One Sister Ended Up at Disney, the Other Sister Ended Up on the Downtown Eastside

Last week, the Vancouver Sun ran a "local girl makes good" story about Lisa Stevens, a Vancouver-born choreographer who has made an international name for herself. Stevens has recently choreographed High School Musical, which was picked up by Disney. The Sun reporter noted that Lisa "is looking forward to taking family and friends to one of the Vancouver performances".

Not her sister Anita Stevens, I bet.

Anita Stevens, Lisa's older sister and only sibling, ended up on the Downtown Eastside where the family member who didn't make good so often ends up. Anita looks exactly like the high school graduation photo the Sun ran of her Lisa, dark curly hair, fine features.

Anita was on medication for mental illness, manic depression. Everybody on the Downtown Eastside knew about her mental illness as Anita spoke freely about it. "She never acted as if it was a secret," says one Downtown Eastside resident. Several Downtown Eastside Enquirer bloggers, both male and female, knew her.

Anita rarely talked about her family but she did say that her parents had told her that if she ever showed up at their house again, they would call the police and have her arrested.

Choreograph that!

Anita mentioned that her mother had wanted both her daughters to be artistic but she had been more of a bookish type. She had studied Archeology at Simon Fraser University. She could play the piano well though, and would sometimes play the one in the Carnegie theatre.

Like many people on the Downtown Eastside, Anita ended up on the Disability welfare rate, not the Disney payroll.

You could tell Anita had been raised middle class; she was always a little better dressed than most people on the Downtown Eastside. She was beautiful and men often wanted sex with her, until they discovered she was cracked -- and even then some wanted sex with her.

Years ago, Anita mentioned that her sister was a "much in demand" choreographer and that she had her own dance school. "She said it was called the 'Lisa Stevens School of Dance' or something like that," a Downtown Eastside resident recalls.

Lisa had begun dancing at the age of five at Vancouver's Jewish Community Center, according to the Jewish Independent newspaper. The Jewish community appears quite enamored of their native daughter. But they weren't so enamored of her father, who had converted to Judaism when marrying her mother; he never felt the Jewish community totally accepted him, Anita once said.

Despite Lisa's hectic life according to the Sun article, she often returns to Vancouver, sometimes visiting with her old friend Perry Ehrlich at the Jewish Community Centre's summer program, Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance!

Anita once mentioned that her sister was getting married and that she was not invited to the wedding.

Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! Gotta Hide My Sister!

Anita didn't say why she was not invited to the wedding. She didn't have to. Downtown Eastsiders knew that she could be unpredictable, she could cause a scene.

Don't get me wrong, nobody on the Downtown Eastside blames the family. Anita was at least 40 years old when much of this was going on and the family may have earlier tried to help her and become exhausted.

They wouldn't be the only ones. When Anita's mental health was in an unusual downward spiral and she didn't have a place to live, Bob Sarti and Muggs Sigurdson who were involved in the operations of the Carnegie Community Center, let her stay at their Strathcona house. But they had to move her out a short time later; the story was that she had become a fire risk. During the same period she had reportedly started a fire in the lobby of a housing co-op in the Chinatown/Strathcona area where she was staying and got herself booted out.

Anita eventually got her medication changed and stabilized. But a side effect of the medication was weight gain. She was still beautiful, just a ballooned up version. She then got into a social housing apartment building up Kingsway and didn't come to Carnegie or the Downtown Eastside much after that. She said it was too far to travel.

Anita did continue to occasionally submit material to the Carnegie newsletter. She had a long history of submitting poems -- she was a member of the Downtown Eastside Poets years ago -- and commentary. In one of the last pieces she submitted, she advised that the cure for what ails you is lots of sex.

Gotta sing, gotta dance, gotta do what you gotta do.

The Comaraderie of Cab Drivers

This morning at 1 a.m., a few cabs pulled up on Richards St. beside Waves Coffee Shop at Richards and Hastings. A few guys jumped out and there was some pushing and shoving. I dug for my camera but by the time I got it, the commotion had ended. Uniformed police arrived immediately and grabbed one guy and handcuffed him. He didn't resist. There were undercover cops standing around too; they may have been there earlier.

A cab driver with a white turban walked over to another cab in which the driver was sitting behind the wheel writing a statement for police. I asked the guy with the turban what had happened and he said the guy writing the statement had been assaulted. He asked me if I had caught any of the action on camera.

Another cab driver was sitting at an outdoor table at Waves Coffee Shop writing a statement while a police officer sat at another table writing a report. (see photo above). I asked the cab driver if someone had been assaulted. He said no, that a guy had "damaged my car", and pointed to a large dent on the hood of his cab. He appeared angry. A police officer was examining the dent.

What amazed me about this event was how many cabs immediately showed up to help a fellow cab driver in distress. At least 7 cab drivers showed up to help an 8th cab driver. It was like a tribe of yellow cabs blocking Richards St.

Is the Woodwards Tower Tilting?

Two old timers at the Ovaltine Cafe today were saying that the tower at the new Woodwards site at Abbott & W. Cordova looks like it's tilting north. I don't know. What do you think?

One man said, "I hope it collapses. That would be funny." He was revealing the bitterness that some Downtown Eastside residents feel about the fact that despite protests and a squat at the site, they failed to win the number of social housing units they wanted there.

NPA "Breach of Public Trust" School Trustee Switches Allegiances

Non-Partisan Association School Board trustee Eleanor Gregory has revealed that she is abandoning her own party's Mayor Sam Sullivan and supporting Vision mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson.

But is she doing Robertson a favor?

Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry allege that Gregory has a history of breach of public trust in concealing from parents the fact that there is an international boycott of Vancouver School Board diplomas.

The boycott was organized by COPP as a "last resort” after the VSB failed to seriously investigate documented evidence that fraud and human rights abuses had occurred under the NPA-dominated School Board in the lead up to the tightly contested Nov. 2002 election. According to COPP, tactics used by the NPA-dominated School Board included “political psychiatry” that could rival China and resulted in a woman being intimidated into dropping her plans to campaign against the NPA School Board in the election. The well documented tactics were used against the woman after she informed the VSB in writing that she would be campaigning in the election, then just weeks away, about their “duplicity” in the handling of bullying complaints. She had seen an NPA trustee on television assuring the public that bullying complaints were being taken seriously when, in fact, she and others who had independently lodged bullying complaints against a verbally and physically abusive teacher were being ignored, sent intimidating correspondence, and/or generally treated like they were the problem.

Blue-Scarf Housing "STANDS" Spread to 13 Vancouver Street Corners as Olympics Loom

Can’t people think of a color other than blue for a scarf? I thought the Blue Scarves were conservatives who meet at the Vancouver Public Library on Thursday evenings to discuss the threat to modernity by Islamo-fascism. But now people on the political Left are wearing blue scarves too, as they stand on Vancouver street corners to demand social housing.

Blue Scarf Housing “STANDS” are the latest action by the Citywide Housing Coalition, a group started by the Carnegie Community Action Project [CCAP] in 2007 to ensure that governments keep promises to make affordable housing a legacy of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Every Saturday people wearing blue scarves and holding blue banners meet for an hour between 1 and 2 p.m. on street corners in Vancouver. They are there to demand that City Council protect Vancouver renters from having their homes converted to condos and that federal and provincial governments restore programs that built permanent social housing for low and moderate income people. They also want welfare rates raised and barriers to getting on welfare removed. “We believe that these changes are the primary means of ending homelessness in our city and beyond”, Wendy Pederson, a full time paid CCAP organizer, wrote in the April 1^st Carnegie Newsletter.

The STANDS began on Feb. 23 on nine intersections and have now spread to thirteen intersections.

(Photo above: A mini house used as a prop for the STANDS sits outside the door of the CCAP office inside Carnegie Center.)

The idea for STANDS came from the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo whose children were “disappeared” by the military from 1976 to 1983. “They stood every week in a city square wearing white scarves until the generals capitulated”, Pederson wrote. “The scarves became an international symbol for protests against unjust and inhumane governments.”

Street corners with stands so far are:

• Georgia & Burrard
• Burrard & West 4th Ave
• Arbutus & King Edward
• Edward & Main
• Main St. & 33rd Avenue
• Broadway & Commercial
• Commercial & 1st Ave. (this one may have moved)
• Heather & 6th Ave.
• Broadway & McDonald
• Cordova & Gore
• Oak & W 49th Ave.
• Sasamat & West 10th Ave.
• Burrard & Nelson
  

If you show up to stand with the social housing advocates on the street corner, you will get a blue scarf handed to you. If you show up to meet with the conservatives at the Vancouver Public Library, you have to bring your own scarf. That points to a fundamental difference in the outlook of the two Blue Scarf groups.

City Admits Screwing Up on Condo Project for Downtown Eastside

The City of Vancouver admits it screwed up. And today groups fighting gentrification in Vancouver in the lead up to the 2010 Winter Olympics fought back.

The Carnegie Community Action Project and other groups in the Citywide Housing Coaltion held a rally to express outrage that the City had evaded the legally required consultation process for a 7 story condominium development on the Downtown Eastside. Rick Michaels, the Director of Planning delegate for the City of Vancouver, has already apologized for what he calls an “inadvertent shortfall in the notification process for this application,” and an “incomplete notification process”, according to Wendy Pederson (in photo above with red loud speaker), a full time paid organizer with CCAP.

"The City of Vancouver may have been trying to sneak this proposal past us," Pederson said.

CCAP and the Citywide Housing Coalition, groups fighting loss of housing stock for low income people and pressuring governments to keep their promise to provide social housing as a legacy of the 2010 Winter Olympics, today held the consultation that they say the City of Vancouver was legally required to hold but didn’t. About 50 community members and housing advocates gathered today at the offices of Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users on East Hastings and marched to a vacant lot at 58 West Hastings Street owned by Concord Pacific, Canada’s largest developer. The proposed project is called “Greenwich” and contains 154 market housing units, from two-bedroom to studio units. No social housing or other community amenities are currently proposed to be located on the site.

“This project got a rubber stamp from the city, even though it doesn’t comply with the Downtown Eastside housing plan,” noted Pedersen. “How can the City approve this project without talking to the elected officials that set the plan, or the community that relies on that plan?”

Joyce Rock of the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House was equally disappointed in the approval, suggesting it would lead to displacement: “In what other neighbourhood in Vancouver would the City tolerate 32% of residents being at risk of displacement because of new development?” A meeting scheduled for today by the City to approve additional density for the site was cancelled after CCAP wrote to the planning department to express concern about the lack of notification that the project was moving ahead.



Taking a jab at the City’s lack of a consultation process for the Greenwich condo project, protesters jotted down answers to questions such as "What do we need on this site?” on three huge signs at the vacant lot where the proposed project is to be built. In the above photo, Jean Swanson, an organizer with the Carnegie Community Action Project, can be seen getting the process underway.

(In the center of the above photo, Citywide Housing Coalition leader Mel Lehan, wearing the red and black jacket, talks to a protester at the site of the proposed Pacific Concord condo development.)

Pederson reminded protesters at today’s rally that the City has also not given up their plan to build highrise towers on the Downtown Eastside. If they go ahead with that, she told the crowd, “we’re hooped!”