NEW YEAR’S GREETINGS FROM OUR MLA

Just as we go to press with our January issue (a couple of days behind schedule, ‘cause we had to party a bit too!) we received the following season’s greetings from our hard-working MLA and his family. We return the greetings and look forward to another year of progress on all the issues that Spencer takes to heart, and thank him for his efforts.

Happy New Year! A New Year gives us all a new opportunity to help make a better world, a better community, and better friendships too.

From my family to you and yours, we wish you all the best for the year ahead. And as always, if there’s a way I can help as your MLA please let me know.

Sincerely,
Spencer, Romi and Dev

The same to you and yours Spencer, from all of us at The West End Journal!

Have your Christmas tree chipped for composting at Sunset Beach January 4 and 5.

RECYCLE YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE

It’s time to recycle your Christmas tree.

Traditionally, Christmas trees are taken down 12 days after Christmas – on January 5. But of course there have to be dissenting views, as on every question, large or small. The Church of England says January 5 is the Twelfth Night, while some people count the 12 days after Christmas beginning on Boxing Day meaning it would fall on January 6.

One thing we can count on is that every year City of Vancouver staff and Lions Club volunteers provide Christmas tree chipping events. After the trees are chipped, they are taken to the Vancouver Landfill to be composted.

In the West End this happens Saturday and Sunday, January 4 and 5, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Sunset Beach upper parking lot — Beach Avenue at Broughton. So you may have to buck tradition by a couple of days to take advantage of this service.

Bring cash and non-perishable food items to donate at the recycling event. These will be distributed to local charities.

If you miss this opportunity, Vancouver also offers curtsied pickup on the weekend of January 11 and 12. Trees must be set out by 7 a.m. on Saturday and laid on their side.

You can also take your tree to the Vancouver transfer station at 77 West Kent Avenue North.

However you choose to dispose of your tree, please remove all tinsel and decorations. Those don’t compost!

A SEASON OF LOSSES

This winter has been a season of loss for many West Enders, especially in the LGBTQ community. Three deaths in particular made headlines.

Jeremy Mohammed … On November 28, 43-year-old West End resident Fizul Jeremy Mohammed was found critically wounded at Robson and Denman, following a stabbing in the Downtown Eastside. Police and friends reported that Mohammed was attempting to return home following the fatal incident. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Photos later posted on social media showed a coffee shop near Main and Cordova streets cordoned off behind police tape along with a heavy police presence. According to witnesses, Mohammed was stabbed in the alleyway next to the coffee shop. He was the resident caretaker and handyman at his residence at Bidwell and Robson.

His was the city’s ninth homicide of 2019.

A service will be held at 11 a.m. January 04 at the Richmond Funeral Home (8420 Cambie Road).

Jamie Lee Hamilton … On December 23, long-time West End resident and social justice advocate Jamie Lee Hamilton died at the Cottage Hospice, age 64.

Hamilton was among the first to draw public and political attention to the fact that a predator was preying on sex workers in Vancouver. She protested police inaction in 1998 when she dumped 67 pairs of stilettos on the steps of Vancouver City Hall to raise awareness about missing women.

In 2016, Hamilton co-founded Canada’s first sex work memorial, located outside St. Paul’s Anglican Church, at the West End intersection of Jervis and Pendrell streets. The memorial, a retro lamp post with a red bulb, honours sex workers in the neighbourhood who were forced out by city hall, police and the provincial government in the 1980s.

Services will be held for Hamilton on Thursday, January 23 at 2 p.m. at St. Paul’s Church, to be followed by a reception in the church hall and a gathering later at The Junction nightclub on Davie.

Bruce Smyth. (Belle Ancell. Photo / Courtesy LOUD)

Bruce Smyth … The same day that Jamie Lee Hamilton died another prominent member of Vancouver’s LGBTQ community, Little Sister’s Book Store co-founder Bruce Smyth died at UBC’s St. John’s Hospice.

Smyth opened Little Sister's in the West End in 1983 with life partner Jim Deva, who died following an accident in 2014.

The pair opened the bookstore—initially on the second floor of a house on Thurlow Street, just a few steps from Davie Street and in the centre of what is now known as the Davie Village “gaybourhood"—due to their frustration at not being able to find gay and lesbian reading material. The store moved to its current much larger location on Davie Street in 1996.

Smyth and Deva, with store manager Janine Fuller , led a years-long battle against Canada Border Services Agency, which deemed much of its imported printed matter as "obscene materials". The CBSA routinely seized Little Sister's shipments at the border, leading to a decade-long legal battle that ended with Smyth and Deva emerging victorious with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2000.

No public services have been announced as yet.

FIRE CLOSES BEACH AVENUE

A fire in a West End apartment building the afternoon of December 22 closed down Beach Avenue from Jervis to Denman and displaced several residents.

The fire, in a ten-story high-rise at Broughton and Beach, broke out on the third floor at about 1 p.m. Firefighters doused the fames from both inside and outside the building and everyone inside the apartment got out safely.

The blaze started in a kitchen and was not considered suspicious in nature. There was smoke and water damage to four other units and some residents won’t be able to return to their homes for some time, which was a heck of a way to start the holidays.

A familiar face while on patrol in the West End.

A WELL EARNED RETIREMENT PACKAGE

A frequent site coming and going through the West End, and a favourite with locals and tourists alike, Vancouver City Police mounted division member Clyde the Clydesdale has retired.

Now 16, Clyde became joined the VPD at four and served with honour for 12 years.

Trained to endure, and hopefully enjoy, the attention, and nose-pats, and to not shy away from sound noises, and skateboards zipping by, he was as comfortable posing for pictures for fans he encountered on his rounds as he was working crowd control after a fireworks event. Clyde soon became a trainer of sorts himself, paired with new horses in a buddy system designed to familiarize new recruits with the demands of big-city policing.

“Any time I was on Clyde, I felt grateful for him,” said VPD mounted unit spokesperson Sergeant Susan Intelligent, who joined the unit as a reserve rider in 2008.

Clyde’s retirement package consists of a life of ease at the Willow Acres Equestrian Centre in Surrey.