Pubdate: Fri, 24 Jun 2005
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Times Colonist
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/victoria/timescolonist/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jody Paterson

REVEREND AL IS HELPING VICTORIA TO OPEN ITS EYES

Everyone has the right to an opinion. But I can't let a letter to the 
editor last week go unchallenged around the competency of Rev. Al 
Tysick to run the Open Door.

I met Reverend Al not long after I moved to Victoria 16 years ago, 
back when Open Door was a little operation on Quadra Street and 
Johnson. I'd drop by the place in those years searching for a story, 
and there'd be maybe a dozen or so people hanging out. Most were 
chronic alcoholics.

Reverend Al would no doubt count himself fortunate to see a day like 
that nowadays at the Open Door. These days, visitors to the Open Door 
number in the hundreds. They fill up every inch of the Pandora Avenue 
drop-in and spill onto the streets. Some set up camps, deal drugs, 
throw used needles on the ground and otherwise drive the neighbours wild.

But don't be blaming Reverend Al for any of that. His place is an 
open door, that's true, but it always has been. What's changed are 
the size of the crowds, and the kind of drugs people are tending to 
use. There's no hiding it, as anyone who has made their way past the 
high-intensity scene at the Open Door recently can testify.

If ever there was an indication of something going very wrong in our 
society, it's the scene at the Open Door. In terms of health problems 
and misery, it's as grim as anything Vancouver's Downtown Eastside 
has to offer. Now the police are having to be called in to stop the 
open drug-dealing.

Some days, violence between clients prompts the Open Door to close 
down until people cool off. The drop-in is straining to keep things 
manageable for the impoverished, homeless and physically ill people 
- -- many with mental-health issues and addictions as well -- who rely 
on the services of the Open Door.

The time when a few dozen people sought the Open Door's services are 
long gone. So are the days when alcohol was all there was to worry 
about. Now there's heroin, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine as 
well, and no shortage of people selling drugs to support their own 
addiction. The next thing you know, there's a letter in the paper 
questioning whether Al Tysick is the man for the job, and speculating 
that it might be better just to turn the whole operation over to the police.

If we were prepared to jail people for the crime of being messed up 
by life, I guess that strategy could at least address the problem of 
having to look at our social failures. Police could just arrest 
everyone and try to get them jailed for a few years. Out of sight, 
out of mind. The public could continue to avoid thinking about their 
community's decline.

But if you actually want to get at the problems, then it's going to 
take even more Al Tysicks, and quite a few more Open Doors.

I'll bet the Victoria Police feel the same way. I don't imagine 
they'll be elbowing Reverend Al out of the way any time soon for a 
crack at running the Open Door, either. Police rely on places like 
the Open Door and the sobering centre to take intoxicated people off 
their hands, because they know from experience that jail's no place 
for the addicted and ill. A savvy urban police force often 
understands more than most that enforcement is only a small part of 
the solution to what ails a community.

That's not to suggest that Victoria is ailing to the point of being 
unsafe, because it's still mostly the sad and desperate who are at 
greatest risk of getting caught up in a negative situation downtown, 
not downtown shoppers and business owners. Still, the impact is felt 
to some degree by all of us, because the mere act of driving past the 
Open Door nowadays means having to face up to the reality of a 
growing sub-class.

Victoria service providers have been criticized off and on over the 
years for creating the downtown's social problems just by existing. 
The general theory behind such criticism is that if agencies would 
just quit feeding and supporting the poor and desperate, they'd go 
away. Like bears in our provincial parks.

Unfortunately, there are no berry bushes and warm dens waiting for 
this group of people, and no place to push them anymore. Our wilful 
neglect over the years around issues including addiction, mental 
illness and personal struggle has brought us to a very dark place, 
and it's only going to get darker if we continue any further down this path.

If you doubt that, take a long walk around Vancouver's ruinous 
Downtown Eastside and see if you still feel the same way.

"Open your eyes, people," Reverend Al said in a media interview a 
couple of years back, when the numbers were starting to climb at his 
place. Well said
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MAP posted-by: Beth