for its elderly, the displaced, the mentally distraught, the abused and shattered. Vancouver’s Lower Eastside remains a testament to this city’s ever evolving arrogance and incivility, one that is not merely nationally known, but internationally.

Every morning I walk out of my front door and I see people. And beyond the slum hotels and the tenements that clutter this neighbourhood, Vancouverites run the Seawall and play with their dogs in parks oblivious to the overwhelming difference between what are, in truth, two worlds – a five minute car ride apart.