Students Impacted by Seeing Skid Row

Students Impacted by Seeing Skid Row

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 15:22

A group of students, their parents and other adults from the Clearwater River Dene Nation is digesting the images they saw this past weekend.

They visited Vancouver’s downtown eastside that is fraught with drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness and prostitution.

Lester Herman, the school’s counsellor, says many of them were impacted when they met a 20-year-old woman who had been on the street for the past 9 years.

Haley Lemaigre, a grade 11 student, was clearly moved by the young woman as well, noting she was beautiful, but could have been more beautiful and more successful without the drugs.

Lemaigre says it was hard to see homeless people with nothing to eat and digging through garbage.

Clearwater Chief Roy Cheechum says the tour was a wake-up call to the high school students, because they got to see what drugs can do to decent people.