GRATEFUL COUNTRY TOPS UP TURVEY'S AWARD SHELF

A former Downtown Eastside activist who developed the city's first
needle exchange in North America will be invested today as a member of
the Order of Canada.

John Turvey, 61, will be recognized at a ceremony in Comox for his
several decades of work on behalf of marginalized people in the
Downtown Eastside. The event won't be in Ottawa because Turvey is too
ill to travel.

Diagnosed three years ago with mitochondrial myopathy, a potentially
fatal disease, Turvey has trouble speaking and walking. The genetic
disease attacks the energy cells in his muscles.

"I'm hangin' in," he told the Courier Wednesday in a brief
conversation.

Turvey and his wife Deb Mearns moved to Comox two years ago after
Turvey reluctantly retired from the Downtown Eastside Youth Activities
Society (DEYAS).

Mearns, 53, ran the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood Safety Office for
several years. Mearns and Turvey have been together for 16 years, and
were married 13 years ago.

The move to Comox has allowed Turvey to reunite with his son. He is
also the proud grandfather of an eight-month-old grandson. Mearns said
the move has been good for Turvey.

"John started to realize he had to start looking after himself for a
change," she said.

Turvey's family will be by his side today at the Comox Recreation
Centre, where B.C.'s Lieutenant-Governor Iona Campagnolo will induct
Turvey as a member of the Order of Canada.

"I'm blown away," he said, noting he misses the Downtown Eastside.
"All the richness and the friends and the dynamics and, of course, the
politics-I miss it. But it was time that I left."

A former heroin addict, who was stricken with hepatitis C, Turvey
originally thought his illness might be connected to hepatitis, but
that wasn't the case.

His retirement ended a very public career of fighting for better
services for poor and troubled youth and adults. The former social
worker developed the city's first needle exchange in 1988.

Turvey founded DEYAS in the early 1980s. It now runs one of North
America's largest needle exchanges. Other services include drug and
alcohol counselling, a youth life skills program, a health van, six
youth detox beds, a youth outreach program and a youth drop-in centre.

Allan Roscoe, acting-executive director at DEYAS, has known Turvey for
more than 25 years. Both men worked as social workers out of an office
on Water Street in the late 1970s for the then-Ministry of Human Resources.

Roscoe couldn't think of too many people who deserved the Order of
Canada, but noted Turvey's passion and commitment for helping
marginalized people makes him a deserved choice.

"He helped educate the public to recognize that young people who were
being exploited in the sex trade were in fact victims of sexual abuse,
so he reshaped our thinking in that area," he said. "I can't remember
any individual ever saying they felt that John had let them down, that
he hadn't come through for them."

Strongly opinionated with a confrontational style, Turvey could fight
in courtrooms and in the political arena to advance the interests of
marginalized people, Roscoe added.

"A lot of people I know who in the past maybe had philosophical
differences or political differences with John, still all acknowledge
that he did great work."

Turvey tries to keep up with city politics in Vancouver. Not a big fan
of the NPA, he noted there was "mixed blood" between him and former
Vision mayoral candidate Jim Green.

"I'm certainly not as uncomfortable with Sam Sullivan as mayor as I
would be with most NPA candidates," he said.

Turvey's award comes two years after he received the Order of British
Columbia. When he receives the Order of Canada today, he will be
thinking about his friends and the people he helped in the Downtown
Eastside.

"Let them know I miss them. It's good to be here, and I love Comox,
but I certainly do miss the East Side of Vancouver."