DEAN OF DRUG ADDICTS NOT DONE YET

The thin man in the Harry Potter-like glasses only has to walk out on to
East Hastings to be reminded of who he is and what he has become-the
country's most famous junkie.

"That's quite a handle, I know. See Mom, I told you I'd become something,"
says 49-year-old Dean Wilson, who began shooting heroin in Toronto when he
was 12 years old.

As he enters a coffee shop at the corner of Columbia and Hastings, he is
greeted by people who know him from his crusade to give drug addicts a
voice and better services in the neighbourhood.

They also know him from his real-life role in Fix: The Story of an Addicted
City, a documentary filmed by Nettie Wild that captured Wilson's fights
with addiction and city hall to do something about the mounting drug deaths.

The documentary received a lot of press in the fall of 2002, leading to
Wilson, Wild and former mayor Philip Owen travelling across the country to
show the film and participate in forums about drug addiction.

"The movie made me look terrible -- I mean there's a story in there where I
pawned my daughter's graduation gift for dope the day before her graduation."

He pauses to take a sip of coffee.

"But I'm glad I did the movie -- somebody had to put a face on what's going
on down here. But I'm telling you today, there's going to be more to come
from me."

Wilson has been out of the public eye for the better part of a year, saying
he was waiting to see if Insite, the city's supervised injection site,
would become a success.

It has, he says, pointing to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority data
that claims an average of 600 people a day inject drugs at the facility,
which is half a block from Wilson's room at the Sunrise Hotel.

"A lot of people took credit for getting the injection site open [in
September 2003], but we did it-the addicts did it. We politicized it, and
the politicians listened."

But enough about the injection site, he says. Profound poverty, alcoholism
and giving people jobs to make a life for themselves are issues that need
more attention.

Wilson is now the community liaison for Life Is Not Enough Society [LINES},
a non-profit group which finds jobs for addicts and impoverished people at
such facilities as the injection site.

Wilson, who is collecting welfare, doesn't get paid at LINES and works with
volunteers Thea Walter and Maura Ahmad in a room across the hall from his
residence at the Sunrise Hotel.

PHS Community Services Society donated the office space and the health
authority pays the $28 stipends-for four hour shifts-to volunteers hired
through LINES.

Wilson wants more treatment facilities, detox beds, housing for the poor
and education campaigns focusing on why a person like him wasn't steered
from shooting heroin at 12 years old.

"This year, I'm going to be kicking, screaming, punching and doing what I
can to get these issues out front. I'm good at what I do, and I've proven I
can make a difference."

He also pointed out that Statistics Canada shows that many single men
living in the Downtown Eastside don't live past 60, whereas men living in
Richmond can expect to live into their 80s.

"The big glory of the injection site is over. It's time to move on. There's
other problems out there."

Wilson is the former president of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users
[VANDU], an organization that represents addicts. He said he resigned from
the organization last year.

"VANDU became too much for me for too long. I've done my time there."

But Ann Livingston, project coordinator for VANDU and mother to Wilson's
two-year-old son Joey, tells a different story. Livingston says Wilson
didn't resign, but that VANDU's members voted him off the board of directors.

The vote came after Wilson pocketed $60 he was supposed to use to courier a
VANDU report to Ottawa, Livingston says.

"It's no big deal -- really, it's no big deal," she says, noting it's not
uncommon for addicts to steal to pay for their habits. "I wish him well,
and I hope he stops using dope."

Wilson said he is familiar with the incident and noted that he paid back
the money. Livingston says he didn't.

"So I spent the money one day, and paid it back the next day. That's a
non-issue. That's just people being jealous again and stuff like that."

Neither Livingston nor Wilson, who describes Livingston as a saint, wanted
to discuss their severed relationship publicly. They don't live together,
and Joey is staying with Livingston.

Wilson's welfare pays for his room and gives him about six dollars a day to
spend on food. He claims to have his addiction under control, having been
on the methadone program for more than a year.

Stricken with Hepatitis C and a banged up left leg from being hit by a car
a couple of years ago, Wilson says some days he finds getting out of bed
difficult.

But he knows people are relying on him to speak for them. As a result of
his notoriety from the film, he has newfound contacts with all three levels
of government, he says.

"I can get things happening. We have to get things happening. If I snap my
fingers, I can get 500 people right here, right now. Somebody's got to
organize because when we have a bad day down here, we f-ing die."

Adds Wilson: "Politicians, I'm coming."