DAY ONE: Vancouver on Trial

Willy Picton is coming soon to the living rooms and newspaper stands around the world. The international media are camped out on our doorstep salivating for the gruesome details of how 26 women from Vancouver's downtown eastside were murdered. Picton is becoming the new media dahling, our very own poster boy for all of Vancouver's dirty little secrets.

Recently recovered from guilt-free shopping on Boxing Day, Patricia Graham, the editor-in-chief at The Vancouver Sun informs us: "...our relatively safe, civilized and peaceful community is going to get ugly for a while," as her staff dig in for the two year Picton Media Hoedown. I don't know what colour her lenses are but things in Vancouver haven't been "safe, civilized and peaceful" in the 13 years since the provincial government hasn't cast an eye on the welfare rates and the mayors have been basking in the glow of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics .

Civilized is the last word that comes to mind to describe this continuing vicious neglect of our homeless. With all the well-intentioned yawp, their numbers are increasing. In the days of independent newspaper ownership, a publisher or editor of character would have shamed the city and province long ago into tackling the homelessness and drug addiction issues of Vancouver and the province.


Returning to the Keyboard, Raising the Banner
Time to kick the tires. Turn the keys again. Stir things up. As a home, Vancouver leaves a lot to be desired and a lot of people out of a home. Joy willingly evades continuity in the face of indifference and the absence of compassion. And most fleeting for the poor saps driving by in their Jaguars, nipping at pesky pedestrians' feet, gunning their engines on a congested Robson and sneering at the panhandlers; all of which seems to constitute their answer to life's little riddle: Why am I alive? For the rest of us, as we witness the gulf between the grotesquely rich and the extremely poor grow ever wider, we may feel helpless in the sad drift but perhaps it is best to heed the heroic among us, one of whom, Stephen Lewis, offered recently, "Despair is a self indulgence."