Victoria is coming off a glorious summer. Tourism was up. The B.C. capital was named the world’s “best small city” by Condé Nast Traveller for the third time, beating Florence, Italy and San Sebastián, Spain with its bustling harbour and rain forest adjacency. A major new hotel broke ground downtown – the first in two decades – and a handful of new restaurants added to an already boffo culinary scene.
Most tourists, though, aren’t going the few blocks over to Pandora Avenue, where change is slower to come. The Globe and Mail chronicled the decade-long decline of the wide thoroughfare, from a leafy gateway leading downtown to an open-air drug market and carousel of despair. The reporting was part of the newspaper’s Poisoned series, chronicling fentanyl’s path of destruction.
“The rest of the world comes here and goes: ‘What an amazing place,’” says Jeff Bray, chief executive of the Downtown Victoria Business Association. “But if you’re a local and you’re driving down Pandora, you’re thinking: ‘This is a war zone.’”
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On an October day, there are makeshift shelters along Pandora outside the Our Place treatment centre. It’s a short walk east from Central Baptist Church, whose outreach workers have also been dealing with the troubles on the block.
After years of inaction, it seems the situation along Pandora is finally coming to a head. In July, Victoria announced a $10.35-million plan for the avenue and the city’s downtown, which included adding more police and bylaw officers, and transporting vulnerable people away from the area to access other services around the region.
Funds were devoted to temporary housing and public works to ensure what the plan called “the cleanliness, hygiene, look, feel and atmosphere of the city.” The investments were aimed at addressing concerns of public safety and disorder. The efforts are heavy on ambition, but it is not yet clear whether they are having the desired impact, or whether they can.
Less than a year out from the next civic election, Marianne Alto seems to be staking her mayoralty on the fate of the Block, as the stretch of Pandora is widely known. She has promised her compassion-weary electorate they will see “significant changes” to the street by December. A high-profile failure there could doom her re-election bid before it truly begins.
Linda Hughes walks with friends and neighbours to see the state of Pandora. Fences surround the Alix Goolden Performance Hall, and Harris Green has signs warning people not to camp there.
Firefighters at The Harbour, a supervised consumption site, learned they had arrived for a false alarm. Overdose-related calls have been steadily rising on Pandora over the past decade: Fentanyl, which this man is smoking from a pipe, is a major factor in that.
Pandora’s decline began when cheaper and more potent fentanyl elbowed heroin off the Block. “The drugs changed, and the drugs changed everything,” says Julian Daly, CEO of Our Place, one of Victoria’s largest social services agencies. “I cannot stress that enough.”
At the same time, the city drifted into “endless accommodation” of behaviours that make many feel unsafe, Mr. Daly adds. The city of around 94,000 opened North America’s largest safe inhalation site in 2023. For years, many policy makers embraced the idea that people should be allowed to sleep in tents on city property and use drugs in public.
Two years ago, council voted against a proposed ban on drug use in libraries and community centres. Such a ban, said Councillor Susan Kim at the time, would have fundamentally gone against what those facilities are all about.
“In our compassion, we sometimes lost the balance with accountability. And when anything goes … it really does,” Mr. Daly says.
Nick Prescott and his dog, Bell, have set up shelter near a construction site on Pandora.
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Megan Sarasin, left, is vice-president of Lion’s Pride, a recovery society that does a weekly food program on Pandora. Here, volunteers hope to give people options for treatment and a better life.
On a recent visit to Pandora, The Globe encountered people lying prostrate on the sidewalk, soaked by the driving rain. Others sat slumped against walls or stood bent in half, heads lolling, necks twisting, seemingly in and out of consciousness. Someone appeared to be screaming through the throes of psychosis. But to the people who know the Block best, this is progress.
“We’ve seen real movement,” Pastor Shawn Barden of Central Baptist Church wrote in an e-mail to The Globe. The church has anchored Pandora for almost 100 years.
“There was a flurry of cleanup activity in front of our church, with city workers on overtime and police presence noticeably increased. I half-expected the momentum to fade, but to the city’s credit, they’ve continued with a concerted effort – trying new strategies and showing signs of deeper engagement,” Pastor Barden added.
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Shawn Barden from Central Baptist Church is encouraged by what he sees along Pandora.
The new investments to Victoria’s police budget, worth $1.35-million annually, represent a major shift from what has traditionally been Canada’s most left-wing municipal government, notes Mr. Bray: “They’re doing what they can to signal that they want police to stop this.”
As if to make the message more explicit, city council passed a motion this fall – sponsored by three of its most progressive voices – affirming support for the incoming police chief’s vision that emphasizes more community policing in the downtown and Pandora areas. Councillor Jeremy Caradonna, who teaches environmental studies at the University of Victoria and runs a small farm stand in the city’s Fernwood neighbourhood, said the motion was a chance to affirm council’s focus on downtown safety.
Stephen Hammond, the lone centrist on the council, says his colleagues are acutely aware of the public’s frustration with council’s handling of downtown disorder and public safety. “They know how disappointed voters will be if they don’t see real change. They’re scared.”
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Victoria’s new police chief has requested funding for more officers.
Fiona Wilson, the new chief of the Victoria Police Department, responded to the motion by requesting funding for an additional 16 officers, noting the city’s disproportionate problem with homelessness and street disorder.
Mayor Alto has said she is leaning toward supporting the request.
City spokesperson Colleen Mycroft declined to make either Ms. Alto or Ms. Wilson available for an interview. It is “too early” for these conversations, she said.
What hasn’t changed is the city’s “housing first” approach, which offers people unconditional housing without requiring them to address substance or mental health issues.
This is where critics believe Mayor Alto’s efforts will fall down.
“We have a generation of people who are now permanently brain-injured from repeated fentanyl overdoses. These are not repairable injuries,” Mr. Bray says. “This is not like a stroke. You can’t fix it. They don’t need a crappy hotel room.”
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Jeff Bray from the Downtown Victoria Business Association doubts whether housing-first policies alone can change Pandora, which he describes as a ‘war zone.’
For his part, Mr. Daly is calling for a “health-first approach” instead – code, in many cases, for involuntary care.
The provincial government has taken tentative steps in that direction, opening more beds for those detained in care against their will because of addiction and homelessness. But it is a controversial approach: critics argue it is a violation of a person’s liberty.
“This is the hardest conversation, but one we can no longer avoid. When someone is so unwell that they cannot make informed decisions about their care, leaving them on a sidewalk with nothing but their civil liberties intact is not compassion – it is abandonment,” says Mr. Daly.
The reality is, the city has shown real leadership, says Mr. Bray. But they can’t fix this on their own, he adds, noting that more provincial help is needed.
“We need them to open up spaces for involuntary care, so the city can get back to potholes and parks and libraries – the things they’re supposed to be doing.”
Still, in the past few weeks, the situation along Pandora has been slowly improving, says Linda Hughes, who lives in a condo overlooking the Block: it’s “inconsistent, gradual, but noticeable.”
“Our fingers are crossed. We just hope that what looks like a light at the end of the tunnel isn’t actually a returning freight train.”
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Ms. Hughes is hopeful that life on the street below her home will continue to improve.
