BACK IN THE '50S, THINGS WERE A LITTLE DIFFERENT

Hard drugs have long been a Vancouver reality. But as an upcoming
production of a 1953 morality play illustrates, the culture has
changed dramatically.

It was the summer of 1953 and Ruth Filer had just graduated from
Britannia secondary school when she met Jim Bain, also 18 and a
dockyard labourer. Ruth was a preacher's daughter and more than a
little naive. Jim was good looking and a charmer. He would take her to
Jimmy's Cafe to hang out with his buddies, happy-go-lucky guys who
worked during the day, got dressed up in the evening and hit the dance
clubs downtown. The old cafe, long derelict, still stands in the 700
block of East Hastings, next to the Astoria Hotel.

Ruth had no way of knowing it, but in the years after the Second World
War Jimmy's was near the epicentre of Vancouver's heroin trade. In the
early part of the century, the city's always substantial drug culture
had centred on the opium dens of Chinatown, but by the late '40s it
had shifted to "the street" -- the cafes and pubs of East Hastings. An
estimate published in the mid-1950s put the number of heroin users at
2,000 -- about 500 in jail, 500 "once-in-a-while" users and 1,000
full-blown addicts. Proportionate to population, the numbers are
higher than but surprisingly comparable to current numbers, but in the
hey-day of Jimmy's Cafe, the drug scene was infinitely more discreet.

Jim Bain was also discreet. The couple had been going together for a
few weeks when he said he had something to show her. She was sure the
surprise was going to be an engagement ring. Instead, he pulled out a
hypodermic syringe and a packet of white powder. "I'm using heroin,"
Jim told her. "So are the other guys. We get it from Eddie."

Eddie was another of the Strathcona kids hanging around Jimmy's Cafe.
A year or two older than the others, he was a sharp dresser -- zoot
suits, with peg pants, dangling key chain and a snap-brimmed fedora.
In a classic drug-dealer ploy, he had given them the dope to try out
for free. Within two weeks, they needed it badly enough to start
paying for it.

Ruth was shocked. She had no clear idea what heroin was, or how
addictive it could be. In those days, the subject simply wasn't
mentioned. "I'll stop if you want me to," Jim told her. There was no
way Ruth would try it herself, but she was afraid if she took a stand,
Jim would choose the heroin over her. "It's okay," she told him. He
took that to mean that he could continue doing business with Eddie.

Soon afterward, Jim was arrested on a charge of possession of heroin.
Ruth visited him once in Oakalla Prison, but then the warden called
her in and told her that because of her age she wouldn't be able to
see him again, or even write to him. Her father had persuaded the
warden to bar her. As minister of the high-profile Grandview Baptist
Church, he had that kind of clout. Nine months later, Jim was
released. He and Ruth resumed their relationship, but soon he was
behind bars again. Ruth was determined to wait for him once more, but
now her father really put his foot down. "I'd rather go to your
funeral than to your wedding if you marry him," he told her.

Ruth cried, she pleaded, but that was the end of her affair with
Jim.

After The Second Bust

After the second bust, Ruth just had to get Jim out of her system. She
fell back on her writing, her preferred route of escape since the age
of nine -- Bible plays at church, patriotic skits during the Second
World War. Now she created a play in two acts, and called it The
Street -- A Modern Tragedy.

She pictured it as sort of a Romeo and Juliet of the east end, a
cautionary tale for other young people about the dangers of drug use.
She still didn't really understand the drug phenomenon. Most of the
boys at Jimmy's Cafe came from stable homes, none had been abused. All
she could surmise was that some sort of perverse peer pressure had got
them hooked. The Street was set in Jimmy's Cafe, on Hastings and in an
Italian immigrant's apartment nearby. The characters, incidents and
dialogue were drawn from her own experiences. Jim became Johnny in the
play; the pusher Eddie was Duke; Ruth herself was now Angela, the
naive young would-be writer.

In the best Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney tradition, Ruth recruited her
friends -- from high school, not Jimmy's -- to act in the play. She
convinced Narcotics Anonymous to sponsor the show; got the father of a
friend to build the set; produced, directed and acted in it herself.
Tickets sold for 50 cents apiece when, in June 1953, the troupe put on
two performances in a hall on Hastings Street. The Sun called the play
"the story of youth in the slums and the dramatic story of a boy's
struggle to escape the habit of drug addiction." The production played
to nearly full houses, although Jim was in jail and couldn't be there.

After the show closed, Ruth put that part of her life behind her. She
met someone else, got married, raised a family. Under the name Ruth
Kozak, she continues to earn a living as a freelance writer, teacher
and day-care worker.

A few years ago, Ruth was leading a West End writers' group when she
met Jay Hamburger, the driving force behind a street-wise
semi-professional drama group called Theatre in The Raw, which had
already mounted productions of Chekhov and Beckett. On an impulse, she
dusted off the half-century-old script of The Street. Struck by the
pertinence of the drama to today's issues, Hamburger encouraged her to
keep the teenagers' point-of-view and the 1950s setting, but told her
the ending needed a serious rewrite. As originally scripted,
Jim/Johnny finally faces up to his problem as he goes to jail, leaving
the audience to assume he will straighten out. The ending was dictated
by Ruth's preacher-father, who insisted that personal redemption
should be the theme of the play.

Ruth took a writing course with playwright John Lazarus. Two years of
agonizing rewrites have produced a more hard-headed script that
reflects the reality of illicit drug use as it is understood today.
Hamburger took the revised script and, after workshopping it in places
like Oppenheimer Park and Carnegie Community Centre, is now set to
mount a full-blown production that will tour high schools and venues
like the Portland Hotel for hard-to-house residents in addition to
public performances.

Where They Are Now

Some of the kids from Jimmy's have kicked the habit; others never got
off the street. Eddie, the neighbourhood drug pusher, went on to
bigger things, eventually graduating to a leading role in a criminal
syndicate that controlled the heroin supply for all of Vancouver. In
1970, he was convicted in a major conspiracy trial and received a life
sentence -- one of the first such sentences in B.C. for drug activities.

Jim Bain got married, raised two kids and earned his living as a
drywall contractor. About 10 years ago, Ruth had a dream about him.
Wanting to re-establish contact, she mailed a Christmas card to his
mother and sister in Burnaby. Bain called and they went to dinner. He
told her he was reformed and off drugs, living in the suburbs,
separated from his wife. He started calling her five times a day. At
first she thought it was cute, but then she realized he was being obsessive.

The clincher came when he suggested they go into business together --
a heroin capping operation in her apartment. Ruth kicked him out and
told him never to come back. That was the last contact they ever had.
Two weeks ago, Ruth learned that Jim had died of a brain tumor. He
might have lasted longer, but his continuing heroin use thwarted the
diagnosis and treatment of the condition. Jimmy's Cafe may have closed
long ago, but Jim never managed to get off the street.