Exits and Entrances- A Journey Through many Landscapes - by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Eleven - Part Two.

     Chapter Eleven - Part Two.


      At the start of the 21st century troubles started showing up at my front door. By now I wanted to forget Montreal. My years in that city now struck me as a horrible painful interlude in my life. Yet people from that city or from my time there, came to Vancouver. One man from my past wanted to live in the city and not far from where I lived.
     "Please leave me alone," I wrote to him. "Please find somewhere else to live." This man left Vancouver shortly afterwards and I breathed a big sigh of relief.
     Then the B.C. Liberal party swept to power in the B.C. election of 2001. They captured 77 out of 79 seats in the B.C. legislature. The B.C. provincial Liberal party was anything but liberal. The party cleaved to a Reaganesque agenda that shovelled tax breaks to the rich and cut social programs to the bone. "We're going to examine the whole disability allowance program, " vowed Murray Coell in effect. Coell was the new Liberal Minister of Human Resources. Coell tried to strip 15,000 people out of the 55,000 on disability from the disability rolls.
    Coell failed in this brutal effort. One woman, the Scots-born Margaret Birrell and the organization she headed up, the B.C. Coalition of the Disabled foiled Coell here. In the end, Coell who was now called by some disabled people "Murray Cruel" kicked nobody off the disability rolls. Yet Coell changed the welfare laws making it much harder for poor people to get welfare. Soon homeless people piled up in the streets of British Columbia.
     In the end I wasn't touched by Coell's assault on the disabled rolls. I used my past experience as a welfare advocate to escape being even noticed by the Liberals' attempt to purge the welfare and disabled from getting a government cheque. My doctor John Robinson was  conservative but he was also a compassionate man.
     This man wrote a letter at my request to the welfare office I went to, outlining my several disabilities."Get your doctor to write a letter on your behalf," Rolf Auer, a burly anti-poverty activist advised me when Murray Coell announced his plans. This advice and Doctor Robinson's letter saved me I'm sure from having my disability status being re-examined by workers from Human Resources.
      Yet after this, new problems erupted at Eight Oaks Housing Co-op where I had now lived for over 20 years.