Down and out on Water and Duckworth

By Ivan Morgan
December 8, 2023 Edition

Like many downtown St. John’s houses, mine is right on the sidewalk. Step out my front door and you are on the street. My front room has a big picture window that looks out over that street. Several weeks ago, at one in the morning, I was curled up in my chair by the fire with a good book, the dogs asleep at my feet – my happy place.

For some reason I looked up from my book and that’s when our eyes met. Right outside my front window, nose literally pressed against the glass, a very young man was peering in. He looked no more than 20, very pale, thin, and gaunt, with high cheekbones and sunken eyes set in dark rings. His ballcap brim was sideways. We looked at each other for a second, then he leapt away from the window hollering “Holy shit someone’s still up” and he and a young girl legged it up the street and disappeared around the corner.

I was being cased.

I have lived on the Northeast Avalon almost my entire life, and I have never seen the level of desperation, pain, and hopelessness that I am seeing now. It’s everywhere. Clearly, we have an out-of-control drug problem. There are many people out there hurting. People are being driven to desperate measures to get the drugs they need.

Pharmacies that dispense methadone see a day long steady stream of people coming for their dose.

We have all seen the “tent city” in Bannerman Park, but these days you cannot go anywhere downtown without seeing people clearly in need of help.

Even the downtown Santa Claus parade was postponed by what I suspect was a drug-related issue. It’s a huge undertaking to have to cancel at the last minute, and an estimated 50,000 folks had to turn around and go home. We have a problem.

Decades ago, I worked street outreach and I have seen all this before, but not on this scale.

They say a society can be judged by how we treat our most vulnerable. If that’s true, we have to do better. 

Addiction and drugs are not the problem, they are the symptoms. A century ago, it was alcohol and we tried prohibition, banning alcohol. At the time it made sense to people. It didn’t work because it made no sense – it didn’t address the problem. Alcohol was never the problem. Prohibition did nothing to address the crippling poverty, mental health issues and despair at the time.

People need help and they are clearly not getting it. Cutting off their drugs doesn’t help. Judging them doesn’t help. Moralizing about them doesn’t help. You know what helps? Help helps, and obviously they aren’t getting much.

Government has been forced to address this situation, and among other things they have formed a committee (this one is called a task force). The problem is there are many people who need help right this instant, as you are reading this. Committees are notoriously slow in getting anything done.

As is often the case, these desperate people are being used as political footballs. Government has clearly dropped the ball on this issue and opposition parties are duty bound to hold them to task, which they are doing. (Speaking of politics, if you want to watch a sad race to the bottom, go to X – aka Twitter – and watch the various volunteer groups who are trying to help the tent city residents call each other names. So much for a crisis bringing us all together.)

We need better mental health care for those in need. We need to provide living conditions that aren’t cold, rat-infested hovels making slum landlords money. We need safe places for people to shelter. People who aren’t isolated, hurting, broken or hopeless are less likely to seek the quick fix of a drug high.

Maybe you think you are safe: maybe you think this is not your problem. It’s all our problem.

We need to be more compassionate, more patient and more understanding. This problem will not go away if we aren’t.

That being said, a while back in a grocery store parking lot I walked around a big delivery truck to surprise three young men at my car. They stepped back but didn’t run. Clearly, they were testing the locks. As I walked up, I offered a fake friendly “By’s” to avoid confrontation. They nodded. Then one of them pointed to my little dog in the passenger seat and asked me how much a dog like that was worth.

Suddenly, I was John Wick.

 Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com