Roxanne is supremely strong: she’s the original Wonder Woman. During the years I’ve known her, that strength has been tested by grief, trauma, and other challenges. She’s now working in the midst of a national opioid crisis that has claimed more lives than at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Roxanne’s resolve to help others is inspiring, a trait shared by our late friend, Raffi Balian. (Roxanne, Raffi, and I gave a talk during the Toronto International Film Festival.) – Hugh Gibson, filmmaker
Recently, I came across the proverb “Hope is the dream of the waking.” Lately, I find myself thinking a lot about hope, and its place in my work and my life.
This past weekend I celebrated my 50th birthday. This is significant because I never once thought I would live to see 50 — and I doubt anyone else would have bet on it, either. I couldn’t imagine I’d be in a room surrounded by so many people who have stayed with me throughout different phases and spaces in my life (many of which must have been difficult to witness).
Hope can be elusive.
As a community support worker in the harm reduction field, I am faced with an overwhelming sense of grief, and have no space between traumatic events. In this work, everyone needs a person who they can go to for honest, critical evaluation, someone to whom you can always tell the truth to because they understand the situation through their own life experiences.
For me, this person was Raffi Balian.
Early on the morning of Feb. 17, I was startled awake by my partner, who told me that my friend and mentor had passed away of an overdose in B.C., where he was participating in a conference. A darkness filled my heart as I was flooded with the many deaths of friends, family, and community members in recent months … years. I felt angry, then helpless, then numb. I don’t think I had allowed myself to count the losses before that moment, always moving quickly to avoid the pain.
Raffi was a leader of leaders and communities. He lived his words and was loyal and true to the bone. He pioneered many movements, always soldiering on for and beside the marginalized and voiceless. In my life, he was best known for his groundbreaking work in harm reduction in Riverdale, but the impact of his death rippled internationally, and many of us on the front lines were rocked to our knees.
I still text him when I can’t hold it in any longer.
Frontline workers and street-involved community members are all fighting — fighting the continual losses, and the impact of absorbing our neighbours’ pain. I learned, first on the street and then through my work, that if people trust you, they will tell you everything, but those things will take up weight and space in your mind. Boundaries are complicated as a community worker; you have one foot on each side of the fence. You work overtime in your head, and your heart will often get bruised. Repeat 10 to 15 times a day. We need hope.
In our community, we have always found ways to take care of each other. When I started working, bad date licence plates were written in lipstick on the store windows along the stroll. Now we have bigger, more encompassing harm reduction programs, which focus on helping drug-involved people without judgment, and in which frontline workers often come from the very places where they work. It has always been a part of life in our community — it isn’t new, though it is news to many people who focus on the law, and on systems that come in from the outside. The Stairs is a way to introduce people to harm reduction, and help them recognize the value of relying on street-educated people to do this work.
There is hope in The Stairs.
Today I went to Raffi’s office and I could smell him there, just a bit — maybe his gym bag (grin), maybe a little lingering scent of his cologne… What was it? His essence? I let my eyes travel over his things, the pictures of his friends, family, service users, the giant dreamcatcher, the stacks of books. While I watered his plants and felt the cold window ledge with my fingertips, a film played in my head, short skits featuring him during different moments in our friendship.
There was hope in that, too.
Roxanne Smith is a harm reduction worker in Toronto's Regent Park and is featured in the documentary, The Stairs.
Watch The Stairs, streaming now
Read more: The Stairs: Tales from Regent Park