Monster Houses In Richmond

Neighbourhood Photo Gallery - Gastown

A sign for Water Street, which is the main road in Gastown and features popular cafes such as The Water Street Café, Trees Organic Coffee, and local shops like John Fluevog. 

An aerial view of pastries at PureBread bakery, which is just one of the bustling cafes and eateries that the Gastown community offers. 

Someone admiring the famous Gastown Steam Clock, which was built back in 1977 by horologist Raymond Saunders, which was the first steam clock that Saunders built. 

The view from Maple Street Square in Gastown, which features iconic landmarks such as the statue of Capt. John "Gassy Jack" Deighton - the origin of the name 'Gastown'. 

A man playing a piano in the rotunda of the converted Woodward's building, which also includes an abstract spiral staircase, a basketball court, and a large mural of the 1977 Gastown riot.

FOI Request - SFU Sexual Assaults

Elizabeth Douglas, Reporter

KPU Citizen Journalism 1220

8391 Fairdell Crescent,

Richmond, B.C. V7C1W5

(604)-277-4941

lizdouglas314@gmail.com

February 23, 2018

Information and Privacy Officer
Archives & Records Management Department
Maggie Benston Student Serives Building (MBC) 0400
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
neelands@sfu.ca

Dear SFU Information and Privacy Officer,

Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, I am requesting that you provide me with the following records:

• All formal complaints and/or number of complaints made by SFU students and staff regarding sexual harassment and/or assault on either Burnaby or Vancouver campuses since January 1, 2012.

Please supply me with these documents via email in a PDF format as to avoid photocopying fees.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Douglas, Reporter

KPU Citizen Journalism 1220

I decided to choose an FOI request involving acts of sexual violence and assault on university campuses due to both current events, and personal reasons relating to the topic. There have been multiple reports in the last few months relating to sexual harassment allegations at BC Universities, such as UBC and UBCO. Regarding the choice of university for my request, a teammate of mine was recently sexually assaulted by their SFU professor on campus. Prior to these instances, I had been considering taking courses at SFU, and I wanted to know whether this was a recurring issue at this specific university. I did some additional research on SFU's history with sexual assault allegations and I came across articles from the CBC and Global News about past acts of sexual violence at the University. Despite the prior events, I hope to find out whether this university is taking steps to make its campuses safer, or whether my teammate's experience was only one of many other sexual assault cases that will continue to occur. 

Safe Injection Sites - The Solution for Recovery

Photo by - ShoZu

"Allowing supervised injection sites to remain open is also allowing people to freely inject themselves with harmful drugs, create unsafe neighbourhoods, and spend millions of dollars that can be spent on other forms of treatment"- the closing statements of Nimerta Randhowa's blog post in support of shutting down safe injection sites. Safe injection sites exist in Canada for a reason, and work to benefit both those affected by drug addiction and the community as a whole.

Although she does note the basic definition of what a safe injection site is, she fails to acknowledge the extent of services that these facilities provide. In fact, she defines the sites as "facilities where addicts can come and consume illegal, recreational drugs in a hygienic space with medical supervision", which contradicts her closing claim that safe injection sites allow users to "freely inject themselves". Organizations like InSite provide trained medical staff to control and respond to potential overdoses, and according to Vancouver Coastal Health's website, there were 1, 781 prevented overdoses in 2016 alone because of the work of InSite employees.

She also believes that in regards to the promotion of less harmful injections, "This will make it more difficult for users to quit their drug habits as they able to satisfy their addiction without worrying about the possible repercussions", which yet again doesn't acknowledge the full capacity of InSite's services. Not only does the site provide medical supervision and response to overdose situations, but also counselling and referrals to other services including OnSite, which is the organization's detox and rehabilitation facility.


Nimerta claims that the existence of safe injection sites "create unsafe neighbourhoods", another entirely false statement. Firstly, safe injection facilities are placed within areas where drug addiction and "gathering point[s]" of users already exist, such as Vancouver's East Hastings street. Nimerta notes at the beginning of her post that, "Vancouver's East Hastings street is notorious for its drug epidemic", and its not a coincidence that both InSite's Safe Injection Site and the Insite for Community Safety building reside within the East Hastings community. Therefore, safe injection sites are rather bringing aid to already unsafe neighbourhoods rather than creating new ones as Nimerta suggests.

Additionally, one of the services that InSite offers is needle exchange and disposal, which provides cleaning services to public spaces in the event that used syringes have been incorrectly discarded. Therefore, these organizations are creating safer public spaces rather than endangering the public as has been suggested by the initial argument.

Another point that Nimerta argues in her post is that of the high expenses required to support running safe injection sites. As presented previously, she believes that in order to run safe injection sites, "[the government] spend millions of dollars that can be spent on other forms of treatment", but according to a Global News article by Dr. Samir Gupta, this is not the case. Gupta states that, "it would also save us almost $43 million" due to the high costs of Hep C treatments alone if we continue allowing safe injection sites to operate.

Safe injection sites aren't solely places where addicts can inject in a less harmful environment, but rather an entry points to access other services related to addiction support and mental health programs. They are not spaces for drug use promotion, but rather ones for rehabilitation. Once the majority of society is capable of comprehending this fact, then maybe safe injection sites will be granted the support to reach their full potential.


Search Engine Optimized (SEO)
Google Trends showed that in the last 12 months, the search "safe injection sites" (25) was searched for far greater times than "supervised injection sites"(5) - showing a spike in searches around the unveiling of facilities like InSite (2003). I then compared the terms 'solution' and 'option', and found that the term 'solution' (88) scored higher than 'option' (36). Lastly, I found that the term 'recovery'(88) placed significantly higher in searches than that of 'rehab' (28).

KPU Mini Photo

Journalism presents itself around the KPU Surrey campus 

First Blog Post

Photo by: Sunny M5