Charlayne Thornton-Joe eyes a paper cup as it somersaults past her on a downtown crosswalk. She deftly dips in among the other pedestrians to snatch the cup off the ground and toss it into a corner trash bin.
"When you see downtown as a neighbourhood, you treat it differently. People flood into the downtown every day and they see office buildings and shops, but it's also home to a lot of people. The street is like someone's yard," explains Thornton-Joe, a three-term Victoria city councilor. "You wouldn't just dump your trash in it."
Increasingly, Victoria's heart is becoming home to ever more people as upscale condominium projects are completed. Yet tucked around all those polished new domiciles lives the capital region's poorest population, according to the 2006 census, which found downtown residents have the lowest income and the highest unemployment rate.
Allan Edgar, a photographer, visual artist and courier, makes do on an annual income that he estimates at less than $15,000. For 15 years, he has rented a small studio in Chinatown. He initially viewed one proposed condominium project on his street as "terrifying."
Terrifying only in theory, however, for when it comes to describing his well-heeled new neighbours, he takes a different tack. "A lot of them are young people, they come in with vision and energy and that trickles into the urban culture," Edgar says, listing off the newcomers' boutique galleries and shops.
In 2006, Clayton and Gayle Ealey, a 40-something couple, moved from high-stress mental-health jobs in Alberta to a work/live condo in Dragon Alley and opened a luxury dog shop, High End Dog, downstairs.
Where some might stay safely tucked inside at night, the Ealeys take their cocker spaniels Roxy and Max on midnight strolls through downtown, unperturbed by street people. "I worked in mental health for 22 years," Clayton Ealey said. "I come across people all the time, doing drugs and all that stuff." He's not worried. "If anything, a lot of people know us because of our dogs."
Robert Randall sees the vagrant population in different terms. He chairs the Downtown Residents Association and for the last nine years has lived at the Mosaic condominium complexon Fort Street. He worries that the concentration of social services in his neighbourhood forces the community to shoulder too much of the indigent population and their accompanying ills. "There needs to be a crackdown on real abuses," Randall said, listing off loud late-night fights and public inebriation. Nevertheless, he has no plans to leave. "There's a quote, something about the 'noise of bottles in a shopping cart as the symphony of the street.' If you're going to live here, it is something you just have to get used to," Randall said. "You have to enjoy the pulse of the city."
And while some might worry about the gentrification of downtown, Randall says the new construction is reviving the city, block by block, pointing to The Juliet condo complex at Johnson and Blanshard.
"That part of town was really derelict. It wasn't a street you wanted to walk down," Randall said. "Now The Juliet has really boosted it up. It made a forgettable part of town into a destination."
The whole of Victoria's downtown population, including James Bay, parts of Fairfield and other neighbourhoods, nearly doubles from 78,000 full-time residents to 150,000 during the day, when people from all over the capital region converge here to work, shop and play. Thornton-Joe says downtown commuters might see the core as only a collection of offices, stores and recreation services. But to Thornton-Joe, who spent her childhood taking shortcuts down Fantan Alley and waving at her aunt in her second-storey window over what is now Sagers Furniture store, this is a neighbourhood.
On Government Street, she makes small talk with a pair of tattoo artists in front of Sailor Jerry's Olde-Tyme Tattoo Shoppe, mentioning that their funky little parlour was once her uncle's shoestore, where she played upstairs.
As she swings into the 10-block area known as the Humboldt Valley -- bounded by downtown, James Bay and Beacon Hill Park and home to Victoria's luxury highrises -- she points to three plastic bags leaning outside The Astoria's sleek entryway. The bags of clothes are marked as a donation for Big Brothers. "Isn't this just what you'd see in a suburban neighbourhood?" Thornton-Joe asks.
The census findings that mark downtown as the capital region's poorest and most unemployed populace mystify Thornton-Joe, who believes the figures are outdated. Pointing out that most of the new condominium projects were not completed in 2006, she argues that much has changed here since then.
"I think if the census were held today, it would paint a different picture."
THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD
sa国际传媒 reporter Joanne Hatherly continues her series with the last of five parts on neighbourhoods of note around the capital region. Drawing on Statistics sa国际传媒 data, which breaks the region down into 69 areas called "census tracts," Hatherly profiles some of the enclaves that stand out from the rest.
- Sunday, March 29: Gordon Head South is home to the region's highest number of visible minorities and foreign-language speakers.
- Sunday, April 5: Most places in the region are getting bigger, but a neighbourhood around Colwood's Esquimalt Lagoon is actually losing residents.
- Sunday, April 12: Single and looking for a match? Hang out in Fernwood South, where more than half the people have never married.
- Sunday, April 19: More and more people are moving to View Royal, the fastest-growing place in the province.
- Today: This area may have swanky new abodes, but it's home to the poorest people in the region and has the highest unemployment rate.
