[EN]
Going to the dark side of Vancouver
When I visited Vancouver a few weeks ago, I was staying near commercial st. at my friend's house. Every time I went downtown I took the sky train as my friend recommend it to me. But on the last day in Vancouver, the weather was amazing, so I wanted to take a bus. I don't remember which bus was it but I took on of the main bus going to the downtown. Beautiful mountain, blue sky, sunshine... the view from the bus was absolutely gorgeous. And then I felt that suddenly the atmosphere is changing. And I realized that this bus passes E.hastings street.
Every time I met people in Canada they asked me if I went pass E.hastings street. And when I said no they gave me advice not to go there. They said it would you could be in danger as a tourist and also make you sad just watching people there.
East Hastings is a street occupied by homeless people, prostitutes and drug addicts in Vancouver. Originally, this street was an area with lots of shopping malls until the 1980s, but with the advent of a large distribution chain, these shops closed one by one and became a slum. People saying there are three types of people in East Hastings: drug addicts, homeless people, people with a mental history or symptoms abandoned by their families. Vancouver is the only place in Canada that doesn't snow, and in other cities homeless and drug addicts cannot survive due to cold weather. So people are coming to Vancouver from all over the country.
As we approached Hastings Street, I began to see phrases such as "no cash, don't break" in front of the shops, and also homeless people who go through all the garbage can. I looked out the window, I saw things I had never seen before in my life.
The first thing that I noticed was a lot of people were selling things on the streets like flea markets. Later, I found out that they're doing it for making money so they can buy drugs. So in Korea which where I live, we have very strong laws for drugs and so I've never seen people who're high on drugs in my life except an American movie or tv show. We do have homeless but it's not common to see them on the street. Can you imagine how I got shocked? I didn't want to believe this is real. All these people looked so messed up, doing drugs every alleyway at day time, walking like zombies.
Everything that I saw less than 10 minutes passing through this street, made me so sad deeply. They are the same people as us how did they end up here? and how can we help them?
I often talk about drug rules with my friends from America, they think Korea is boring because we have very strict rules for drugs. After I saw all these dark sides of the drug problem in Canada I'm glad we don't have these problems in Korea.
Vancouver is such a blessed city with beautiful nature, good weather, clean air, and good people, but there was a painful dark shadow.