Just Desserts at the Downtown Community Court

Usually when a Downtown Eastsider walks into a courthouse, they expect to be served something other than jumbo chocolate chip cookies. But that's what they got this afternoon at the opening lunch of the new Community Court on Gore St. near Cordova, beside the Sunrise Market.


The Community Court, which began operating earlier this month and is modeled on one in New York City, will offer a quick, "integrated" response to people nabbed for petty crime in downtown Vancouver. There will be a welfare worker, a housing worker, a forensic psychiatrist, to name a few, in the court house to connect people pleading guilty with services that might help them. The idea is that helping people with some of their underlying problems such as being broke, addicted, homeless, might diminish their temptation to break into your car and mine. Sentences will often involve community service such as cleaning alleys or working in kitchens.


Today, sheriffs standing at the front door of the Community Court were calling out to people walking by on Gore St., "Come on in! Have a burger!" Inside the building, a corridor led past the closed door of a court room and on to an outdoor court yard. Some Downtown Eastsiders recognized it as the courtyard of the old pre-trail jail. Today, it was the site of a lunch catered by the Bread Garden: hamburgers with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, pickles, etc., hot dogs, potato salad, caesar salad with large croutons, bags of potato chips, cans of pop and bottles of water. For dessert, there were assorted fresh jumbo-size chocolate chip cookies with huge chunks of chocolate in them. There were other varieties of jumbo cookies too, like chocolate with almond slivers sprinkled on top.

The guy in the off-white suit and green shirt just left of center in the above photo is a judge in the Community Court. A guy walked up to him and said, "You look sober, you must be the judge." The judge laughed and said, "It's early in the day."

Photo above: Guests mingle in the outdoor court yard where the lunch was held inside the Community Court building.

Photo above: A sheriff in dress uniform stands at the back of the food line up in the outdoor courtyard.


Here a sheriff chats with people lined up for food. Early on, the crowd was made up largely of people who worked in the neighbourhood, with just a smattering of the low income population. But word soon got out that there was a free lunch at the community court -- somebody yelled it out at Main & Hastings -- and a crowd of poor people showed up. The food quickly ran out as they had catered for just 300.

Marilyn Whiskeyjack Murdered

Isn't that an interesting name? Whiskeyjack. She won't be using it much now that she was murdered on Friday night.

The 42 yr. old aboriginal woman, raced into the hall of Main Rooms near Main & Powell St. just before midnight, screaming that she had been stabbed. She made it down to the street where she collapsed. Other tenants called 9-1-1 but Whiskeyjack died in hospital an hour later.

Whiskeyjack, according to Carnegie members, was a drug addict. She was stabbed just 2 1/2 blocks away from controversial projects for addicts that have drawn world attention to the Downtown Eastiside: the supervised drug injection site and the free heroin dispensing project. But whether she used these services is unknown.

Several patrons and staff at Carnegie Center knew Whiskeyjack, as she used to come around. She apparently picked up her mail there, as a regular recalls seeing the name "Whiskeyjack" on the list at the reception desk for people who use Carnegie as their mailing address.

Whiskeyjack was stabbed multiple times, according to the media. There are conflicting stories at Carnegie; one story is that she was stabbed in the neck, another is that her throat was slit. Paramedics would have been close by as the Fire Hall is at the end of the block where she collapsed.

Whiskeyjack's boyfriend is a suspect. The word on the street is that he is hispanic, although that has not been confirmed.

[Makes you wonder if he could be one of the many hispanic illegals on the Downtown Eastside selling drugs. Even the other drug dealers are fed up with these illegals. They tell them to scram because they are quick to draw "heat".]

The Main Rooms is a drug scene. About three years ago, just before Christmas, Downtown Eastsiders walking into the Univeristy of B.C. Learning Exchange next door to use the free public access computers saw evidence of this. They watched as half a dozen bodies were carried down onto the street from the Main Rooms. All had died from the same batch of drugs in the same room.

The Main Rooms, like numerous low-rent rooming houses on the Downtown Eastside, is owned by Betty Woo. Woo has a reputation amongst longtime Downtown Eastside residents for being a good landlord, believe it or not. She is occasionally around the Downtown Eastside with her husband Jimmy who sometimes carries a repair kit.

"It was like an episode of CSI," a Carnegie regular repeatedly said of the scene on Saturday, the day after the murder. "People in white outfits were going into the Main Rooms and there were police vans and trucks."

The forensic team was working the scene again on Sunday. "It was like CSI," the Carnegie regular said again. "They were carrying out bags of evidence. There was a woman taking off her white suit. She was real beautiful, just like you'd see on CSI. She was putting on her glasses; I was trying not to stare at her. She was opening little drawers in the back of the police van just like in CSI."

Watching the forensics team back on Sunday, this onlooker, a white guy, said twice that he was pleased to see that the police were not taking the attitude that Whiskeyjack's life was cheap. Vancouver Police have been accused for years of displaying this attitude towards the lives of women in the Downtown Eastside underclass when a serial killer appeared to be targeting them, resulting in the current infamous Pickton trial. "They're taking this real serious," the onlooker said of Whiskeyjack's murder. "They're not treating this like, 'Ahh, just another dead Indian druggie.' "

Whiskeyjack is a bird, a Canadian jay. It is not known whether Marily Whiskeyjack was Cree but according to the Canadian Gage dictionary, "whiskeyjack" is adapted from a Cree word.