When I had my accident I needed to just be somewhere, to heal and rebuild my life. ouver's DTES afforded that luxury. It is now time for me to give back.I come from a very ugly childhood. I didn’t have much of one. I left home at 12 and have been on my own ever since. I left home for very valid reasons and I do not have contact with my birth family.

I come from a lot of abuse, many forms of it, and I grew up in a world of fear. Once I left home, to the best of my ability I was never going to experience that again, or so I thought. When a child is that young there are not a lot of employment opportunities available. I found myself surviving with my wit and getting by wheelin, dealin’ and stealin. Before too awfully long before law enforcement had my number. Two days before my sixteenth birthday I was raised to adult court for reoffending, and I was sent to real adult prison! There was no young offenders act in those days and we were considered adults at 16. Any way I spent time in prison and when I was released the cycle continued for several years. I could not see out side the box. Society saw me as acriminal….so be it, I was a criminal.

It was not until shortly after my son Anthony was born. When he was young he visited me in jail on a couple of occasions and that really bothered me. I felt that I owed him a better chance at life than I had been given. I knew that I wanted to make some changes, but I had no idea what that looked like. First though, I made some lifestyle changes in that I became an active member of a 12- step group. My first real job was in the recovery industry, and I found that I had some abilities that combined well with passions of mine. I excelled at that first position and it led to others. Each one a little better. By this point in my life, Anthony had moved in with me. I successfully taught him the value of a hard day’s work and he was growing up to be an amazing young man. Unfortunately, I was a workaholic, if I could do that part over I would spend more alone time with Anthony. He has grown up to be an amazing man and I am so proud of him. We remain in contact and I look forward to watching him live life as an adult.

The most difficult day in my life remains to be the day I had to tell him that his mother had passed away. I took solace with the knowledge that he had come to live with me at the perfect time.

When I was working at my first job at the recovery house, here was a computer in the corner, but I was totally unfamiliar with it. I was dating a woman, Michelle, whose mother was in computer training. With their ongoing support, I found a passion for information tech. I also found that I had a susceptibility for learning that few other possessed. My training began with very basic courses, this is a keyboard, this is a mouse etc. It did not take long before I was taking every training course I could possibly fit into my schedule. I studied after hours and on my lunch breaks, I was always studying. With the ongoing support of Michelle and her family, as well as Anthony, and a couple of amazing instructors from Polar Bear Software in Vancouver. (they knew that I was from a different world and really made themselves available to help me progress!) I got my MCSE + internet certification in what was heralded as record time. Six months later I was offered a job at Trebas Institute. I was hired to teach hardware, software, networking and TCP/IP. I loved it! I also opened my own business and was setting up networks around the lower mainland. Tony would help with some of my jobs and I was content that I had built a solid life for us both, against all odds.

As a young adult Tony was living life and he went to England for a couple of years. It was then that my world fell apart! I was riding my bike one night after work when I was struck from behind! I boke both tibia, my pelvis, my hips, my ribs, crushed both hands, ripped my rotator cuff, broke my back in four places, my skull in four places my face, my nose, my teeth with a shearing brain hemorrhage. I was grade 7on the Glasgow coma scale and I did not awaken for some time. When I did I did not remember much. It was the beginning of a long painful ugly recovery. It was in medical records from a previous time, that I had narcotic issues, Therefore I was given very little if any analgesic while hospitalized. It was torture. Inhumane! One day after being there for almost a year I went out and found a way to self- medicate. They gave my bed away. In the middle of one of the few snowy winters we’ve had, in 2007, I was thrown out of Hospital with no community support. My memory had not fully returned, and I was outdoors, alone and afraid. I didn’t know at that time that I had people that I could have turned to for support, I didn’t remember!

I found a doctor that I had seen previously and hey agreed to medicate me for pain, but only if I took a combination of Oxycontin and methadone. I had no choice, I did what was asked of me. I had no Idea how badly I had been injured, nobody told me. If I had known, perhaps I could have researched brain injuries and realized that most of the horrible things I was going through were classic brain injury symptoms and all would be ok in time, with support. Instead I thought I was the unluckiest man on the planet and I was more angry and bitter every day. But It was going to be ok because I had a huge settlement coming….. The accident could not have been any more the drivers fault but ICBC found a way to cheat me.

I only had my lawyer and my doctor for support and I had no reason to think that they had anything but my best interests at heart. Surprise, it never happened the way I was led to believe that it should. Now I was not only alone and injured, I was broke, and I was staying that way.

It was very challenging trying to accept my new limitations. I had a lot of difficulty accepting that I wasn’t the same man anymore. The bitterness in me grew and I was an angry broken old man just waiting to die! And then my doctor called me in his office. He told me I was cut off cold. The dose I was on was so high that the withdrawal could have killed me! It almost did! I was forced to self-medicate. I had nothing but good looks and charm and I needed to come up with a couple of hundred bucks a day. I wasn’t easy, but the survivor in me shone through. I managed to survive for 6 months. I don’t even know how! The garbage truck got to the intersection of the alley and street just a half second after me. I was a pedestrian on his right. In my mind it was my right of way in many ways. I pushed my cart to go on, he accelerated turning firs left and then hard right. My cart got caught on the side of the truck and I was slammed against the truck and hit the ground. It was rush hour traffic and I have never felt so alone in my entire life! I knew I was hurt but had no idea how badly. Nobody stopped. I was left alone to pick up my broken ass off the ground as well as pick up all of my smashed belongings. I did the best I could while I watched the truck come the same way to the same intersection, but instead of turning, went straight. Clearly his route had him going straight and he made changes as an afterthought.

When I arrived at hospital several hours later, I was diagnosed with a c2 fracture in my neck!! I couldn’t believe it. There was no way I was going to make it now! I was fucked! And then I saw Kurt. He had been taking people into a study called SALOME. It studied the effects of prescribing Heroin (diacetylmorphine) for chronic pain as well as addiction versus other treatments, ie Methadone and Hydromorphone. I was saved, I could put my feet up and breathe for the first time in years. It was such a shock to my system that I suffered a minor stroke from pushing my broken body beyond any place that any human should ever have to go!

Once again ICBC found a way to screw mw, I have no doubt that if studied, it will be found that many people that live in poverty, do not get what the deserve. There I was, my medication was now provided, but I was lost. I had no idea that there was anything out there that I could be doing. I was just existing. I was an angry broken bitter mess! I was literally just waiting to die, and in my mind, it couldn’t come fast enough, and then something happened. I can’t really explain it in any other way, I’ll just tell you what happened. People had begun to die from this fentanyl thing. I somehow ended up at St Paul’s hospital in a meeting with movers and shakers. Stakeholders from all levels of local society, as well as the press. The topic of discussion was what can be done to save lives. We were asked to think outside the box. One young lady stood up and suggested that they give opiates at St Paul’s and no one would have to buy fentanyl and die! Everyone clapped like she had said something that was amazing and started clapping.

I remembered my visits and couldn’t help myself. I stood up and exclaimed loudly that I didn’t know what planet these people were from, but I live here, and it doesn’t matter what you give away at St. Paul’s! You treat us like shit, (people in poverty as well as drug users), you rob us on welfare days, you assault us you throw us out in bad weather with improper clothing. I don’t care what you give away here, I’m not coming! I know a great many other people that feel the same way because these are most definitely not isolated incidents. It is the norm that we are treated badly. I sat down, and the room was quiet for some time. I was a little concerned. Before too long people began approaching me and thanking me for saying what I said. This went on for the remainder of the day. That afternoon I began wring and in the next 24 hours I stayed up and wrote a complete business plan for a peer staffed and managed Hydromorphone replacement and safe injection Site. It was good, and I somehow knew that I had something left to offer the world professionally.

I was invited to St. Paul’s to speak with the front- line staff about how to interact with a marginalized society. From there I noticed that there were places in dtes where I could make a difference. I came to the realization that perhaps I was still alive to speak for those who have perhaps had difficulty speaking up for themselves. I realized that the folks in the neighborhood had accepted me for whoever I needed to be at any given time, and perhaps I was indebted to them, all of them. That is how I began being a support voice wherever I could. I used the bitterness and anger that I was pretty much completely made of by that time, as a springboard back into life! Something had changed within me and I was no longer waiting to die. I have a full life ahead and although I can never be the man I once was, that is ok. I am a much different man that still has an awful lot to offer. It is clear to me that what I now present with is not only accepted, it is much needed in some situations.

Salome has given me the opportunity to take my life back and I have risen to the challenge. Although what I have gone through is very real, and came close to breaking me, the survivor in me took control at the pivotal time to access the energy that I needed top propel myself forward from all the negatives that had piled up. I am glad that a new path has opened for me because I not only get an amazing amount of satisfaction from just about everything that I do now. I see a future. That future includes all of you. I have managed to tap into some new strengths. I honor every day of yesterday and I even honor how difficult it was because it has taken every minute and every challenge that I faced in yesterday to present the man you see here today. A good man, a strong man, a man that, if you are willing, will take your issues to city hall and fight for them with all my heart!