A June 2023 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Vancouver, British Colombia as the 5th most liveable city in the world, cementing its consistent position in the top five. Cruise ships dock daily at the iconic Canada Place, disgorging bejewelled tourists with designer trainers directly into the tourist melee of Vancouver’s historic Gastown district. In the background, shiny glass high rise towers are the working hubs for the city’s lawyers and accountants. But just two hundred metres away, the cityscape changes dramatically. Here, on the streets and alleyways of the Downtown East Side, Vancouver’s tragic opioid crisis plays out.
This is the epicentre of Vancouver’s public health emergency. Supply issues with heroin caused by the lockdowns and travel restrictions that came with the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increasingly toxic drug supply as dealers cut heroin with fentanil, carfentanil and other synthetic opioids which are up to 100 times more potent than morphine. As a result, the narcotic concentration varied massively from one batch of heroin to the next, leading to inadvertent overdosing – documented in a recent report from British Columbia’s Coroners Service, it was revealed that some 90% of overdose deaths involved heroin which had been contaminated by fentanil.
Since 14 April 2016, when Canada’s westernmost province declared a public health emergency, there have been some 12,000 drug-toxicity deaths. People are dying of suspected overdoses at a daily rate of 6.4 people per day - a situation described by the province’s Chief Coroner as a crisis of incomprehensible scale.
Indigenous Canadians, living and working in the Downtown East Side, are disproportionately impacted by the overdose crisis, due to systemic racism, inter-generational trauma, and hostile colonial policies. For most of the last century, there was a concerted drive to eradicate their indigenous culture and heritage, this led by both the Church and the State. The Church sought to “civilise” the natives by having them tear down their cultural symbols such as totem poles, by criminalising the ‘potlatch’ (a ceremony integral to their governing structures and spiritual traditions), and by forcing their children into the now infamous residential schools where in an attempt to assimilate them, they were forbidden to speak their own languages or to have contact with their families. Many were placed in foster homes where they suffered both physical and sexual abuse. Fleeing, they ended up on the streets and addiction soon followed.
Here in the Downtown East Side, many addicts lie passed-out on the sidewalk, others stagger around in a stupor, all with averted gaze as if to say “I am not here; I don’t want to be here; I am not really here…”. By using a wide-angle lens, the photographer captured his images by walking amidst these people as if through a tableau vivant, like a post-modern reinterpretation of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
No one wants to know about this opioid crisis. Neither the affluent middle-class citizens of Vancouver living in their dream city of lush parks and waterfront apartments, nor the tourists from the cruise ships who are warned not to venture into the Downtown East Side. We no more want to see them than they wish to be seen by us…
Using a 40mm lens on a Nikon Z7 II slung around my neck, but with the photographs composed and triggered through his iPhone, I took these images covertly, but close up and in plain sight. This lends the images an air of unstaged immediacy but creates a strong moral responsibility for the photographer. This is the antithesis of traditional street photography. By showing the desperate and tragic context without the central focus on the face, the photographer reveals a body count of lost souls for whom there is no redemption. As if in a war zone, it is a catalogue of despair; the only exit is through the needle.
For the photographer, the real scandal, and the cause of so much misery, is the failure of a wealthy state to recognise that its cultural heritage is its people, not just the landscape and the outwards signs of prosperity.
In line with current practice, the photographer acknowledges that the land on which he has taken these photographs is the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory* of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
* Traditional: recognises lands traditionally used and/or occupied by the First Nations.
Ancestral: recognises land that is handed down from generation to generation.
Unceded: refers to land that was not turned over to the Crown (government) by a treaty or other agreement.
The UK-based photographer travels extensively. With his Canadian wife, he often spends his summers in Vancouver, a city he has come to know well. However, until recently, he too was unaware to the tragic plight depicted in these photos. The experience and disturbing insight affected him deeply and led him undertaking this project. Spending time in the area and talking to health and social workers has given him a better understanding of the challenges facing the First Peoples in their ancestral lands.
