FRIDAY
February 27 2015 Vol. 106 No. 16
NEWS 5
50 years of teaching SWEET SPOT 18
New digs for Elysian Coffee SPORTS 23
B-ball teams court provincials There’s more online at
vancourier.com WEEKEND EDITION
Winners Rev ealed vancourier.c om/STARS
THE VOICE of VANCOUVER NEIGHBOURHOODS since 1908
BIRDMAN Roy Mackintosh sits on his living room couch with Squirt, a finch he hand-raised from a baby. Squirt is one of many finches that live in Mackintosh’s small apartment in the Downtown Eastside. See photo gallery at vancourier.com. PHOTO REBECCA BLISSETT
Animals give lifeline of love and hope
Downtown Eastsiders gain commitment and company, part one of a two-part series looking at DTES pets and their owners Sandra Thomas
sthomas@vancourier.com
Heavily tattooed, with hair shaved close to his scalp, Roy Mackintosh does not look like a man you’d take home to mother. But when Mackintosh begins to blow kisses to the tiny bird, which is not much larger than the man’s neck tattoos, perched on his shoulder, each of the three women in the small room sighs an audible “Aww.” Relaxing on a loveseat in his single room apartment located in
the heart of the Downtown Eastside, Mackintosh says he hand-raised the teeny zebra finch nicknamed “Squirt” with a syringe after its mother stopped feeding him. “He follows me around and even sleeps on my neck sometimes,” says Mackintosh, who in 1999 moved from Cape Breton to B.C. for work. Sunlight streams through the windows of the apartment Mackintosh has lived in for more than three years. The unassuming room looks similar to others in the building, complete with a small TV,
single bed tucked into the corner and narrow galley kitchen. The exception is the row of small round baskets lined up along the top of a wire stand in one corner of the room, several more perched near the window and a bird’s nest built atop the door jamb made from straw and yarn Mackintosh buys for that very purpose. It’s this room Mackintosh and his birds call home. Mackintosh discovered his love for birds after his sister gave him a pair of finches, which eventually grew to a flock of 19. And, as if Mackintosh’s love for
these birds wasn’t obvious, he lists each by name, including Trouble, Chaos, Anarchy, Alexis and Elizabeth. Mackintosh estimates it costs between $30 and $40 a month to feed and care for his tiny charges. He admits going without on occasion to ensure the birds are fed. “But if I wasn’t spending it on them, I might spend it on something that could get me in trouble,” Mackintosh says with a grin. It’s a familiar story for some lowincome pet owners in the Downtown Eastside. Continued on page 14