KERRISDALE HAS ITS ADDICTION GRIEF

Documentary Follows Four West-side Vancouver Families Who Are Grappling
With The Addiction Of Loved Ones

Addiction and its toll on the Downtown Eastside have been key issues in the
Vancouver election campaign, but in the last week before the vote the flip
side is coming to the fore.

On Tuesday night at Point Grey secondary school, outgoing Mayor Philip Owen
will introduce another cinema-verite documentary on illicit drug use in the
city -- this one focusing on the West Side and the impact on the middle class.

I think it explains why addiction and its handmaidens -- endemic disease
and tragedy -- are a driving issue in the municipal campaign even though
health is a provincial responsibility.

The problems that spill into the open on the Downtown Eastside resonate
throughout the city because their roots lie in every neighbourhood, and
this film reveals that.

Entitled From Grief to Action, after the group whose work it chronicles,
the 60-minute documentary to be broadcast on Newsworld follows four
middle-class families struggling with a young adult hooked on drugs. This
addition to the growing body of visual works on the city's drug epidemic
emphasizes its effects on such parents and how the experience has
politicized them.

"Someone from one of the student newspapers asked me if this was a trend in
film-making -- given Nettie Wild's film Fix [which starkly records the
sordid social decay in the Downtown Eastside], etc. etc.," said Nijole
Kuzmickas the producer-director.

"My answer was it isn't a trend in film-making that has triggered the work,
it's the trend in overdose deaths."

Kuzmickas got involved with the Kerrisdale-based From Grief to Action when
her "Little Sister" Melissa died from an overdose. It opened her eyes to
how democratic addiction is.

As she got more involved with the group and grew to know its members, she
approached them about documenting their experience.

Their personal nightmares are interwoven with scenes of the political
action the group has embraced to end the current war against illicit drugs
and win greater treatment services.

"We wanted at least four families because we thought a family might drop
out and decide they didn't want to do it midway through," she said.

Ray and Nichola with their son Ross; Rob and Susie and their son Gavin;
20-year-old Kip, his mum and his two-year-old son, and Sheila and her
daughter Johanna, 20, volunteered.

"The first day of shooting was [in] February 2001 when most of the families
signed up and when their kids were doing really well," Kuzmickas said.

Rob Rattan, who works as a Crown prosecutor and was overwhelmed when his
son was sent to jail for a robbery he committed to feed his habit,
explained: "It's like I say in the film near the end: We got involved
because we thought we were going to be the success story."

Kuzmickas thinks, "all of them felt that."

There is no success story.

Mostly, this documentary is achingly sad.

Over-all, the crew captured 36 hours of footage over 17 months.

"We kept in touch and when there was anything going on we would go and
shoot," Kuzmickas said. "Sometimes there were things going on that were
just too raw at that moment. Although they would talk to me about it, they
would say, 'We don't want a camera here right now.' But they were committed
enough to the project I could go back after a few days or a few weeks."

The scenes are heart-wrenching

Dad Ray Hall sadly admitting he was ready to go to Main and Hastings to buy
heroin when withdrawal gripped his son. Rob Rattan's family preparing to
celebrate Christmas in prison.

Johanna admitting that there's no point pretending she works for "an escort
agency" any more: She's a hooker and she's hooked.

They all begin the hour optimistic that they are going to beat the odds --
80 per cent of opiate-dependent addicts relapse and remain in thrall of
narcotics. What is overwhelming, I think, is the unemptying well of love
that each family seems to offer, and it doesn't help.

Today, all four of the young adults are still struggling to stay straight.

"Johanna is just such a heartbreaker -- she is so smart, intelligent,
funny, great -- and so addicted," Kuzmickas sighed.

The families are in the grip of a problem for which there is no panacea,
but they refuse to abandon their children or the fight to get governments
to respond. They have been especially active in the civic campaign.

"I think we represent the tip of an iceberg in Vancouver and probably right
across Canada," said mum Nichola Hall.

The documentary is a compelling argument that addiction is a health issue
and it would be better for society and those who are afflicted to
decriminalize illicit drugs and embrace addicts with the health system.

As Eugene Oscapella, of the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, says
ridiculing the current law-enforcement-driven approach: "What we've done
doesn't work, let's do more!"

From Grief to Action has appeared before Vancouver city council, given
testimony before the Senate special committee on illegal drugs and
campaigned for COPE mayoral candidate Larry Campbell.

The Senate committee was certainly swayed by their testimony -- its
September report called on Ottawa to abandon the war on drugs and the
prevailing prohibition policies.

If you can't make Tuesday's screening, watch From Grief to Action when it
is broadcast on television.

You'll have a better understanding why senators are urging new policies,
why the outgoing Owen is championing to the last minute of his tenure the
urgency for the city to trailblaze a new approach and why Campbell with his
facility on this issue is on the cusp of becoming mayor.

From Grief to Action airs on The Passionate Eye, CBC Newsworld, Nov. 17 --
the beginning of Drug Awareness Week.