A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

The concept of “passing” has presumably been around since whenever the first person on the outside of the dominant social group of the day figured out they could hide in plain sight because they had the good fortune of looking like they belonged. You’re a black person in the pre-Civil Rights era, but your genetics gave you light skin and straight hair. You’re Jewish in Hitler’s Germany, but with an acceptably Aryan bone structure as to draw no negative attention. You’re a trans woman using a women’s washroom, but your physical appearance is sufficiently “feminine” that nobody has a thought about that. You’re a sex worker in a hostile room of those mean kind of feminists who hate sex work, but everybody treats you respectfully because you look like them and they have no idea what you do for a living. You’re LGBTQ in a land that will have none of it, living out your secrets from inside a heterosexual marriage. You’re a daily user of street drugs, but you’ve got a job, a nice house and a ...

I spent a bit of time on “the block” this past weekend, that stretch of Pandora Avenue that is currently one of the city’s most visible hot spots of social crisis. I hope the city’s big plan works out well for all concerned, and sign me up for helping. But after three decades of watching so many variations of Victoria councils trying to get a handle on this issue, it's obvious that we'll just be moving street problems into someone else's neighbourhood unless we grasp what really creates these hot spots.  There's a tough little core of maybe 70-100 people at any given point in time in our region who are youngish, hardy, and deep in a late-stage struggle with whatever substance has got them, generally with mental and physical illnesses taking an additional toll. Their chaotic and unpredictable lives place them far outside the many rules, online forms, waiting periods, and service restrictions they face when trying to get help. Like anyone, they need to get their needs met...

Anyone else like a radio opportunity that gives free range to say whatever you want to sound off about,  but then you listen to it and think good grief, couldn't I have been more eloquent and organized in my thinking? Ah, but then I wouldn't be me, right? Or that's what I like to tell myself.  Here I am, blathering on People First Radio this month about the street scene in Victoria. For some reason, I'm listening to it for the first time today, 10 days after it aired. I think that might relate to my reluctance to not want to hear myself talking in random, wandering, no-key-messages fashion. That's my dealio, but that's not to say that I love that I do it that way.  But all that said, thank you, Joe Pugh, for letting me sound off in my usual stream-of-conscious style, and for including some clips from the speaker series on the toxic drug crisis that I organized in partnership with Peers Victoria earlier this year.  On the upside, illicit drug deaths in BC fell t...

I hope the inquest recommendations that have come out of tragedy in a University of Victoria residence really do lead to major change. What happened to Sidney McIntyre-Starko is very sad, and there were some major stumbles on a number of fronts leading up to her death at 18 from toxic drugs. But if anyone is thinking that the terrible stigma that hangs over illicit drug use got eased by all the news coverage of this young woman’s death, just let that one go. If anything, the coverage deepened stigma. Right to the final stories, we have seen photos of beautiful Sidney in all her active, “normal” roles, been reminded that this was the first time she’d ever used drugs. She was a good person, we have been assured many times by those quoted in the stories. She died because of system failures, the stories emphasize, not because she was a drug user. And there it is. The stigma. The coverage is careful not to say out loud that Sidney was not like all the other drug users who are dying, b...

Nobody knows the challenges of getting out from under harmful substance use like someone who has actually done it. The third event in the Peers Victoria speaker series on the toxic drug crisis brought together a powerful panel of six past and present substance users to talk about their journeys with frankness, wisdom and so much insight. (I was the lead organizer of the series.) But while we've got a complete video of the event , it's a rare devotee of the subject who would watch the whole thing, clocking in at over two hours. So I made a "greatest hits" compilation, if you will - 40 minutes all in, with clips reordered and with a bit of categorization that helps bring more focus to the panelists' comments.  Here it is for your viewing pleasure . If you have people in your circle who are still saying stupid nonsense about substance users not wanting recovery sufficiently or being content to exist in a state of oblivion, please share it with them.  What kind of sys...

I generally stay out of the fray when it comes to commentary on politicking, so much of which is about as reliable as a snake-oil pitch. But having caught Pierre Poilievre’s promise of addiction treatment for 50,000 Canadians , paid out of the money that will be saved when safe-supply programs are cut, I just can’t let that blatantly misleading statement stand unchallenged. First, let’s start with safe supply. That’s the term used for when people are able to swap out their completely unregulated opioid-based street drugs for a prescription opioid from a health professional. It’s the most obvious immediate strategy to stop a toxic drug crisis that has killed 50,000+ Canadians – more than a quarter of them in BC - in the decade since the anesthetic fentanyl began dominating the street drug market. That Poilievre actually thinks there’s enough money in the country’s teeny-weeny safe-supply response to pay for a major expansion of treatment beds and the cost of putting people into th...

Thank you to long-time community organizer Ann Livingston for pointing me to this 17-year-old blog post that takes us back to 1950s Vancouver to remind us that there's nothing new about the strategies being talked about now to improve health care for people who use substances - or the political tactics used to block those efforts. The Community Chest and Council, the forerunner to the United Way, struck a Narcotics Committee in 1952 to examine the problem. The Committee recommended a comprehensive drug strategy that included rehab centres, educational campaigns, and stiffer penalties for traffickers. But what really stirred debate was its proposal for clinics that would provide maintenance-level doses of heroin to addicts. The drug clinic scheme was intended to “maintain a constant check on the number of addicts in any community. It would also protect the life of the addict and support him as a useful member of society. This existence would hasten his rehabilitation, or at least r...