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Our House in the middle of the streets

Seventy-seven-year-old Norm Sharkey roller-skates 50 kilometres along the Stanley Park seawall every weekday morning. Sharkey started the Wheels 4 Freedom fundraiser April 28 and plans to skate the length of a cross-country journey.
Norm Sharkey
Norm Sharkey rollerblades 50 km each day. Photo Dan Toulgoet

Seventy-seven-year-old Norm Sharkey roller-skates 50 kilometres along the Stanley Park seawall every weekday morning.

Sharkey started the Wheels 4 Freedom fundraiser April 28 and plans to skate the length of a cross-country journey. He is raising money to fund another journey, the return of a communal house for recovering addicts to Vancouver.

A former addict and now 43 years sober, Sharkey is the founder and program director of the Our House West Coast Society, a non-profit that helps recovering addicts through communal living. The program was based in a house on Union Street but was sold as it required expensive repairs.

The residents were relocated to a house in Surrey June 2013.

Sharkey joined the military in his early adult life and drank his way through a UN peacekeeping tour in the Middle East and the Congo. He was released with an honourable discharge and ended up at unique facility near Montreal that helped him recover. Residents with a desire to get clean lived in a house beside a working farm. He started Our House in Ottawa in the ’70s, the city’s first drug recovery program.

“People I’ve met living on the street have not really had the best of family lives,” said Sharkey, “so that’s the big thing we tried to pattern the house after.”

Sharkey visited Vancouver in 2004 and has stayed on the West Coast since.

“Once I dropped my rollerblades and got on the seawall, I said I got to move here,” said Sharkey.

He decided the city had a need for the program after speaking to some individuals on the West End who said they would consider getting clean if they had a place to live.

Weekday sessions at Our House run as long or as short as residents need to talk. Addicts who relapse or use are not asked to leave the program as it is understood that getting clean isn’t something that happens overnight. There is no minimum or maximum time required for stay and Our House tries to make room for new individuals when able.

The Surrey location has 10 individuals living together.

Sharkey says the program is no different than Vancouver’s, but he wants to be near individuals in need. “We want to get back to where we started off, talking to people wrapped up in blankets on the streets.”

Samantha Andrews, public relations spokesperson and former resident of Our House, hopes they will be able to maintain two sites for different purposes.

“Surrey is away from the temptation, away from Main and Hastings,” said Andrews. “Vancouver is where there are more jobs and schools, more resources for them to tap into.”

John Hills lived in the very first Our House after a friend of Sharkey’s found him on Davie. He said the program saved his life thanks to the open sharing. He has been clean for 6 years.

“I’ve been to other recoveries and never heard anything except the word ‘problems’ and ‘I have issues,” said Hills. “I was taking that stuff [my past] to the grave but the talking kept me from getting high.”

He hopes the return to Vancouver will allow Our House residents to continue outreach opportunities.

“I’m not a counselor or nothing but I share my story with new people,” said Hills. “It’s my way of giving back. Wandering around what I call the jungle, East Hastings, that’s where I feel comfortable and willing to talk.”

The Annual Our House Roll-a-Thon runs July 19 at Second Beach at 10 a.m. for interested bikers and skaters and those who wish to get acquainted with Our House. A barbecue will follow.

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