On Homelessness

About 10 years ago, a friend and I met with Liberal Member of Parliament, Hedy Fry, in her office in the Denman Mall.

I'll never forget this encounter.

We made the appointment to discuss an idea we had.

We wanted to open the Burrard St. armories to the homeless as a shelter for a dozen or so days over the coldest part of the season in December and January. The site had heat, hot water, beds, cots, mattresses, blankets, lights, a kitchen and about 100 cadets who marched back and forth all day.

All we were asking of Dr. Fry was that she speak to the Minister of Defense. My friend was a former City Councillor and we felt confident we could get the City onside.

Dr. Fry was so not interested in seeing us.

Her first response was that her research had indicated clearly that homeless people liked being homeless and that they would always chose homelessness because it gave them a sense of independence.

I told her that I lived in False Creek and that I had spoken several times with people living under the Burrard Bridge. To a man, they had all said they would be happy to get in out of the cold.

Her next response was that this was just "a band-aid measure. You're not going to cure poverty."

I was shocked by this kind of idiocy.

I told her that I wasn't a Christian. "But wasn't it Jesus who said, "The Poor shall always be amongst you.""

Here is the school to which I belong.

Almost all human endeavour, and especially the helping kind, is a "band-aid" measure. We do a bit of this, we do a bit of that and we make the world a slightly better, safer place. We push the marble a little further up the hill. Only once or twice in a generation does a Curie or a Salk come along and significantly change the order of things.

The rabbis teach that if you save a soul, you save the universe.

How much can any of us expect to do?

I spent ten years running a treatment centre. I didn't save the world, but I helped many people and I'm both proud and humbled by this experience. If I visit a senior in a care home for an hour, that isn't worthwhile?

Let's leave the Worst and Least deserving Member of Parliament for now and go to today's news.

Jeff Birmingham and his girlfriend - we learn in this morning's Province - collected $1,100 worth of Canadian Tire "money," brought it to Canadian Tire, who matched it and allowed Jeff to buy $2,200 worth of goodies for the poor.

He bought 60 sleeping bags, 60 pairs of socks and 20 thermal blankets.

Please don't write me and tell me from your deepest wells of cynicism that this lovely couple wasted their energies. I applaud them. Bless them for their kindness and thoughtfulness. Their "band-aid measure" will keep some people warm.

IN another Province story, we learn that 5 churches in the tricities area have been taking in as many as 250 homeless people. That's the good news. The sick news is the NIMBY neighbours in the full spirit of Anti-Christmas, are kvetching.

This is a story of Hope and caring and, simultaneously, a story of disgusting selfishness. Read the story here.

It is true that we need larger, more comprehensive solutions to homelessness. They are called HOMES. We need the Federal and Provincial governments to stop putzing about and built adequate housing for the homeless. I am a taxpayer and I welcome this expense.

But until the rosy day that happens, any gesture that alleviates the suffering should also be welcomed.

I'm so sorry that the presence of homeless people in their neighbourhood churches has cut into the delusional plans of the good folks in the tricities who are dashing about buying their new plasma TVs.

I am proud of those 5 churches.

Happy Sunday.

GLOBAL WARMING BITES CASTILGLIONE

Still don't believe in global warming?

Try visiting Castiglione, a village near Ravenna on the Adriatic Coast, not far from Venice.

A tropical disease spread by tiger mosquitoes hit this town like a bomb this past summer.

The disease, normally present only in Africa and India, has now been spotted in Switzerland and France.

For those of us who love Italy, this is scary news indeed. Venice has its fair share of Mosquitoes even as early as April and May.

Read the whole story from this morning's NY Times here, if you're not too feverish.

Eastern Promises Unfulfilled

Is there anyone left in the world today who knows the difference between form and content or style and substance?

Ordinary viewers and critics alike rant and rave in ecstasy about one movie after another because...why? They got a shot of adrenalin during the Kill Shot? They fell in love with the owl in the tree? They were inspired by the little girl on the raft?

Last night I rented David Cronenberg's film, "Eastern Promises."

After 35 minutes or so, I took the DVD out of the machine and watched 2 Seinfeld reruns.

In the opening scene, a man is executed in a barber shop. From the opening beat, we know what is coming. Everything is telegraphed. The only surprise is the utter viciousness with which the murder is filmed.

The boy doesn't simply cut the man's throat. He basically saws the man's head half off with a small straight razor. Blood spurts in great orgasmic rushes. The man fights crazily, hopelessly in his death throws.

Later, out hero, our star, Viggo Mortensen, collects the corpse from a freezer and calmly snips off the ends of five fingers.

Soon, hero and friend are in a private brothel with drugged teenage girls.

Friend insists that Hero defile one of the girls now and before his and our eyes to prove that he "isn't queer."

I stopped the disc as Viggo was doggy pumping a naked girl in full view.

If I want to watch porno, I'll do that on my own time, thanks.

When I rent a movie or go to a cinema, I'm expecting something a tad better.

Now, Mr. Cronenberg is a much celebrated artist.

"Scanners," "The Dead Zone," "The Fly," "Dead Ringers," "Crash," "A History of Violence."

Now it's one thing to be a Master of the Bizarre or the King of Mayhem or some other adorable sobriquet.

But this man is sick.

And all of the people involved in financing and distribution and promotion and adoration are suffering from an advanced case of "The Emperor's New Clothes."

Like Tarentino, and often Scorcese, Cronenberg is about blood and bad sex. If he weren't making movies, he'd be a petty criminal or the local bar sleaze.

Basta. Enough.

Today's Province Column +

Here is today's Province column.

And below is a succinct response:

Hello Mr. Berner,

I absolutley and totally agree with your perspective on treatment and not giving to those struggling with addictions more of the same. Personally, I believe that we have bought into the notion of harm reduction simply because we no longer really care about the well being of those entrapped and we do not have the patience and dedication that is required to see individuals weaned off of substance abuse.

Thanks,

Don Sukkau

Interesting that last week I was inundated with raving hate mail, and today I have about 3 responses, all of them positive.

Seems like VENTING...has become a national pasttime.

Sam$ MI$$ion

I have it on a number of reliable sources that The Nutty Mayor spends 99% of his time running for the next election.

He has raised a small fortune in his war chest and he attends private fund gigs almost nightly.

Which means, among other things, that he attends to almost no City hall business.

Which could be a good thing...for city managers and for us.

No matter how much lucre this ambitious, vengeful teenager piles on, my sense is that he is finished - a one-snort wonder, who will be very much on the sidelines at 2010.

There is a groundswell of disapproval and distaste against this fellow the likes of which I have never seen before.

City Rai$e$ the Roof

It is hard to argue with a 25% increase in wages for non-union managers at City Hall after the City settled with union employees at a 17.5% increase.

Nevertheless...we should all be so lucky.

A 25% wage increase for folks who are already in the $100,000/year +++ remains galling in the face of the struggles facing ordinary workers.

Ladner and others will argue that we must remain competitive with other jurisdictions, and that may be so.

But I would say, "If your $250,000/year and all the perks and short hours and days off and Vancouver quality of life just aren't cutting it for you, Bunky, then enjoy the hellhole called Alberta."

Victor's Vision of Kim

Once again, Kim Capri has uttered one of her trademark non sensical and unsubstantiated pronouncements. This woman is the very embodiment of Bimbo politics. Her presence on Council is an affront to every hard working, intelligent female politician who is elected on merit.
In this instance, Ms. Capri opined that moving addicts to neighbourhoods will actually make neighbourhoods safer. How does she know this? Would that include the addict who stole presents from the child's hospital room last month? Or the addict who beat the kindly old man in the Cathedral? Ms. Capri knows she can make these types of airhead statements without challenge from from the media. That's her role on council. She is the Official Blonde and every time she invents one of her mindless factoids, she gives regrettable credence to that stereotype.
Vacuousness had been this woman's trademark since she was nominated. I recall a summer night, two years ago at the Italian Club, when Ms. Capri, along with a gaggle of NPA aspirants, made pre nomination speeches. I recall being gobsmacked by her solution to the drug problems of the downtown east side. She actually said the solution was to have more early childhood education. The woman beside me whispered to me " Is she suggesting we take all crackheads into regression therapy back to the womb and start again?"
Stupid then, stupider now. Why indeed would women be attracted to politics and risk being typecast as being in the Kim mold?

Best Flicks in Town

Leonard Schein continues to show the best movies in town at the Park, the Fifth Avenue and The Ridge.

Take a taste below...then click on the link to your right ("Leonard's Silver Screens") or here.

GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINEES NOW PLAYING AT FESTIVAL CINEMAS ATONEMENT 7 nominations including Best Picture. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN4 nominations including Best PictureJUNO3 nominations including Best Picture THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY3 nominations including Best Picture THE KITE RUNNER2 nominations including Best PictureTHE SAVAGESBest actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Randy Travis and BB King

JUdge Wallace Craig's Latest from the North Shore News

PREMIER MUST ACT ON SKID ROAD PROSTITUTION
December 19, 2007
THE long and ominous shadow cast by men who beat, rape and murder brings fear and uncertainty to women in ways rarely experienced by men.
Since I began my journey in 1931, Vancouverites have lived through many changes and turbulent times – some sudden and dramatic, others gradual but pervasive.
Along the way a rising tide of violence towards women in Canada reached Vancouver. At first it came slowly, spreading insidiously through homes, schools, the workplace and our streets and byways. Then, in the 1960s, with the dawning of individualism, self-indulgence, consumerism and notional equality for women, a trickle of violence towards women began to surge. Now it is at high slack with no sign of ebbing.
In my twenty-six years on the bench at 222 Main St., I watched this rising tide of violence towards women, dismayed by the failure of the court to confront it with determination and deterrent sentences. Rather than speedy trials and significant sentences, offending men were able to manipulate plea bargained soft landings in a special court euphemistically referred to as “disposition court.”
I remember the late 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, times when women were safe in their homes and protected in public. Today a woman is as likely to be attacked in her home as on the street, and in public there is no comfort for a woman who ventures alone into an underground parking lot or onto a wooded pathway in a park.
Making matters worse, by the 1970s too many obsessive sociopaths had transfigured their violence into stalking women they wanted to control. This posed such a threat to women that Parliament responded, creating a new offence of criminal harassment.
Today our society has been struck by a thunderbolt of condemnation expressed in stark words on the front page of the Dec. 10 issue of the Province.
Robert Pickton Guilty of Six Counts of Second-Degree Murder. We Let These Girls and Women Down in Life. We’ve Now Let Them Down in Death.
Six murders committed serially leads to only one conclusion, by rational inference if necessary, that they were planned and committed purposefully in a horrifically sadistic manner.
A serial killer seeks his victims one by one, sequentially and, unless clearly insane, is engaged in the most evil of planned, sadistic, and deliberate first degree murder.
The jury verdict that Pickton committed second degree murder was flat out wrong.
Pickton is not insane – rather he is the embodiment of evil in its most sadistic incarnation.
“We let these girls and women down in life” can have only one meaning: that the continuing and sporadic disappearance and presumed murder of the most vulnerable of women, drug-addicted street prostitutes – mainly young aboriginals – beginning in the 1980s and increasing in the 1990’s – was a terrible crisis of enormous proportion.
What did successive mayors and council members of Vancouver and chiefs of police know and do about the missing women of Skid Road? They must tell us under oath why the malevolent vortex of our anarchic Skid Road was allowed to swallow up the most defenceless of women. It verges on malfeasance and that alone cries out for a formal inquiry.
“We’ve now let them down in death,” says to me that the horror of Skid Road remains unchanged and may even be worse for women of aboriginal ancestry. The Province quoted Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs as saying “I am so angry that our women have been treated like second-class citizens yet again with these second-degree murder verdicts. … Regardless of the outcome of this trial and regardless of whether the trials (concerning) the other 20 women go ahead there needs to be an inquiry. The whole issue was ignored and dismissed for so many years, even though fingers were pointed at the Pickton farm.”
Yet we must not be deluded into believing that an inquiry will bring real change to our hellish Skid Road.
Only our premier, Gordon Campbell can do that.
Mr. Premier, the Pickton case is a Mississippi gamblers buck-handled knife, signifying who decides the game to be played and who alone deals the cards; hence the saying “the buck stops here.” A buck-handled knife bearing the initials “Willy” is now on your desk Mr. Premier. You are the dealer. No more shuffling of cards.
Here’s a few aces to be dealt face up, right now.
· More detoxification facilities and adjunct residential treatment in and out of Skid Road.
· Insist that the federal government amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence for prostitutes to work the streets. This would enable police to take our most neglected and brutalized of young girls and women off the street; and before the much touted community court set to begin in 2008. Remember, it was the removal of the old Vagrancy C section from the Criminal Code that began the parade of drug-addicted street prostitutes forlornly teetering about on high strolls, low strolls, and kiddy strolls where they immediately became and remain prey for freaky, violent and amoral johns.
· Insist that the federal government create a specific “johns” offence, a hybrid summary conviction offence targeting street johns found in the company of street prostitutes with punishment ranging from a minimum of 30 days to a maximum of 180 days without any opportunity for parole.
Mr. Premier, the Pickton case is a last call to society. Act now; get tough.
We must stop this open-air public market in which vulnerable girls and women are so easily taken away by freaky johns, sadistic street sociopaths and murdering psychopaths.
We will always remember the missing women of Skid Road, particularly whether the buck-handled knife remained on your desk, Mr. Premier, or was passed into limbo.
Contact Judicial Gadfly
at wallace-gilby-craig@shaw.ca
or by posting your comment directly on the Writer’s Corner of www.realjustice.ca.

Mazel Tov! Tanti Auguri!

Congratulations are in order to 2 very different groups:

1. The Anglican and United Churches deserve recognition for their bold and thoughtful message to the provincial government that real markers must be set on environmental damage. They have called for a carbon tax that might help industry cut back on its regular spew.

I think this is a responsible and useful and important role for the church. More!

2. The Sun's week long coverage of the madness of alcoholism has been excellent, and today it's telling of the Alcoholics Anonymous story is first-rate.

May all the misbegotten pseudo-scientists, Svengalis, doctors and politicians looking for a silver bullet read this and recognize the achievement of this extraordinary social asset that continues to operate quietly in out midst and turn millions of clean and sober human beings back to real life.

NPA Messes with the Rules

The NPA wanted more "ambassadors" on the city streets. The cost is almost $1 Million.

The other councillors didn't want to spend taxpayers money on what constitutes a private security force, when we need more police.

Needing a vote of 8 yeses, Council changed the rules and renamed this travesty as a "single source contract," which requires only a simple majority. They got it and they passed this questionable gift to Genesis Security.

The Courier did a superior job of covering this story.

And who should be at the centre of this ugly maneuvering at City Hall?

Kim Capripants, who threatened, "There's the opportunity to do this right, or we can do it the hard way."

Add "Bully" to the list of Kim's growing roster of skills.

Exit Strategies Praised for Hookers

The Sun argues in a recent editorial that a second Pickton trial would not serve the public interest.

I don't agree with them, but I am cheered to see that they argue further that the money would best by spent on exit strategies for prostitutes and treatment for the psychiatric and addiction problems that plague prostitutes.

I hope they don't get the hate mail that I received for saying exactly that on Sunday.

I guess it's all in the way you say things.

The High COst of Politics

I love the juxtapostioning of opposing or complimentary stories on the same page in newspapers. I am sure that layout editors do this as a kind a marvelous prank.

On the left hand side of Tuesday's Sun, a story about political appointees getting mighty raises. Useless ciphers like the CRTC and the Immigration & Refugee Board (and we all are grateful for the wonderful jobs all these folks are doing) are receiving very generous Christmas bumps.

On the right hand side of the same page, the Human Rights tribunal determines that for years, nurses, as a class of people, have been discriminated against and could be owed hundreds of million s of dollars in back wages for doing the same tasks that doctors do and being payed a fraction thereof.

Even "Old" Progress Bothers the BCTF

It is taken until December 2007, for Alberta and BC to agree that teachers from one province can work in the other.

You would have thought that this kind of housekeeping in a so-called nation would have been taken care of 80 or so years ago.

Yet, the BC Teachers' federation is still kvetching, "Oh, this will lower standards."

As if standards could get much lower.

Singhing the Blues Away

Mr. Singh will probably be deported soon.

The 2000 ardent supporters who held up business at YVR only a few days ago have vanished.

Turns out, Mr. Singh and his "cause" were largely unwitting pawns in a sick game held by terrorists, who have since found more fallow fields.

We are a comically tolerant nation.

Yet, we are not laughing.

Radler

What a strange mix of feelings I have about David Radler's sentence of 29 months.

This will happen when you actually know someone.

We are hardly friends. I met the fellow twice, found him to be a "character," combative, brilliant, funny and oddly kind and thoughtful.

If he has already returned or forfeited $100 Million, that is almost a statement saying, "I earned too much and possibly not the right way."

While I don't condone his actions or apologize for him in any way, I wish him a reasonable survival or all that has happened and will happen in the coming months.

Johnny Cash- Ring of Fire 1968

Great response to Last Week's Column

Dear Editor,



Thank you for letting David Berner to give it straight to the public re: Libby Davies and the brothel battles. Libby Davies MP for Vancouver East has not done one thing to advocate for adequate detox, stabilization and recovery for the poor women in her Riding who want to get off drugs, and off the street. I recently sat and talked with several desperate women who had managed to get through the obscenely long detox wait, and were then were facing the deplorable 6 weeks to 2 months wait to get into recovery (anywhere in B.C.) with nowhere to go except back to the street and addiction, or emergency centres full of drug users.



When I went to Libby Davies about this situation years ago she dismissed it saying, "Oh, that system doesn't work". It does work for those can manage the wait. Libby has always put her support into systems that help people to stay in their addictions, such as Harm Reduction which let's face it, is really Addiction Enabling. Now she thinks co-op brothels would be a great protection for these women.



Isn't that a bit like speeding away in your power boat, while abandoning your downing friends in shark infested waters, and telling them they'll be safer, if they get together with the other drowning people. Yes, that's so cutting edge, and so avant garde. Doesn't anyone realize NO ONE WANTS TO BE A DRUG ADDICT. Can't we just help them out of it, instead of trying to capitalize on their misery.



Pastor Gloria KielerLiving Waters Mission782 E. Hasting St. V6A 1R5604-251-2493

*** NOTICE ***

No blog on Tuesday and Wednesday. Blogger indisposed.

Back on Thursday with really, really BIG BLOG !