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BLOG: Governor General Michaelle Jean Dogged by Anti-Poverty Protestors at Vancouver Downtown East Side Tour ...
BLOG: Governor General Michaelle Jean Dogged by Anti-Poverty Protestors at Vancouver Downtown East Side Tour

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BLOG: Governor General Michaelle Jean Dogged by Anti-Poverty Protestors at Vancouver Downtown East Side Tour ...

SOURCE: The Canadian Press
 

Jan 23/08: Governor General Michaelle Jean Dogged by Anti-Poverty Protestors at Vancouver Downtown East Side Tour ...

Governor General Michaelle Jean faced heckling and swearing Wednesday from anti-poverty protesters who dogged her walk through Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

Most of the angry words were directed at city councillor Elizabeth Ball, who accompanied Jean, but some of the taunting and at least one obscene swear word appeared directed at her.

The Queen's Canadian representative, who was closely surrounded by her own security and a city police escort, smiled stiffly through the two-block walk to a private meeting with Mayor Sam Sullivan.

Many residents of the downtrodden neighbourhood and activists are angry at Sullivan and his governing party, who they say are focusing on the 2010 Olympics while ignoring the poverty, drugs, violence and lack of affordable housing in Canada's poorest postal code.

Jean, on a tour of British Columbia this week, knocked her schedule off the rails with a 90-minute closed-door meeting inside the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, one of the few havens for female drug addicts and prostitutes on the neighbourhood's Dickensian streets.

She emerged to say she found what she heard "very moving."

Men are normally barred from the centre - though Jean's husband and some aides were allowed in. Sullivan was expected and protesters had been waiting for him but he was instead meeting across town with his counterparts from other major cities to discuss homelessness.

So they vented their anger on Ball as she led Jean on a brief walk into neighbouring Chinatown.

Hecklers, some of them from the militant Anti-Poverty Committee, taunted the civic politician and asked Jean whether she thought she was getting an "unsanitized" view of the Downtown Eastside.

"Way to help out," shouted one man.

One welcomed Jean as "your f**king highness," and others chanted "homes, not Games."

"The Governor General wasn't the main target," said Aaron Muirhead, one of the handful of young protesters who trailed her walkabout. "She's irrelevant as far as we're concerned."

Jean visited the Dr. Sun Yat-sen memorial garden, a walled oasis of calm in the bustling downtown, where she met privately with Sullivan. Protesters guessed he was there and stayed around to heckle him as he left.

Jean was scheduled to speak to the visiting big-city mayors and meet with B.C. Order of Canada members as she continued her B.C. tour.

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