Social Rendering

A History

There has been media coverage on the Downtown Eastside's (DTES) activist community proclaiming the business community is the gentrifier of their community. But, originally Hastings Street and Gastown constituted the main business hub of Vancouver and 'old' office buildings were converted into residences in response to the social housing shortages created by Expo 1986. The City pushed the poor off Davie Street into DTES. Business always demands the transient subculture off its door step. It is the choice of the people elected to run the municipality on how that demand is met that results in the culture of their new neighbourhood.

It is unfortunate the present culture of the DTES still rallies divisiveness: Us v Them.  It has been this way for as long as I've known the neighbourhood. In 1994 there was DERA's internal fighting with who was the Executive Director, Jim Green or Barb Daniels. The latter won out, but the former was given a mid-management position in the provincial government. The divisiveness continued to flourish due to all the players, named and their supporters, behaving within the realm of corruption. The manifestations remain in every crook and cranny, and those bred to it knowing nothing different, and it is nurtured by the whole City, itself.  The corrupt include those with the blinders of not-in-my-backyard.

The corrupt deny there are choices. It has to be this way for the paradigm of victim to exist: For every victim there must be a perpetrator. A parallel paradigm exists with every emancipator there is a collaborator, and they embrace the realms of choice.

Choice requires an acknowledgement of Us v Them, but only from the perspective of defining the parts of the whole. Choice also reveres the responsibilities of its processes and results. It proclaims openly when it wears the blinders, for choice is the voice of creation.

A Revolution

Is it possible for the corrupt to take up the mantel of choice?  Of course, for that is the purpose of creation: the more invocation of choice results in an expansion of creation. Even the corrupt exist within creation, the difference is theirs is short lived.

The collective is on the verge of a rendering the awareness of choice.

Hastings Street is meeting the needs of the new demands with the influx of creative individuals gathering within its population. The area's growth is for naught. It is change due to choice, and with that choice there comes more choice.

My Choice

I have lived this homeless existence with the question of how to break the juggernaut of the Us v Them paradigm, so that I can have the survival tool thus enabling an expansion of my thriving needs. Without shelter (one of three sacred survival requirements) my choices of activity is restricted to shortening my life.  It is the juggernaut of the corrupt, the outside force that has invaded my space and needs lancing.

The lancing can only be done when light is used to define the dark images of ourselves, the communities. I choose to give you a light.

The Episode

Yesterday, amid the deep slushy streets on the south side of Victory Park I saw this man taking

advantage of the emptiness to create. 

On the northeast corner there was another man and his creation required a shovel.

This is Wes Regan. He was cleaning away the snow from the drainage grate so that the melting water would not pool. When this happens there is no safe place for pedestrians to cross the streets, and the cars splash the water up to the sidewalks. The only solution is to clear the grates of the heavy snow, and this requires man power the City couldn't possibly arrange efficiently or economically.

Wes probably recognizes the need more than most because he's the Executive Director of Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association.  All in all, it took him about an hour to do a couple of blocks worth of shoveling. In that time he was given tea from one cafe and a breakfast muffin from another, and said, "They would have done the same for anyone (else), I'm sure".

I told Wes that I had just concluded a tour of western cities to see what poverty and homelessness was like in them, and it had inspired me to share the moments of kindness to create a better society.  Wes and I share the belief we can have a kinder community and easier life when we each do something to help another.  It is these moments of choice when collaboration blossoms into the recognition we are all part of the whole.

We all belong, including the corrupt.  Our purpose and need is to have a balance between the dark and light.

En garde, Magnat.

1994 was a naive time.

There were groups of us sitting around the tables believing we were there to make a difference in our lives. In this belief many of us saw government employees as being partners, ergo democracy in direct action: and, again, Vancouver leads the country with an innovative Canadianism!

We were diligent in our meetings, keeping the decisions on course with how we saw the medical system would best meet the needs of everyone. We studied our communities, met as citizens of the city and province, learned the communication skills the bureaucracy had been learning, wrote and shared our reports, and gave our hearts to what we knew would have the best outcomes. It was to be the final, not beginning stages of the Vancouver Health Board.

Quickly it came from the government the service boundaries had to be divided differently. They knew the money flow, so we posed no argument and continued to make plans as to how we include the new neighbourhoods into our plan for the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board. In quick succession the names and boundaries kept changing and every neighbourhood across the Lower Mainland (22 municipalities surrounding the Fraser River delta) no longer had input to any plan's implementation.

Fast forward through the Drunken-Campbell-BC, where addictions developed into big business for the province. In fact, along with cannabis, the continent's pharmaceutical industry found another group of subjects to test and sell their new found mood-altering concoction, methadone. The Downtown Eastside in Vancouver and Whalley in Surrey are the Lower Mainland's focus to find test subjects, and methadone-only pharmacies have popped up like daisies. One Surrey pharmacist plied flyers for his delivery service ($80. per prescription) to his strongest client base's residential complex. (photo to come)

Many of the generational homeless are raised or migrate to these two areas: It is much easier for the urban poor to make a camp in park-filled Surrey, or have a floor mat in Vancouver than any where else in Canada. Besides, the Lotus lands are always found in the port cities, or those that longshoremen reside in, because that's where the pirates, aka gangsters, have historically plied their trade.

1912 Vancouver businessmen successfully lobbied the provincial government to have the merchant-class ships unload in their port.  Originally the plan was Prince Rupert, because it was a 55-hour shorter route from Singapore, but the Vancouverites were better sleeping partners. A century later Jim Pattison has changed this - and he's been a BC pirate since his infamous 1970's pornographic smuggling - back to Prince Rupert, and that lovely, little coastal community is about to be the hub of ugly; The pirates are sure to moor and leave a wake of destruction up and down the eastern Pacific coast and along the hunting grounds of the Yellowhead Highway, aka Highway 16, right into Edmonton. Pattison has the two western provinces tied into a juggernaut of pig farm proportions, and the psychopaths are salivating.

Homelessness continued...

Unenviable, or not?

None of us escape the dichotomy of choice. Tis the way of life. So, is it more enviable to have many choices or fewer?

The situation...

I have a monthly disability income of $940. The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in this area is $700, add the average cost of utilities (phone, hydro, internet or cable TV) to be $150. I have the added expense of paying $125 per month for a loan I had to take out nearly two years ago. The rest is to buy food with...

I could rent in the cheapest city in this area (average $550 for rent), but it is the city that has caused me the greatest grief and where gangsters roam without any societal containment. My life could be in danger if I were to roam the same streets, as rumor has it, the so-called-contract that was out on me last November is still active.

To use the emergency shelters throughout the Lower Mainland is to sleep beside the same people connected to the gang that put that contract out on me. It is the same as the Transition Houses, where women from prison and the violence of addiction go.  I would pay $375, at least, for a bed for a month.


I have applied to numerous non-profit housing and remain on a waiting list for each. The Salvation Army was oh-so-diabolical and managed to put me from the very top of the A-list for housing to the bottom of the B-list with BC Housing. I have been on this waiting list since January 2000.

A few days ago I turned 55 years of age, and this is suppose to qualify me to use the services of Senior Services Society, in New Westminster. About two months ago I met with Denise Wells there who once worked for a non-profit organization in Surrey and she was part and parcel of a group who tried to steal my artwork. She pawned me off, with prejudice, to a co-worker and Phillip turned out to be "too busy" to help me. I spoke with his acting supervisor, Anna, yesterday and her view is that I don't need their services. She suggested I go to a place in Surrey, which is where Wells worked before and in the heart of the gangster territory.


I could use the bed I have been using the last month, but one of the people has chosen to view my bike as his way to excise his anger. He has destroyed the derailer and it will cost me about $75 to have it repaired. His reasoning for changing the gears abusively is the bike is "a piece of shit".  But, it isn't his responsibility to fix it, or pay for the repairs. His girlfriend has nothing to say, except to pretend nothing is wrong.  (The bike is not just a bike: I have severe arthritis in my lower limbs, and wear a knee brace for support. I cannot stand for more than a few minutes with the brace and the bike allows me to carry groceries as well as exercise to control my weight and diabetes.)

The rains have returned, but there is always a sleeping bag and tarp.