Thursday 16 February 2012

Browsing

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The Carrall Street Flea Market sets up between Hastings and Cordova each Sunday.
This is, without any exaggeration, Canada's poorest neighbourhood.
I would judge that much of the 'merchandise' sold here has been retrieved from dumpsters and such.

6 comments :

Andy said...

Wayne. Is that you under the sunglasses :-)

CaT said...

HAHAHA. i had the same question as andy, but wasnt sure i dared to ask...
;)

Wayne said...

I was afraid there might appear to be some similarity. No that isn't me.

He isn't wearing sunglasses. That's an eye-patch. In that neighbourhood it's quite iffy to take photos of people. They sometimes over-react.

TheChieftess said...

You are a brave man Wayne!!! Folks in this type of neighborhood are generally quite wary of photographers...Nicely captured...
Quite the social consciousness statement...

Bob Crowe said...

That's quite a statement. Not equaled by any down-and-out corner of Toronto or remote Arctic village? The photo is intriguing, as if Z.Z. Top went to BC foraging for literature.

Wayne said...

Bob, the area is acknowledged as 'Canada's poorest postal code' by the gov't. All big cities have similar neighbourhoods but none in Canada deal with issues of homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental illness on the scale that the downtown eastside does.

I haven't seen anything that comes close to the DTES in Toronto or Montreal. Alcohol and drug abuse are serious problems in some northern communities but you don't stay homeless in an Arctic village for long and live to tell the story.