Vancouver park board to vote on Bud Osborn memorial

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      After Bud Osborn died in May, the Downtown Eastside poet and activist was remembered by speakers at a public memorial on East Hastings Street.

      The cofounder of the Vancouver Area Network of Drugs Users look set to receive a permanent memorial in the future.

      Vision Vancouver commissioner Sarah Blyth has put a motion to establish a memorial for Osborn on the agenda for the park board's meeting on Monday (July 21).

      Her motion would ask park staff to "work with family members and friends of Bud Osborn to create a memorial for Bud Osborn that people in the future can remember Bud's important contributions to Vancouver and the awareness he has helped to raise for people who need it the most".

      It also notes that Osborn's "work with VANDU helped lead to the creation of North America's first supervised injection site in Vancouver, and continued through legal challenges to laws affecting controlled substances and their users" and his "poetry and contributions led to a greater awareness and understanding of some of the struggle people live within the DTES every day and he pushed to create change against the odds".

      Osborn died on May 6 after being hospitalized for pneumonia and a heart condition.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      me too

      Jul 20, 2014 at 4:01am

      There goes Blyth, mixing up her focus on the DTES and her position as a PB Commissioner. While Bud was a dedicated and good soul what does that have to do with the City's park space and the PB's staff time and budget? This is just another example of VV's elected official's overreach and skewed priorities.