People
G R E AT S T O R I E S
WA S T E L A N D October 2006, photographed by Marina Dodis It was disgusting and shocking and very smelly. I think when we’re faced with the consequences of the way we live, it is pretty shocking, especially because we don’t live in that big a city—it’s surprising how big the area was. The writer is in the photo. It just helps to see the scale; it’s difficult to grasp unless you get the tractors in there and a person. I usually shoot portraits, so this was a change of pace—he almost disappeared in the shot. Which actually worked as a little bit of a metaphor.—Marina Dodis, freelance photographer
ON THE HEROIN TRAIL May 1978, written by Garry Marchant
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R AT I O N A L E N Q U I R E R January 1999, written by Steve Burgess Long-ago editor Jim Sutherland and I came up with a column called Rational Enquirer, a sort of ‘fake news’ column before its time. The concept: every month I would pull a weird stunt designed to throw light on a current issue. In 1999, rusty ships full of Chinese refugees landed on our coast, causing some hysteria. So I set up a table in Kerrisdale with a petition titled ‘Support Chinese Refugees!’ Twenty minutes later I changed the petition to ‘Support Chinese Dogs!’ Dogs beat refugees by a ratio of seven signatures to one. Once, I picketed outside the Greek consulate with a sign reading ‘Rice, pita bread AND potatoes? Too much starch! Greek food: the silent killer!’—Steve Burgess, writer, 1994 to present
HEROIN TRAIL: GARRY MARCHANT
My decade as the Vancouver magazine travel columnist changed my life, turning my long-time love of travel into a full-time job. I ventured from the icy wastes of the Antarctic to the sultry beaches of Polynesia and from the Galapagos to Tibet. I rode the Concorde from New York to London and savoured the luxury of a suite on the legendary liner QE2 on the way back. I also wrote features, including an exposé of Filipino faith healers, an account of my year as editor of the Brazil Herald in Rio de Janeiro, and a story on the heroin trail from Thailand to Vancouver. For that story I went to northern Thailand, where I saw hill tribes harvesting the opium, making incisions on the poppy buds, then scraping off the sap. In Bangkok, I learned how the labs turned the opium into heroin and how it was smuggled out. I also visited a prison in Bangkok to interview Canadian drug dealers, including Ricky from Montreal. Back home, I spent a night on the streets with the Vancouver Police drug squad. Sometime after the story appeared, I got a letter from Ricky. He was being released from prison and intended to stay with me in Vancouver for a while before continuing on to Montreal. I fretted about this for months, but Ricky never turned up. On my next visit to Bangkok, I contacted an RCMP officer at the Canadian embassy. He told me that Ricky was stopped at the airport with a load of heroin and was back in prison. Travel writing was never so nerve-racking. —Garry Marchant, columnist, 1977 to 1989