Thought Patterns
by Emanuel
The title does not refer to what you might think (it’s actually been quite sunny this winter). It has to do with Canada’s poorest zip code, the Downtown East Side and what a few police officers have been doing about educating the youth of the dangers of ending up there. I just discovered the ‘Through a Blue Lens’ documentary available on YouTube and it’s worth watching if you want to get a realistic idea of what life is like down there. It’s produced by a few police officers that call themselves the Odd Squad and from the look of it, they’re doing some really good things in the community. Their mission is to produce ‘reality-based documentaries to give youth the knowledge to avoid the pitfalls of drug abuse’.
While this past week featured a lot of press about the upcoming Olympic Games in Vancouver, I thought The Globe and Mail did a good job of using the timing to feature ‘Canada’s Slum: The Fix‘. It’s worth some reading if you’re interested in the subject as there’s a lot of information there. Here’s a excerpt I found representative:
“My drug of choice is more,” he says — more of whatever is available.
Asked if he is trapped on the Eastside because of drugs, he says: “No. Poverty did that. We live in a shithole. I mean, who wouldn’t want to get high down here?”
I’ve posted about the topic before with specific regards to some of the most inspiring ideas on the subject. It’ll be interesting to see how this will play out during the Olympics.
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