Rickie
“One thing I started liking about taking pictures is that I saw the way I was happy taking them.”
Click each photo or scroll down to read Rickie’s story
I remember this sign from when I was a kid. When we first moved to Vancouver, my mom used to take me and my kid sister down to Woodwards and shop. You know, $1.49 cheesesteak Tuesdays. The fact is, I don't know much about my family history. All I remember is where I grew up. I just know where I was born and stuff like that. The only thing I remember is the happy times and my family.
This is me at Community Connect and I just wanted somebody to see a picture of me doing it. Just a remembrance, I guess you'd call it. My younger sister and I were always close, everybody thought we were twins. When she died two years ago, it impacted me hard. That’s why I decided to go volunteer for harm reduction and outreach work. I don't know if I'm reaching people or not, but it’s making me feel better doing it.
This is Community Connect, a fair that DUDES Club helped with. Women came in, they got fed, and they could get a haircut and stuff like that, just to make them feel good. And I thought that was great. The DUDES Club information isn’t restricted to men. We want women to know that their men can come to us and get help. I enjoyed taking those photos. I felt good about them because it shows that I was helping people out.
This is Tent City. And that's sad because why the hell are people living out in the streets? The government is saying they're doing something but they're not. The government doesn't help you out to the point where you can adapt yourself. All they want to do is keep you on the poverty line so that you'll never get over the poverty line, so you can't build yourself up. And when they do try to help, whatever help that they want to give you, you have to jump through hoops to get it.
The Sisters [Franciscan Sisters of Atonement] serves breakfast on the first Saturday of the month. I used to go there and see people in the line that I hadn’t seen in a long time and talk to them. I’m a very solitary person but lately I’ve been going out more to connect with the community.