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Of Seeger, Squamish and social justice

United Church minister sees some hope for the homeless

Daniel Bogert-O’Brien has a newspaper clipping tacked to his office door at the United Church of Squamish. The story is about folk musician and political activist Pete Seeger, who, in O’Brien’s eyes, was one of the social justice movement’s founding fathers, a man of spiritual verve and moral tenacity. In a very real way, Seeger was O’Brien’s catalyst. Footage of his 1963 concert We Shall Overcome triggered a spiritual reflex in the outspoken minister and advocate for the homeless.

“I was really struck by what I call the spiritual element of his concerts,” says O’Brien, his eyes casting about one of the few overstuffed bookshelves that help characterize his downtown office. “It was all about social justice, and yet it’s just spiritual stuff, just a power that works in human community, for the well-being of human community.”

Human community is something O’Brien spends a lot of time worrying about. In his position as minister, he regularly deals with Squamish’s homeless population, and he sits on the district’s social planning council, a body committed to tooling solutions for those people left behind in these prosperous times. He also sits on a branch of the Helping Hands Society, the organization that runs Squamish’s drop-in centre and emergency shelter.

“It’s pretty bad news in Squamish,” he says. “It’s a difficult group. Some are very hard to house because they have multiple issues, mental health and drug issues. We need to see these as problems. And some of those problems are on the edge of legality because they don’t buy drugs from a guy in a pharmacy — they get them from a guy in a jean jacket in a crack house.”

Sitting in O’Brien’s office, it’s easy to see why local homeless might seek him out. And that they do; there’s even a man who sometimes sleeps outside his office window.

Maybe it’s the minister himself. With a thick head of hair and a full beard, glasses stuck on the edge of his nose and lanky body relaxed and reclined, he’s very much a compelling figure, someone you want to listen to. Even his office puts you at ease, with his banjo resting in a chair as a candle flickers next to some prayer books, a clock ticking quietly beneath the conversation.

The whole effect stems from his past. Even before seeing We Shall Overcome , O’Brien’s mind was inclined towards social justice. The Great War traumatized one of his grandfathers, while the other was the first caretaker of Burnaby’s Central Park.

“That was the shaping of my upbringing,” he says, “what you could call working class British Columbian.”

O’Brien’s path to Squamish, which brought him to the United Church about three years ago, has seen him study in California and Alberta, teach in Ottawa and, in the early ’70s, approach the church for baptism, membership and candidacy for ministry — all in the same day. He now uses his appetite for study and ease with words to help out with the local homeless advocacy movement, much of which involves working with Squamish council.

“I’ve apologized to them for being a big-mouth, left-wing cleric,” he laughs, flicking one of his sizeable hands at the ceiling. “But, dammit, that’s what I am.”

As such, O’Brien explains Squamish’s homeless problem in economic terms. The gap between rich and poor is widening across the corridor, he says, and the high cost of living has people experiencing work-based lives that become simultaneously insular and regional. But not local.

“We have people who are so busy in their work life that they don’t even know what’s going on in their own town,” he says, referencing the significant portion of the workforce that commutes to Vancouver or Whistler. “And a lot of the new apartments that are going up are owned by landlords from Vancouver. And at this point, they’re probably not as involved in the community.”

As far as homelessness in Squamish is concerned, what’s going on is basically this: Surveys done by local volunteers peg the district’s homeless population at around 100; there is no permanent shelter in the area, only an emergency shelter with 10 beds; that same shelter is regularly open as a drop-in centre; the country has been without a national housing act since 1998; the district’s affordable housing policy, which is a work in progress, won’t have any impact on the utterly destitute because it prices stock not based on a percentage of income, but on that of the local market, which is currently exorbitant.

“You’re talking about a market place that for many people means having two or three or four jobs just to be able to live,” he says. “It rips our guts out spiritually. All we have is this market relationship with one another.”

O’Brien doesn’t like Squamish’s affordable housing strategy for that very reason, but he realizes council can only do so much. What’s needed is support from senior governments, and much attention needs to be drawn in the run-up to the 2010 Olympics, when problems like Squamish’s threaten international embarrassment.

He does like the district’s plan for downtown. The vision of mixed-use buildings — residential, commercial and professional — combined with increased street life could remedy the problem posed by disconnected locals. All of a sudden people are immersed in their community again, and the social ailments it experiences are that much harder to ignore.

“I hope for a demographically mixed downtown core,” he says. “The question is: How far will council compromise the plan in response to pressure from developers?”

But pressure goes both ways, and O’Brien hopes to find someone who might use the church’s lots to build some kind of facility with “multiple community usages.” And he also hopes the potential for Olympic humiliation will help secure funding for 20 year-round shelter beds, something homeless advocates are striving towards.

“It is our responsibility, as a community, to care for those who are on the edge,” he says. “And I know that’s scary. I know that’s risky.

“The potential is here for great change. I think we can construct a healthy community.”