Man on Stilts at Poverty Olympics Sunday at Japanese Hall

Better Dead than in the Red

Last week, a longtime Carnegie Centre volunteer was eating a meal at the Carnegie cafeteria and began to choke on his food. The volunteer, who is paralyzed on one side, made his way to the counter where staff sell food, and collapsed.

A young metrosexual with long blond hair who operates the cash register, always with an undercurrent of resentment, acted quickly. He left his cash register and performed the Heimlich manoveur, putting his arms around the choking man and thrusting his rib cage upwards, twice. Then he went back to working the cash registrar. He didn't miss beat: the cash, the Heimlich manoveur, the cash. But the choking man wasn't improving, so a volunteer working alongside the cashier dishing up food, a huskier, physically stronger man, performed the Heimlich manoveur one more time, more forcefully. The food in the choking man's throat came gushing out onto the floor.

Life saved.

Roughly five minutes after the choking began, Skip Everall, head of Carnegie Security strides into the cafeteria, putting on his rubber gloves. Everall reprimanded the volunteer and the metrosexual multi-tasker. “You shouldn't have done that,” he scolded. “You're not qualified to do that.” Not qualified? To get hired at a City Community Centre cafeteria, an applicant has to have Basic First Aid.

“They don't want to get sued”, said a witness.

Margaret Prevost Passes Away

Margaret Prevost, a longtime Downtown Eastside activist, passed away on February 6th. She was born in 1956.

There will be a memorial for her at Carnegie on March 4, 2010 at 1 p.m.

Carnegie Holding 30th Anniversary Celebrations

This week, Carnegie Centre is holding 30th anniversary celebrations all week.

The primary celebration will be this Wednesday. They're holding it on welfare cheque day, a day when the fewest possible poor people will show up.

The Olympics are Here and so is the Fear

This evening I went to the salad bar at Whole Foods at Cambie & Broadway, and afterwards went across the street to Wendy's restaurant for coffee. There were people in there with a range of accents, and a group of Quebecers speaking French, leading me to believe that some of these people were early arrivals for the Olympics.

A Chinese man who spoke perfect English, dressed all in black with a pager on his belt, walked up to the manager and told her that a "suspicious item" had been sitting on a table by the wall for some time with nobody around. He laughed nervously and said, "It could go boom!", throwing his hands in the air.

I knew a guy who lived in Israel who told me that suspicious packages left in public places there got noticed and reported, but I'd never seen this happen in Canada.

I looked over at the item on the table. It did look suspicious. There was nothing else on the table, no food or drink, just a flat black plastic box about the size of an old fashioned portable cassette tape recorders. The manager walked over and looked at it, but somebody called out that it was theirs.

Nobody treated the guy who reported it as though he was paranoid. The manager walked back past his table and said, "Thank you, sir."

We of course have Islam to thank for this fear.

Missing Women Stop Traffic at Main & Hastings

Girls and women missing or murdered on the Highway of Tears were a focus of a gathering at around 4:30 p.m. at Main & Hastings on Sunday. Traffic in the intersection was blocked briefly.

Above photo: Gathering for missing women at Main & Hastings, with Carnegie Centre in the background