A YEARNING FOR ROADS BETTER TAKEN

Street Stories: 100 Years of Homelessness in Vancouver
Michael Barnholden and Nancy Newman. Photography by Lindsay Mearns
Anvil Press, 2007
Review by: Alicia Costa

It’s no surprise that the biggest newsmaker in the past few years in Vancouver has been homelessness. Hardly a day goes by when Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside isn’t in the paper or in the news.  Dubbed "Canada’s poorest postal code" the Downtown Eastside has become a fishbowl for locals, journalists, and tourists alike.

Street Stories: 100 Years of Homelessness in Vancouver  humanizes the people who make up the vibrant Downtown Eastside community.  The first section of the book gives the reader an overview of homelessness in Vancouver from its beginnings in 1886 with reservations for First Nations peoples to huge cuts in social spending and health care by the BC Liberal government.  It forces the reader to confront a past dominated by racism and elite status.

"When much of the recent t political discourse in Vancouver has been dominated by discussion on the 'homeless problem,' usually in the context of the 2010 Olympics, it becomes clear that the issue is not homelessness itself, but rather the fact that is a problem at all." (Barnholden/ Newman, 30)

The second half of Street Stories is a series of photographs and interviews by Lindsay Mearns with local people living on the streets.  Each page includes a black-and-white photo of the individual and a short interview with them.

Each person is unique and has their own story of where they came from and why they are on the street. Most of the women interviewed were on the streets to escape abuse at home.

"I wish I had never become involved in drugs, and could go back and relive my entire life in Salmon Arm. Life on the streets is barely one step away from pigs living in shit," said Melissa Peacock, a survival sex-trade worker who was interviewed for the book.

In each interview Mearns asked each person their advice to young people who were thinking about a life on the street and the overwhelming response was, "Don’t do it." I think Mearns was trying to put a name to those faces we all see and walk by on the street every day.  She gave them a chance to reclaim their voices and to tell their stories.

Alicia Costa, originally from Kelowna B.C., currently resides in East Vancouver. Graduating from Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies in 2008, she is currently in Langara College’s Journalism Certificate program. She hopes someday to break into daily news writing and radio.