The Van — Sade Bezjak Photography

The following essay was written as part of my final project to complete my Photojournalism studies at Niagara College. All opinions found on this page are my own. All photos found on this page were taken by me.

When I started this project in January, I had no idea how I would pull it together. It’s a huge topic. It’s a huge crisis, not just locally, but around the world. Where do you start? I didn’t know what my focus would be. All I knew was that I wanted to use my camera to make a difference within my community.

I was put in touch with Sanguen, an outreach organization operating out of Waterloo, and The Sanguen Community Health Van project was brought to my attention.

The van was launched in 2015, and after initial funding from the region, it is now 100% donation-dependant.

What started as a mobilized health service- handing out clean syringes, taking used ones off the streets, doling out contraceptives, naloxone overdose kits, and easy access to judgment-free healthcare- the van has become a fellowship in its own right.

Thursday nights, when the van is mobilized in downtown Kitchener, is more like a weekly reunion amongst friends. There are familiar smiles, bear hugs, and ‘OH MY GOD! Where have you BEEN, I missed you!’s

A literal ray of hope: I captured this during one of the van’s stops at the downtown shelter “Ray of Hope” in Kitchener.

To see the van in the flesh for the first time is, in a word, overwhelming. Covering nearly every square inch of the otherwise nondescript white van are messages of hope, love, loss, grief, frustration. An outlet for pain, a space to honour, to mourn, - a mobile, makeshift memorial.

Not only does the van work for their clients, their clients work for them, too. The van employs a handful of their current and former clients.

Think about what that means to someone who is struggling with addiction to see one of their own working for the van, someone who understands you because they know what it’s like to live with addiction.

It’s hard enough for non-stigmatized members of our community to find work these days, but for many of Sanguen’s clients, finding a steady paycheque is a seemingly impossible reality of their situation. Sanguen offers them an opportunity to work with people they already know and trust, who accept them exactly as they are.

Consider what that means to someone who is rarely offered instant acceptance from the rest of the world.

The team at Sanguen will be the first to correct you if you call them heroes, activists, or anything other than “just a group of people who give a shit.” And they’re right—harm reduction shouldn’t be a radical concept.

The van team is holding the door open for their clients, offering them support without conditional sobriety, and saying “we’re here, you’re not alone, you deserve to be safe, and if you want help, we’re ready when you are.”

Ralph, a Sanguen client and team member, taking statistics at the back of the van

Angel, hiding from the rain, after hopping into the van to greet the team while her human collected his clean supplies

I first met Violet Umanetz when I walked into her office on February 14.

She was hunched over a huge stack of valentines, hand-writing every single one of them.

It had been a couple of weeks of back and forth emailing as we tried to nail down a time for me to come in, so I knew this woman was beyond busy. When I first saw her, I’ll be honest, I thought she was a volunteer.

There was no way the HBIC (that’s uh, Head Bitch in Charge) of the Sanguen van wouldn’t have more important things to do. We spoke for the next hour while shoving temporary tattoos into impossibly tiny slits in each card and I realized that this WAS the important thing she had to do.

First lesson of many I would learn that afternoon: never dismiss the power of good ol’ fashioned love and kindness.

To: You <3From: The Van Team — To: You <3
From: The Van Team

A few hours later, I was driving home. It was the end of the night and I couldn’t stop thinking about the people I’d met and the conversations I’d overheard. Everyone deserves love. Everyone deserves support and the freedom to live their lives.

Everyone deserves a damn Valentine’s day card.

Naloxone is available from the van in both nasal and injectable kits

As I watched the team interact with their clients, for the first time it was like something clicked and I truly understood what harm reduction meant.

The message of harm reduction is this: while drugs can hurt you, we still must reach out to people who use drugs rather than pushing them away.

It’s not an advertisement for drug use, it’s the acknowledgment that if recovery is going to happen, we need to keep people alive.

The van program is designed to build community with the individuals who use it, and in turn provide a trusted gateway to services that will give them the opportunity to get their lives back, if they want it. This is evidence-based therapy and it’s been proven to change thousands of lives for the better.

When I talk to people who aren’t familiar with harm reduction, who haven’t seen the firsthand impact of the community health van, I feel like there is this perception of drug users that we use to justify our dismissal of their needs—that they aren’t like the rest of us. Through this sense of otherness, we are able to feel safe in our segregation. I will tell you from experience, one night out with the van would change the way you look at marginalization within our community.

I want to share with you a moment from that first night on the van that has lingered in my mind for weeks:

I was put to work tracking the statistics of the supplies being given out in the back of the van alongside Pete, a member of the Sanguen team who I’d met earlier that day. A few hours ago, he’d told me about his habit of collecting drumsticks and keeping them in the van in case anyone wanted a pair. When I wondered how many hidden drummers we had in this city, he passionately described to me the raw talent some of the kids had shown him over the years, using buckets, rails, their bike handles, and keeping amazing rhythm that absolutely blew him away.

It was nearing the end of our night; everyone was trying to preserve what was left of their body heat and the last couple clients were grabbing their safe supplies from the back.

I took down the identifying code for a quiet girl, no older than 18, who kept her eyes glued to her feet when she spoke, while Pete went over the offerings for the night: “Need any screens? Stems? Bowls-”

“Hey, what are those like, stick things?” she interrupted him.

“Drumsticks!” He excitedly plucked them out from the corner of the shelf, beside the bins of Naloxone, and drummed on the floor of the van.

The girl’s eyes lit up with what I can only describe as as pure joy, she asked, “Can I have those?!”

“Of course!” he smiled and placed them in her hands. “From me to you.”

She walked away beaming. I think I forgot to take her statistics.

It’s hard to articulate why that moment stuck. It felt like the embodiment of the van’s values.

Spread love wherever you can.

Love is a pair of drumsticks and a valentine’s day card.

a framed print, at the Sanguen office in Waterloo

As I write this, we’re nearing the end of March. We’re 3 months into 2019, and over 300 members of our community have overdosed while using opioids.

Fourteen of those people are dead.

Those numbers are unacceptable. I refuse to accept that we cannot do better.

We can. We must.

We are failing drug users and their families. We are failing ourselves - and the worst part about it, is that it’s so, SO preventable.

We have spent decades stigmatizing entire communities of people who are, at the core of it all, just trying to ease the unbearable pain of being alive. A pain each of us has felt at some point in their life.

Please understand that this is a lifelong, unasked for, and unfair disease that requires complex treatment in order to sustain life - just like diabetes, COPD, or any chronic disease. For far too long we have forced people into the shadows. Out of sight, to be shrouded beneath a blanket of shame that prevents necessary medical care from reaching them.

Waterloo Region is long overdue when it comes to providing the necessary Consumption Treatment Services to the people who need it within our community. Specifically, in Downtown Kitchener, where the 911 heat maps show the majority of overdose emergency calls are coming from.

Unfortunately, the efforts to provide the much needed CTS site to residents of downtown Kitchener is met with vehement opposition. Opposition that is not fact-based. Opposition that is steeped in fear, the spread of false information, and misplaced anger. Our neighbours in Guelph (who just recently approved an expansion to their site) have shown us that CTS not only works, but that rumours like an increased crime rate in the area, are simply not a reality.

On April 9th, the city council will hear from both sides, as they vote on a location for Consumption Treatment Services in Kitchener.

The opposition is loud, they are angry, and they are wrong. I do not expect that we will change the minds of those who have already written drugs users off as a burden to be dealt with, and not human beings to be loved and supported. My hope is that those of us who understand how desperately CTS is needed in the downtown core - those of us showing up for the vulnerable ones, the defenceless ones, the silenced ones - are able to make our voices heard just a little bit louder than everyone else.

I want be proud of the city I live in. We can be leaders in so much more than just technology. We can be leaders in social change. I want to be able to say that I am part of a community that listens to the overwhelming amount of evidence which tells us that CTS is an important step in the fight against overdose deaths. A fight that we are setting ourselves up to continue losing, the more we stall necessary action. I want to be able to say that in Waterloo Region, we listen to the voices of those who continue to be largely ignored by the rest of the population, and we do what is necessary to support them.

Through CTS

The number of used syringes on the street would be reduced. Injection with used needles would be reduced. Harm reduction shouldn’t have to be mobile.
Drug users would learn more about treatment options, from healthcare professionals they know and trust, making them more likely to use the services
Overdoses would be reduced, as of 2019 there have been NO overdose deaths recorded at any of the 90+ safe consumption sites across the world
The number of people injecting outdoors would be reduced, and with the proper location, a community environment/drop-in space is provided

Learning about harm reduction efforts within Waterloo Region has been, at once…frustrating, enlightening, and humbling.

We cannot continue to keep them on the fringes of our healthcare system.

It’s not okay.

Shame on us for failing to recognize a cycle of incarceration, poverty, violence, and addiction. A cycle blindly continued with creation of harsh and unpragmatic laws, and predicated on fear rather than understanding.

This is a quality of life issue, NOT a criminal one.

We MUST end the stigma of addiction. It is costing us far more than the lives we’ve already lost.

A message within the walls of the van, the last thing seen after receiving supplies from the back