SHOOTING GALLERY NURSE SEASONED ACTIVIST

Megan Oleson is an unlikely looking nurse, standing in the back room of the
city's illegal shooting gallery, her cropped hair covered by a loose-fitting
black baseball cap that's tipped to the side.

With her combat boots and pierced nose, the 26-year-old looks more like an
anti-poverty activist-which she is.

Oleson, who works as a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital's critical care
ward, is the only medical volunteer in the Downtown Eastside's unauthorized
supervised injection site at 327 Carrall St., where she works every night
from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Although she says she's not an injection drug user, Oleson supports the
Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), and is an active member of the
Anti-Poverty Committee.

"Most of the nurses I work with support what I'm doing here," says Oleson,
who graduated with a diploma in nursing from Victoria's Camosun College five
year ago.

"A lot of what I do overlaps. My interest is disability advocacy and harm
reduction. With the addicts that come in here, I don't have to tell them too
much. My role is to teach them vein care and the right way to use. And to be
there in case of an emergency."

It was nurses that pioneered a supervised shooting site in Vancouver at the
Dr. Peter Centre, located in St. Paul's Hospital, which cares for 150
low-income people with HIV/AIDS.

Nurses there were upset they were allowed to give their clients free
needles, only to have them go straight outside and inject behind a bush,
using puddle water, or in some cases their own blood, to mix with heroin or
cocaine.

The Dr. Peter Centre nurses contacted the province's nursing regulatory
group-the Registered Nurses Association of B.C.-and in April 2002, the
association gave the nurses permission to open a small shooting gallery
within the Dr. Peter Centre.

All three levels of government are currently establishing a framework for
operating supervised injection sites in Vancouver.

The Portland Hotel Society, one of the largest non-profit societies
operating in the Downtown Eastside, has already spent $30,000 renovating a
space on the 100-block of East Hastings into a two-room, six-stall
supervised injection site.

The group, which takes care of hard-to-house people with mental health
problems, also funds VANDU with money from the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority, and provides office space for the Pivot Legal Society.

The groups behind the injection site where Oleson works include VANDU, Pivot
and a VANDU spin-off called the Housing Action Committee.

Oleson said the 327 Carrall site is not getting its needles from the
Downtown Eastside Youth Activities Society, which distributes three million
needles a year in the Downtown Eastside.

"We are relying on donations from people who don't want to be identified,"
said Oleson, adding the space is also donated by community members that own
the building.

A search of city records shows the three buildings adjoining Pigeon
Park-325-331 Carrall St.-are owned by a company called Trusty Sales Ltd.

Oleson said the site, which is also used by VANDU as a "Centre for
Solidarity, Resistance and Liberation," attracts between 10 and 20 drug
users each night.

Matthew Bonnetrouge, a Housing Action Committee member who arrived in
Vancouver from Yellowknife 18 months ago, said he became a drug addict in
the Downtown Eastside, and while partially clean, he still uses hard drugs
two or three times a month.

"Society is abusing us," Bonnetrouge said. "They think of us as different
but we have the right to do what we want to do. We use drugs not to face
reality; that's why we get high and stay high."

Oleson said the shooting gallery was opened at the same time the Vancouver
Police Department began to clamp down on drug dealers in the area.

Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who is also chair of the Vancouver Police
Board, has asked police not to shut down the injection site until he returns
from meetings in Ottawa with Health Canada officials.

Campbell, who was expected to return to Vancouver this weekend, anticipates
Health Canada approval for a legal safe injection site within the next two
weeks.