midweek edition WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2011
Vol. 102 No. 31 • Established 1908 • East
33
K&K’s Canucks playoff haiku Running man
37
Densely populated riding includes Kitsilano Apartments dominate Vancouver Centre Federal
ELECTION
2011
Canada votes May 2 Megan Stewart
Staff writer
The Courier continues its weekly profiles of the five federal electoral districts in Vancouver. Riding name and location: Vancouver Centre encompasses the city’s downtown business core and the residential areas of Mount Pleasant, Fairview Slopes,
the West End and a northeasterly pocket of Kitsilano. It takes in the urban forest of Stanley Park as well as the Granville entertainment district, Rogers Arena and B.C. Place along with Edgewater and the projected site of a contentious, much-debated casino. City hall is also located in Vancouver Centre. The riding includes all of False Creek but begins in Burrard Inlet where Cambie Street meets the foreshore. The boundary branches off Cambie at the Dunsmuir Viaduct until the elevated asphalt meets Main Street, where it pulls in a corner of Chinatown before continuing south to East Second Avenue where it jogs south again along Ontario Street
until 16th Avenue. From the edge of East Van, the riding boundary continues along West 16th to Arbutus Street, where the border then turns north toward Kitsilano Beach. The boundary embraces the mouth of False Creek and with it Granville Island and English Bay. What’s it like: Vancouver Centre has a little of everything and then some: commerce, arts, nightlife, parks, waterfront. A 24-hour pulse and natural escapes within the metropolitan parameter make the city unique in the world. The riding is the city’s—and one of Canada’s—most densely populated according to Statistics Canada. See LIBERAL on page 4
Study praises injection site Researchers note decline in overdoses Mike Howell Staff writer
Vancouver Centre includes Stanley Park and the downtown business core. photo Dan Toulgoet
John Graham is feeling optimistic about digging himself out of the depths of drug addiction. The 45-year-old said Monday he’s been clean and sober for two months and will soon be staying at a treatment centre in Maple Ridge. “I think I am evolving to be the person I was meant to be,” he told the Courier after a press conference Monday at the
Insite drug injection site on East Hastings. Graham, who is now a client of Insite’s detox program, was at the facility to hear the news he already knew—that Insite, the only legal injection site in North America, saves people like him from dying of drug overdoses. Researchers from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS published a study in The Lancet medical journal Monday that showed a 35 per cent decline in the number of overdose deaths since Insite opened in 2003. See INSITE on page 4
YOUR SOURCE FOR LOCAL NEWS, SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT! WWW.VANCOURIER.COM