April was introduced to the Skids at an early age, and Al was the first police officer to encounter her on the street. He snapped a photo of her at age 17, the epitome of a wandering youthful kid, queued up at the gates of misery, without a clue for what she had been conscripted. She had blown into town, no doubt attracted by the frenetic inner city energy and the ability to be part of the action anonymously, explaining to the inquiring policeman that she was just here to ‘look for her cousin’. Al knew better, snapped her photo and told her that he now had a ‘before’ picture. He warned her that he did not want to take an ‘after’ picture. He took the time to describe the brutal lifestyle that lurked underneath an `after’ picture, should he have to take it. At the time she was selling marijuana to finance her meager street life, and was not yet wedded to the needle. The warnings rolled off her as empty words, like they always seem to with invulnerable youth.

Things changed quickly for her, and she slipped through boundary of normalcy into the miserable pit of cocaine and heroin addiction. Within a short time she was working the street as a prostitute to support her burgeoning drug habit, and her body began to break down under the strain of a cocaine-fuelled life. Her pretty facial features became buried under a crusty layer of coke sores that no amount of make-up could hide, and her deteriorating teeth bore silent and stained witness to the lack of concern for diet and hygiene. Her body thinned, as did her full head of hair. Her spirit, though, was always there. April was a bright, bubbly girl, who loved to laugh. The extremes of her life would come charging through in her personality. As happy and cheerful as she could be one minute, the next minute would find her lachrymose and forlorn, the price exacted for taking inventory on the hopelessness of her situation. Stark reality of a living Hell, when reflected on, was always too much for her frail persona.

Al snapped her photo six months later, the second time he had ever laid eyes on her, when the devastation of drugs and the harshness of street life joined forces to exact an unmerciful toll on young April. This became the ‘after’ picture Al had not wanted to take, and together with the ‘before’ picture they became the centerpiece of Odd Squad’s first drug education slide show. It was a devastating and powerful pictorial effect. These pictures went on to become a major part of the documentaries ‘Through A Blue Lens’ and ‘Flipping the World’. They were as impacting for April when we showed them to her for the first time, seven years after they were taken, as they were for the naïve high school student audiences we presented them to on a regular basis.

We would always run into April on the street. From a distance she was easily identifiable by her red hair, as there are very few red heads in the Skids. Even now when Al and I see a red head drifting down the street, we both comment on how the person reminds us of April. Sometimes April was in too much of a hurry to talk, rushing off to meet somebody for ‘something’. Other times she would take the time to visit socially, and she always alluded to the desire for change, yearning for the new fresh start that treatment could bring her. Much of this, I am sure, was empty rhetoric, designed as much to pacify our concerns as to alleviate her own sense of dissatisfaction. Sometimes, though, she actually made it into treatment, and when residing there, would quickly put some weight onto her wispy frame to become healthy and robust. The newfound vitality pushed her to make contact with her father in Ontario and her son in Squamish. When we visited her in recovery, she would overflow with enthusiastic energy. In contrast, when she was on the street, we could see her the poison kill a bit of her with each injection.

Her best friend from the time on the street, was her on-and-off again roommate Danny. Mesmerized by her charm and personality, Dan obsequiously followed her with huge hopes for her recovery. He too became entangled in the web of addiction, and suffered in April’s shadow. He still remains April’s best friend, several years after she died. In every conversation that he has with us, she is mentioned with compassion and pride.

We would never speak to her again.

April epitomizes the lost potential of youth to drug addiction. And although she was in a difficult spot for most of her adult life, she did a great service by participating in our documentary work. Her story has connected with youth, and will continue to reach out to youth all over the world for years to come. It is, however, a real shame that she is not here to see it. She was a good person, and I am glad I had the opportunity to know her. Sometimes I can still hear her warm laughter in a cold wind wailing down the bleak streets of the Skids.

Al with April’s ‘Before’ Picture

Al had a gut feeling about April, that she was somehow special, so he took her photo and warned her about the path that she was unwittingly taking. She has proven to be the Odd Squad’s poster girl against drug abuse.