VANCOUVER—Two years ago, something terrible was happening in Vancouver: a killer was on the loose and hundreds of people were dying.The killer stalked construction workers who had been injured years ago on the job. It killed teenage girls. And soldiers who had fought in Afghanistan. It struck on the street, when people were alone in their houses, in coffee shop bathrooms and public libraries.Sarah Blyth was determined to slow the carnage. “There were just so many overdose deaths and there were so many overdoses every day and it became so overwhelming that we basically just … said can we do this? Can we open up the back gate and put a tent and put a couple people there?” Blyth said.The killer was fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has tainted nearly all illicit drugs in British Columbia and is now reaching a deadly hand across Canada. With two other long-time activists and a team of volunteers, Blyth started the country’s first overdose prevention site in the Downtown Eastside, a Vancouver neighbourhood where many residents struggle with poverty, addiction and mental health.Blyth, 46, knew that if she set up a tent and a table in a Downtown Eastside alley and trained volunteers to administer the overdose reversal drug naloxone, they would save lives. There was just one problem: it was completely illegal.“We didn’t care, Sarah didn’t care,” said Norma Vaillancourt, who lost her husband years ago to an overdose and now works at the prevention site. “We just wanted to save lives.”Blyth has a Grade 10 education; a learning disability and attention deficit disorder meant she never really found a place in the school system. She bounced around several schools on Vancouver’s middle-class west side: University Hill, Lord Byng, Kitsilano Secondary. “I understand how people can slip through the cracks,” she said. “I understand how people don’t fit in certain parts of the ...
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