Judy Graves
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
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| Judy Graves - St. James Anglican behind |
For many years Vancouver urban, architecture, and political
writer/columnist Sean Rossiter informed and enlightened the inhabitants of our
city with stories in Vancouver Magazine and the Georgia Straight. For all those
years I took many of the photographs to illustrate his stories. One that I
remember very well is the warm Judy Graves, who had a smile that could melt titanium, who retired this past May after
being an advocate for Vancouver’s
homeless for 30 years.
It was 20 years ago when our city lost
Federal funding for low income and homeless housing. It was at about that time
that rooming houses, cheap hotels and a post Expo 86 boom on condo living that
all added up to the reduction of shelters for the very poor. It was then that
you might run into people sleeping in doorways in some of the better places in
the city.
I photographed Graves
November 24, 2004. She is now retired and yet I keep remembering our former
Premier Mike Harcourt's formula for solving the problem, “Build more
homes.”
It’s so simple. We need many more (not only
one) Judy Graves to tackle this. And of course someone like Sean Rossiter to tells us all about it.
Where we made for this?
Where we made for this?
