Baby Penguins are freezing to death in the Antarctic because it’s raining. Starbucks are closing in the hundreds and people are starting petitions to save them rather than realizing that it would be faster to just invest in a cheap coffee maker and a can of MJB.

The Pope’s sorry for Catholic priests buggering kids – for God knows how long. Obviously an apology makes everything better. The Americans will probably have to issue some half assed apology to the Iraqis at some point as well, I’d imagine, but at least by then they’ll be able to take consolation in the fact that they’ll finally be able to get a Starbucks, an egg McMuffin, and gawk at the Sunshine girl in the paper.

Amira is from Basra. One day she hopes to open her own fashion boutique.

The skies outside are blue, the weather warm, but I ain’t going nowhere. The streets are quiet downtown on Saturday mornings, even down here in the dregs. Everyone’s sleeping down at the park probably, hung over like the rest of the city, though ironically condemned for it. No brunches at which to exchange stories about last night’s wild time, just shopping carts and another eighteen hours to kill in which to get loaded so as to forget that tomorrow is an inevitability. Another eighteen hours in the mental Hornet’s Nest of New Shiloh.

The dogs pounce, attack my face, I groggily throw my feet over the side of the bed and sit there with my head in my hands. I take them out, feed them, and they settle in on the concrete floor because it’s the coolest place in the apartment. I get a cup of coffee, I pop my meds and look out the window while thousands of dollars worth of normality sit in a drawer in the bathroom behind me. That drawer, the pill bottles in it, mean that I’m not in the park.

I light a cigarette, hit the spacebar and wait for this machine to flicker on. I click on Word and begin…

“Baby Penguins are freezing to death in the Antarctic…”

Sherman found Grant standing under a tree that first night. Walking up to him he said “Well, we’ve had the devil’s own day”.

“Yes,” said Grant, “Lick ‘em tomorrow though”.

July 19, 2008 26 Comments

Today the government of British Columbia announced that it’s spending $23.7 million dollars on purchasing six more hotels on the Downtown Lower Eastside that will be converted into affordable housing. In total, the Province has purchased 16 such hotels.

Dave Eby weighed in on the government’s purchases in a recent Vancouver Sun article.

Of course, it sounds fantastic in theory until you delve into how much property in comparison is being snatched up for private development purposes.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Navy has announced that it will be spending $19,316,550 dollars of taxpayers’ money for its security role during the 2010 Olympics. The Navy’s primary role will to be to patrol the waters near waterfront venues, with the majority of their focus being placed on the Olympic Village at False Creek, the cost of which, for a mere two weeks, is $190 million dollars – which is also a cost being incurred by taxpayers.

The entire security budget for the games is currently set at $175 million dollars, though that total is expected to increase. Last year, the RCMP released documents that indicated that the budget would not be enough to provide ample security.

An Aside

With regards to the Olympics and real estate, I thought that the following might interest some of you…

“When Jack Poole addressed a room full of real estate developers this spring it erased any doubts of what the 2010 Winter Olympics bid for Vancouver-Whistler is really all about.

At the risk of sounding naive, we had understood the bid was aimed at getting the games, raising Vancouver’s international profile and welcoming elite athletes to one of the world’s best skiing locations.

Wrong. The real purpose of the 2010 Olympics bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long suffering taxpayers into footing a billion dollar bill to pave the path for future real estate sales. Whether the bid is successful or not is actually immaterial.

“If the Olympic bid wasn’t happening we would have to invent something.” Poole, chair of the 2010 Vancouver Bid Corp. and noted real estate developer, said in a most telling understatement.

It is hard to imagine any fantasy that fits better than the Olympics bid if you are into real estate development.”

February 18, 2008 14 Comments

I came across the following comment left in response to an article on the Tyee regarding homelessness in British Columbia, particularly Vancouver…

“An avalanche of stories on the homeless and the left is bankrupt of any practical ideas. The left calls for housing and treating them in Vancouver, perpetuating the slum we know as the DTES. We in the real world know that Vancouver real estate is far too expensive to justify the economic cost of housing them. Don’t even talk about the NIMBY’s who’ll kill any zoning proposal.

Yet the real solution is housing, rehab, treatment and for those who cannot fend for themselves permanent institutionalization.

So the best solution is to find the cheapest land- maybe out past Fort St. John, way up north, and house them up there. Any objections?

I mean, giving them free housing in Vancouver is an insult to all the working people who struggle to pay for their own places isn’t it?”

Matthewgood.org contributor, Pivot Legal Society’s David Eby, makes some excellent points in the piece, but I want to focus on the sentiment of the comment quoted above.

You might not think that sort of ignorance prevalent in the Lower Mainland, but you’d be surprised. People’s understanding of the Lower Eastside in general is, for the most part, rather ignorant. In fact, much of that ignorance is based on the perception of a problem that has, in truth, remained largely out of sight and out of mind for decades. Only now, when the value of real estate is at an all time high, is the ‘problem’ being delved into by those that hadn’t considered it prior.

For most, their exposure to the Downtown Eastside is limited to driving down East Hastings on their way into the city and little else. They get held up at the lights at Main and Hastings and from the few minutes that they observe their surroundings come to harsh conclusions about those that inhabit this neighbourhood

We do not want to hear their stories. We do not want to delve into the fact that over the last twenty years the Downtown Eastside has become the number one destination of those turned out of mental institutions. We do not want to hear horrific tales of childhood sexual abuse, rape, violence, and Aboriginal disparity. Such things humanize the problem, and that is the last thing in the world that anyone wants to do. Because it is far easier on the conscience to simply categorize everyone down here as a druggy or a drunk who are solely responsible for where they have ended up.

Not all Vancouverites suffer from this phenomenon, but many do, including many who live in other parts of the downtown core who aren’t comfortable with the fact that their urban paradise is only minutes away from the country’s poorest urban neighbourhood. Many of them are, of course, transplants that have come to Vancouver to live the urban West Coast dream and have never been exposed to a neighbourhood like the Lower Eastside or the problems that it presents. Were there a solution that could, in a matter of weeks, transform it into the new Yaletown, many of this city’s residents would be all for it. In truth, that process has already begun.

The homelessness that is prevalent in this neighbourhood has become front-page news not because it was only a matter of time, but for three very specific reasons.

The first is that Vancouver has seen an influx of wealth over the last decade, both foreign and domestic, which has driven property prices through the roof. Given that the downtown core is situated on a peninsula, and developing Stanley Park is out of the question, the Lower Eastside remains the last truly exploitable section of the downtown core.

The second is that Vancouver has seen immense growth in the tourism sector, and many view the Lower Eastside as an embarrassment. Given that every cruise ship that docks in Vancouver is anchored at Canada Place, those that venture off the ships and decide to take a hard left and venture East find themselves confronted with something that certainly does not reflect what they’ve no doubt heard about the city. It is not uncommon to come across tourists down here in the summer that are simply aghast, many of them asking locals that don’t seem too ‘dangerous’ where the park is located or how to get uptown. It is such a concern, in fact, that the Gastown Business Association employs private security personnel to patrol the streets, pushing the homeless and dispossessed out of sight, commonly harassing them even though they possess absolutely no legal authority to do so.

The third is, of course, the 2010 games. Not only have the Olympics contributed to the increase in property prices throughout Vancouver, but have forced both local and Provincial government to address the issue of what to do about the Lower Eastside when the world shows up. Despite the fact that the World Exposition in 1986 lasted for months, laying new carpet and slapping a new coat of paint on walls in hotels on the Lower Eastside was good enough. But in the case of the Olympics, Vancouver is destined to see far more people cram the downtown core, making the problem of the Lower Eastside all the more worrisome. Therefore, the real issue isn’t so much how to actually, and realistically, address the problems that need to be address, but rather how to dislodge them and have them moved elsewhere while throwing advocates a bone.

One of the goals is to obviously see the neighbourhood gentrified like Yaletown was, which has ultimately led to the gentrification of everything from Granville Street to the banks of False Creek. Sure, there are a few rough patches here and there, but nothing to compare with East Hastings. The more that this neighbourhood can be gentrified and attract a new class of resident, the easier it will be to push the dispossessed further down the Hastings corridor.

The truth is, those problems that need solving cannot be realistically overcome in two years while still placating the concerns of those that view the Lower Eastside as a blemish on an otherwise picturesque city. Sure, housing initiatives can be discussed, hotels can be transformed, but they will not meet the needs of all those that require help. Thus, where will those who aren’t lucky enough to qualify go? Because if anti-terror maneuvers are already taking place in the skies over the city, you can bet your life that the mandate of private security firms will be extended well beyond Gastown in 2010.

February 17, 2008 16 Comments

Two pops, to acoustic echoes, just around the corner someone was dead in a van. It’s the sixth homicide in town this year and we’re only thirty six odd days into it…

“Vancouver recorded its sixth homicide of 2008 Friday when a man was shot dead while sitting in his van at the 300 block of Carrall Street in the city’s infamous Downtown Eastside.

The Vancouver Police Department’s major crime and forensic identification teams have launched an investigation into the incident, which occurred at around 6:30 p.m. The man died at the scene.”

Gunshots, despite what they sound like in the movies or on television, sound unique in real life. The four that I heard last night, as I’m not even a half block away, were two in reality, as the two reports produced echoes off nearby buildings. They were the short, sharp, pops of a handgun.

Rumors spread last night around the neighbourhood that up to four people had been killed, but having read the news this morning, I discovered that there was only one victim.

Of course, it’s business as usual around here this morning, and nothing seemed at all different when I went to get coffee.

February 16, 2008 18 Comments

According to an article in today’s Globe & Mail, one third of all calls made to the Vancouver City Police have to do with dealing with individuals who are mentally ill.

For those of you that are in the dark, we spent the last two decades emptying out our long-term mental facilities and placing people on the streets. I suppose, to some, the streets seemed just as good a place as any to dump those that require long-term care. After all, we can’t dare ask taxpayers to keep flipping the bill, can we?

While institutions are absolutely necessary, they must also be staffed by committed and compassionate professionals and not merely warehouses for the ‘insane’. The latter leads only to an atmosphere of abuse, degradation, and humiliation that serves absolutely no positive purpose. But that would require that they be reasonably funded and staffed, and that the costs of a decent mental welfare system in this Province, if not the entire nation, was viewed as something more than a nuisance to most.

Of course, our illustrious Mayor was ‘shocked’ by the report. He then claimed that new initiatives to build “supportive housing” for those that are “relatively stable” are in the works, but nothing for those that require substantial long-term care. He did suggest that Riverview be reopened, but to do so would require a massive influx of capital to render it habitable, never mind what could be termed an actual hospital.

What’s worse than suffering from a serious mental illness? How about suffering from a serious mental illness and being homeless?

February 4, 2008 29 Comments

It’s raining, dark; the streets empty and the doorways filled. On the streets you have to wait it out, try to stay dry, try to find somewhere sheltered from it so that maybe you can catch a few hours of sleep in the hopes that it will have stopped.

I needed laundry detergent yesterday. I went around corner to the store. In Blood Alley something was happening; three squad cars, two officers pulling shot guns out of their trunks. No idea what it was about, but there was a huge construction crane in the alley so maybe something had transpired between the alley’s usual inhabitants and the construction crew. Could have been a drug bust, there could have been an assault; it could have been about a few of the ill-tempered dogs that have been roaming around back there recently.

Things are obviously calmer down here in the winter. No summer tourists to be herded away from, to be pushed by security companies into back alleys so as to protect the illusion of old-world charm. It’s been unseasonably warm though, so at least that’s something. Even with the rain, it’s not as biting as it usually is this time of year. If there’s an upside to global warming in this neck of the woods it’s that if you live outdoors things aren’t as condemnable. At least that’s something.

Drugs and booze. Two steadfast allies of the dispossessed. They make you forget, time machines that offer unconscious passage into the future so that you can lose a day, or three, not having to deal with the reality of where you’ve ended up. Ten blocks uptown the city’s well-to-do scoff at it all while they hit the bars on the weekends and drink themselves silly, press lips to bongs, snort cocaine in the bathrooms of the city’s finer nightspots. The difference is that they have beds to break their falls at the end of the night. The difference is that they do it because it’s a socially accepted ritualistic endeavor. Escape is escape though, and ultimately everyone’s trying to escape something in the end. Admit it or not.

At the very least, if you’re waiting for the rain to stop, you’ve got something truly pressing to escape – the reality that when it does, very little will have changed besides the weather.

Irony For Friday, January 4th, 2008

Chinatown is two blocks over. It’s been there since the 1880’s. It’s filled with countless restaurants. None of them deliver.

I’m not kidding.

Toasters

When I was a kid we used to make toast on an electric heater in the basement. It was one of those long floor heaters, the sort with the metal grill on the front. We would put pieces of bread on it and wait a while, turn them over, and then butter them.

We used to not lock our doors at night as well though. Things change.

Covered In Blood

I was thinking last night on the career of William Tecumseh Sherman, his complexities and hypocrisies, his characterizations of warfare in its purest form, especially those penned during his campaign to take Atlanta and later his march to Savannah, and something that he wrote in his memoirs that I have always found extremely telling…

“I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting—its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers … it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated … that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”

For some reason that always reminds me of the words of Vassilis Epaminondou…

“If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a national hero.”

January 4, 2008 41 Comments

They stroll the streets and alleys adorned in their bright yellow security jackets – but they’re not Police Officers, they’re members of a private security firm hired to patrol the neighbourhood. Despite their mandate from the local business association that hired them, they have absolutely no legal authority, cannot lawfully touch another person, ask them questions, ask them for identification, or ask them to ‘move along’ when on public property. But you see, around here the law might as well be written on wet toilet paper if you don’t look like the sort of person that’s contributing to the neighbourhood’s ‘new look’. That would be why private security personnel are able to walk the streets as if they’re Police Officers and enforce ‘rules’ that are in complete violation of the Charter rights of others.

Now, some of you might view this subject as mildly unimportant, but it is anything but. If, in a bad part of town that is in the midst of gentrification, the homeless and impoverished can be ‘handled’ by private security personnel, what’s next? Better yet, who’s next?

The Vancouver Police Department exists for a reason, and the outsourcing of security by local business associations is, in truth, a massively dangerous precedent. What is even more concerning is that the authorities turn a blind eye to it and, at times, even capitalize on it.

December 16, 2007 38 Comments

December 5th, 2007. A small candlelight vigil is held for the victims at the corner of East Cordova and Columbia on Vancouver’s downtown Eastside.

The jury in the Pickton trial reached a verdict this morning. He was found guilty on six counts of second-degree murder. Pickton was, of course, originally charged with six counts of first-degree murder. In Canada, first-degree murder is defined as follows:

“First degree murder is a murder which is (1) planned and deliberate, (2) contracted, (3) where the victim is an identified peace officer (4) in the furtherance of another serious criminal offence (kidnapping, robbery, harassment, terrorist activity, or using explosives within criminal organizations, etc.).”

Therefore, having been found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder, the conviction finds Pickton innocent of premeditation. Given that he fed his victims to pigs, one has to ultimately wonder how that isn’t an act of premeditation when it was done repeatedly? Obviously, given the various unknowns that plagued the case, the jury was ultimately left with no other option than to find him guilty of a lesser charge.

In all, Pickton has been charged with the deaths of 26 women, to which he pleaded not guilty. Having been found guilty of these six murders, another trial will eventually take place regarding the remaining 19*.

The verdict reached this morning has to do with the deaths of:

Pickton has also been charged with murder in the first degree of:

Pickton has also been implicated, though not charged, in the murders of:

December 9, 2007 30 Comments

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.

November 27, 2007 46 Comments

I came across something interesting in the Globe & Mail today. It seems Dan Rather was in my neighbourhood doing a piece about it recently. The author had this to say about it…

“Nor for this story is he the first on the scene, which is something he always likes to be. In fact, he might be the one zillionth television reporter to stand at the apocalyptic vortex of the Downtown Eastside – the corner of Main and Hastings – to chronicle the miserable history of one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere.”

The true hypocrisy of Vancouver is that not ten minutes away are the city’s two trendiest and most expensive neighbourhoods – Yaletown and Coal Harbour. In truth, even the area that Mr. Rather was covering is being transformed into a mirror image of Yaletown in many ways, though there are no signs of its beleaguered inhabitants reaping any of the benefits. Either the gentrification of the area will fail or they’ll be forced further east down the Hastings corridor – out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps just in time for the Winter Olympics.

After all, we can’t have ‘one of the most miserable six-square-block stretches in a city anywhere’ within spitting distance of both GM Place and Yaletown in 2010. Hell, spitting distance from anywhere in the downtown core. That, and it’s important to remember that property values are so high that the neighbourhood itself is far too lucrative to be considered for low income, subsidized housing. City council isn’t stupid, there’s a reason why they defer the issue – because the longer they do, the more the neighbourhood can be developed and gentrified, attracting a class of people that are deemed far more ‘acceptable’ than those that currently call it home.

If anything, it’s the shame of Vancouver. It’s the shame of those that drive through it with their windows rolled up, or that act as if those they pass on the street are going to beat them to death without provocation. It’s as if most of those that venture into the neighbourhood to go to new restaurants and nightspots think that the people down there have the plague. Hell, even the local business association hires rent-a-cops to keep them off of Water Street so as not to offend the tourists pouring off the cruise ships. That is, of course, in direct violation of their Charter rights, but it happens nonetheless, and no one says a thing.

The Lower Eastside is Vancouver’s shame because Vancouverites continue to allow it to be. The city is so arrogant, so full of itself, so in love with its own new reflection that it can’t be bothered to confront one of the most serious issues that has plagued it for years.

When the world comes in 2010, let them see it. Let them walk the streets and see the dispossessed that call them home. Let them look upon the disheveled bodies in the doorways and the huddled figures clinging to wet blankets on the freezing concrete. Let them see us for what we are, because Yaletown, Coal Harbour, and the rest of it, is not what we are.

We may convince ourselves that that isn’t the case, but just venture down to the Lower Eastside and your perspective will change in a heartbeat. That is, if you bother to get out of your car.

What separates someone in Yaletown snorting coke in a bathroom and someone smoking crack in a back alley in Gastown? One is a fucking moron. The other has probably been shuffled out of our mental welfare system and has nowhere to go and no other way to fight their demons. You spend some time and try and figure out which is which.

November 3, 2007 42 Comments