FORMER MAYOR SPEAKS AT FIX SCREENING

A B.C. FILMMAKER'S searing portrayal of the human cost of drug
addiction and the political efforts behind opening up North America's
first safe injection site is coming to Terrace.

And so is one of the major players who helped lay the foundation to
making it a reality - former Vancouver city mayor Philip Owen.

He'll be speaking at a local screening of Fix: The Story of An Addicted
City, playing one night only later this month as a fundraising event for
Ksan House Society. Fix follows the intersecting stories of the
personalities who are at the heart of the intravenous drug controversy in
Vancouver.

Filmmaker Nettie Wild - best known for exploring the indigenous
Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico in A Place Called Chiapas -
followed her subjects in Canada's poorest zip code for two years, as
they battled city hall.

There's Dean Wilson, a former IBM computer salesman who struggles with
a three-decade long habit. He becomes one of the city's strongest
advocates for the rights of drug users.

Single mom Ann Livingston, a non-user motivated by her Christian
values, joins forces with Wilson to lead a team of addicts in the
fight to open up North America's first safe injection site in Vancouver.

They find a surprising but welcome ally in mayor Owen, a conservative
politician who puts his career on the line as he champions an
enlightened approach to one of his city's most frustrating - and heart
breaking - social problems.

Owen drafted the four-pillar approach of harm reduction, a role that
nearly divided city council - and later saw him ousted by his own,
business-friendly party, the NPA. (He was succeeded in the next civic
election by city coroner Larry Campbell, who also supported the harm
reduction model.)

There's growing awareness worldwide that drug addiction is really more
of a health issue than a criminal one.

Providing safe injection sites where people are supervised is viewed
as an important step in getting addicts into treatment programs.

Observers are watching Vancouver's experience with interest. What
works there may be exported elsewhere - because the drug problem
plaguing the Eastside is found in every community in the country,
including our own.

Fix paints a vivid portrait of the supporting characters in
Vancouver's story, too - although there's no question where Wild's
sympathies lie.

There's the cop whose beat intersects the corner of Main and Hastings,
Ground Zero in a city that lost some 1,200 residents between 1990 and
2000 to drug overdoses.

He comes across as a sympathetic figure who appears to be losing the
battle to keep law and order in the Downtown Eastside, where HIV
infection rates are soaring.

Local business owners, who have become understandingly frustrated by
the scale of the problem, don't want a safe injection site anywhere
near their neighbourhood, setting the stage for confrontation with the
increasingly organized drug lobby.

The movie always returns back to Dean and Ann, who provide the story
with an emotional core, welcoming the cameras into their personal
battles, as well as their political one.

Wild is a documentary filmmaker who specializes in examining political
movements seemingly taking place at the margins of society.

In 1993, she released Blockade, a documentary that looked at the clash
of cultures and agendas between loggers in Kitwanga and their Gitxsan
neighbours.

Fix is playing at the R.E.M. Lee Theatre Saturday, March 13, at 7:30
p.m. Proceeds support Ksan House Society's Terrace Transition House.

Owen will speak following the show, providing an opportunity for
people ask questions about the film - and discover what's happened
since its release.