HIGH AND HOPELESS

Legions Of Solvent Abusers In Winnipeg's Core Exist Only To Find
Their Next Poisonous Fix; The Downtown BIZ Is Taking Steps To Do
Something About The Problem

Police reporter Bruce Owen and photographer Joe Bryksa spent a few
days this month on the city's Main Street strip between Higgins and
Logan. Like all big cities, Winnipeg's core has a substance-abuse
problem. What's being done?

RUSSELL Sinclair points to the scar around his right eye and says the
eyeball is plastic.

You'd never know.

He says it was beaten out of him a couple of years ago on the Main
Street strip in a fight that also left him with a permanent,
bow-legged limp. He walks with a cane.

Still, the 40-year-old solvent abuser says he feels safe living on
the street, shuffling from one soup kitchen to the next and sleeping
at the Main Street Project.

Today begins like almost every other. Some soup and a peanut butter
sandwich at the Lighthouse Mission and then he's off. He's got five
bucks in his pocket that'll get him half a plastic "chubby" bottle
(four ounces) of paint thinner from a bootlegger. "It gets you high,"
says the former Fort Alexander resident in a mumble that's almost
impossible to understand. "It's like cocaine."

The small bottle of paint thinner and its fumes will last him two
days, some of it passed out on the street, the odd time ending up in
the back of an ambulance.

Paint thinner contains toluene, which causes serious nerve damage in
habitual sniffers like Sinclair.

"Some days I don't know if Russell's dead or alive," Lighthouse
Mission pastor Scott Miller says as Sinclair heads out the door. "Why
do people sniff? I think they just want to blot out the reality of
their existence."

Sinclair's not alone. Anyone who's driven Main Street between Higgins
and Logan knows this already.

There, on the sidewalk of one of Winnipeg's busiest streets, the
almost daily display of addiction and hopelessness plays itself out,
worse on cheque days. That's when social assistance money flows so
the down-and-out can buy solvents to sniff and two-buck king cans of
beer to wash it down.

While most Winnipeggers roll up their car window and drive on, people
like Miller are trying to do something about it.

The biggest initiative is a $300,000 program led by the Downtown BIZ.
It will put 10 special constables on the street to detain solvent
abusers and other heavily intoxicated and sometime aggressive people.
The constables will have the power of arrest under the Intoxicated
Persons Detention Act. Once off the street, a formal outreach process
will be initiated to steer some of the solvent abusers to agencies to
help them dry out and get back on their feet.

"Businesses want to contribute towards a solution," says Downtown BIZ
executive director Stefano Grande.

Why the program is needed is simple: City police are too busy on more
serious calls to pick up drunks and passed-out sniffers.

"For Winnipeg police, we're not a priority for them," says Siloam
Mission director of patron services Dan Ingalls.

Four years ago, the Manitoba government brought in penalties to yank
the licences of retailers caught knowingly selling intoxicants like
hair spray and paint thinner to abusers, but only a handful of people
have so far been prosecuted. One Elgin Street store was back in
business hours after being raided by police two years ago.

The Manitoba Pharmaceutical Association is also trying to put a dent
in the problem. It's distributing 4,000 kits to members across the
province to educate them about the risks of solvent abuse, and the
role of pharmacies in not selling certain products to abusers.

There are about 3,500 solvent abusers in Manitoba, according to a
government estimate released in 2002. The numbers don't appear to
have changed since then.

What has changed is that they've become more visible. In the past,
they'd hang out in parks, out of sight, but these days they're out on
the sidewalks, where it's a short walk to the Bell Hotel vendor for
$2 king cans of beer.

Outside the Lighthouse Mission, help can't come soon enough for these
people. The only social contact they have is with soup kitchens, the
Main Street Project, and sometimes, when things go very wrong, city
paramedics. There is nothing else. A few feet from the tattered blue
awning of the North Main Development Corp. -- a long-forgotten,
multimillion-dollar public initiative to revitalize the Main Street
strip some two decades ago -- two men are standing hunched together
in the doorway of a derelict building.

One is a bootlegger. He's got a can of paint thinner. He's pouring
some of it into a small plastic drink bottle held by the other guy.
He pours slowly so as not to spill. Don't want your profit hitting your shoes.

The guy with the small bottle hands him some cash and stumbles away,
picking up his buddy slumped against the Salvation Army's Booth
Centre. He grins when he sees his buddy's bottle and off they go.
It's 10:25 a.m.

A lot's been said and written about sniffers, drunks and aggressive
panhandlers in Winnipeg. Some people say the problem only seemed to
go away during the 1999 Pan Am Games, when the city was centre-stage
to the world and wanted to put its best face forward.

Miller and others who work in the area's shelters and soup kitchens
say the area's substance-abuse problem simply mirrors issues of
poverty and addiction not only in Winnipeg, but across Canada.

John Mohan, executive director of Siloam Mission, says most street
people are aboriginal, but that is slowly changing. Siloam plans to
open a 60-bed shelter next year.

"They're younger and whiter," he says. "A lot come from rural areas
to escape abusive homes. They come here and get caught up in the drug culture."

Mohan says it's similar with aboriginal people. They're fleeing the
extreme poverty in northern communities and come to the city with
little education or support. A lot of them end up sniffing solvents
as it's the cheapest high.

It's also a crippling high. While others can get into emergency
shelter and soup kitchens, the sniffers often become incapable. They
tend to wander in pairs or groups down the length of Main Street or
in the downtown. They sleep where they fall. They're also easy
victims. Two were murdered in 2001 -- their cases remain unsolved --
and another two are on the police long-term missing person's list.

"A lot of them, there is no hope," Henderson says.

"When you start talking to them, they're not bad people," adds
Donna-Lynn Nelson, a Main Street fixture. She's decked out in a big
fuzzy blue hat, children's sparkly stickers on her face and too much
makeup. She's able to strike up a conversation with everyone,
including two men carrying rags of glue and king cans of beer.

"What you see on the outside is not what these people are on the
inside," adds a man who calls himself "Helper". He reeks of glue.
"All of us, we try to help one another in little ways."

Across Main Street at the Lighthouse, pastor Miller says it's an
uphill battle helping people like Sinclair and Helper off sniff.

"It doesn't happen very often," he says, standing under a Got Jesus?
banner. "I have to be very careful how I measure success. I can
preach the gospel when necessary, or I can use words of compassion.
Sometimes that speaks louder."

How can you help?

The Siloam Mission needs volunteers.

The soup kitchen and drop-in centre at 300 Princess St. needs people
on a regular basis as it plans to now run seven days a week.

Volunteers are needed for the meal program, officer administration,
fundraising and to run the clothing bank.

Call Stefanie Ingalls at 956-4344.

For more information, go to Siloam.ca.

Clothing and other donations are also accepted at the Lighthouse
Mission at 669 Main St.

Call 943-9669 for information