“It can only be done by you,” Senator Larry Campbell told his audience about dealing with the problems with substance abuse in their communities.

Campbell spoke to a group of about 90 people Tuesday night at Kitchener Collegiate as the closing keynote address of a series put on by Community Safety & Crime Prevention Council.

In The Minds Eye 2006: Issues of Substance Use in Film + Forum

Campbell was speaking about the four pillars program, which he introduced as Mayor of Vancouver. The program was a strategy to combat drug addiction in the city and include the pillars: prevention, treatment, harm reduction, and enforcement. The four piollars have since been adopted in Kelowna, B.C.; Victoria; and Toronto.

The harm reduction pillar included a safe injection sites where addicts were able to inject their drugs with clean needles, under the supervision of a nurse, and had an opportunity to speak with former addicts about overcoming their addictions.

Campbell was born in Brantford and worked as a steel worker in Hamilton. He joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and was moved to Vancouver in 1969. He would later be come the Vancouver District Coroner and then the Chief Coroner for B.C. inspiring the CBC television show Da Vinci’s Inquest, on which he collaborated with the show’s creators. He retired as coroner in 2000. In 2002 he chose to run for mayor to succeed Mayor Phillip Owen with whom he had worked on strategies for drug addiction in the city. Campbell won the vote, as did councillors running in his municipal party, the Coalition of Progressive Electors.

“We ran 23 and elected 23,” he said of his party’s success in that election.

His television alter ego would also run and win as mayor inspiring the show to become Da Vinci’s City Hall. The show was cancelled before Dominic Da Vinci could move to Ottawa and work in the red room.

Here are some things that he said: (more…)