'This Is Me, Take It or Leave It'

TheTyee.ca
Paul Levesque has spent 40 years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and he sees the neighbourhood as a sole reminder of the way this city used to be.

"It's the last of an era, of Vancouver built in the 1950s, '60s, '70s," he says, standing in the pouring rain at Hastings and Dunlevy. "It's unique. It's not fictional; it's reality. The east end community is not like any other community, because it's not plastic. It's not like keeping up with the Joneses, because we can't afford to keep up with the Joneses. It's a poverty-stricken area. It's painful. But it's also reality."

"People in this neighbourhood are people who, in many ways, have had all kinds of things that are theirs taken from them," says Laurel Dykstra, women's group facilitator for VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. "And the final indignity is people who come to this neighbourhood and take away images and stories without good communication; without clear consent. The typical picture of the Downtown Eastside is a shot of alleys and dumpsters. There are some of those in [Hope in Shadows] and not all of those are pictures of despair or pictures of degradation. They are pictures of humanity and compassion and people's lives, doing the best that they can. There's great things about this neighbourhood -- there's hope and resiliency and vibrancy in this community."