When I think of 'glowing hearts,' I think of addiction and empathy in the Downtown Eastside

When we sing "with glowing hearts" in the Canadian anthem, what are we thinking of? National pride? When I think of "glowing hearts," I think of what I've seen in my community — empathy.

I have always been someone who didn't fit in. With ADD, depression and anxiety my mind always raced. I know what it's like to want to escape, and I did that with booze and drugs from the ages of 13 to 25. I was able to move on from drugs, and I started working in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside over 10 years ago at the Portland Hotel Society — an organization that provides social housing and shelter and created Vancouver's first safe injection site, Insite.

I still understand the need for escape, especially now with so many people dying in our community. It's just so sad.

When this crisis hit this community in the poorest postal code in Canada, volunteers came forward to set up a unique program in a Downtown Eastside alley.

The Overdose Prevention Site started out as a tent an alley frequented by drug users.  It was supported by an online "GoFundMe" campaign and by courageous, compassionate volunteers who refused to stand by while friends and relatives died from overdoses.

Those volunteers live in the Downtown Eastside themselves,  carry a phone and wait for emergencies, ready to respond with Narcan (a medication used to block the effects of opioids, especially in overdose).

At a time when Insite is increasingly burdened by bureaucracy, regulations and political debate, our overdose site has grown into something unique.

Our volunteers already stand in the alley — they know everyone and what drugs they take. They are a community that jumped into action and did not ask permission. They simply took care of each other. They provide empathy, real friendship and compassion, not because they are just doing a shift on a job, but because they truly understand the position the community members they serve are in. They know that the experience of mental illness, homelessness and poverty cannot be understood by those who haven't been there themselves.

They do not ask for more funding. They go out on the darkest, rainiest, snowiest, windiest nights and they wait, armed with Narcan, for anyone who needs help.

They wonder why it's not treated like a national health crisis and at the same time understand why it's not, or why it was not made an issue in the B.C. election.

Simply put: poor people don't matter.

Not to voters or the politicians they elect.

But they do matter to friends and family — and to the volunteers who only want to see an end to the pain and suffering of their friends and families. They don't want anyone to lose another son, daughter, sister, brother, mother or father. Some of them know that heartbreak themselves.

When the money floods in, it doesn't quite make it to these alleys. It trickles through the bureaucracy. It doesn't make it to where it needs to go and where it goes is mostly decided behind a desk, in meetings or at grand conventions across the country —  not in the streets by the real experts, the friends and family. My community.

As we celebrate Canada Day and Canada's 150th anniversary, while acknowledging the fact that First Nations have lived on this land for thousands of years, I will remember there are all kinds of Canadians and ways Canadians help and support each other. These volunteers saving lives in Vancouver's downtown alleys are a community we can be proud of, that our hearts can "glow" for.

Next in So, Canada...: See our take on "we see thee rise:"