Edie's story

Edie Wild, a trim, smartly-dressed woman in her mid-fifties, speaks articulately, politely with a ready smile.

She eagerly tells her story that unfolds in the clean white and brick space of the Interurban Gallery at One East Hastings Street.

Here 200 or so Downtown East residents lined up in early June to receive their free cameras for the Hope in Shadows photography contest. Last year, Edie was recognized for her second place photograph, singled out of 4,000 entries. It was a lyrical snapshot of her cat, Baby Peanut, keeping watch on the windowsill. Winning, she says, left her "walking on air." A year later, she is still aloft and full of hope that one of her photos will be chosen this year.

The contest-now in its sixth year-is an excellent way of turning someone's life around, Edie believes. "I felt part of something. The contest gave me a focus and made me realize that my small talent was worth something."

That sunny view is a far cry from the darkness that filled her world less than two years ago when she was forced to move into a hotel room on East Hastings. In 2006 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and was laid off from a plastics fabrication plant in Burnaby where she had worked full time. Unable to afford her apartment, she moved in with a boyfriend. That situation unraveled when the money she gave him to help pay the rent and storage fees never reached the landlord.

She was evicted and everything she had in storage was confiscated. For one night, just before Christmas, she slept on the street before moving temporarily to a shelter on Cordova Street. Finding an affordable room in the Downtown Eastside was difficult, and made more so by the poor condition of so many of the residences here. Now Edie lives in what she calls one of the better ones, but the first few days and weeks there, save for her cats, were lonely and depressing.

"I segregated myself, I felt worthless... Hope in Shadows allowed me to come back to the world I lived in because people reached out to help me. Pivot wanted me to succeed with the pictures."

You can read more about Edie Wild and other Hope in Shadows photography contest in Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Leslie Perry is a former journalist who is currently teaching English as a second language.