How fentanyl transformed Victoria's Pandora Avenue from downtown hub to open-air drug market

Globe and Mail

24-05-2025

The sidewalk outside Victoria's Central Baptist Church was littered with trash on a recent visit. A woman was slumped like a resting marionette, her arms hanging from her waist. The smell of urine rose from the concrete. It was mid-week in the heart of the city's central business district but Pandora Avenue was strangely quiet. Nobody was talking. No one was asking for change.
Central Baptist Church stretches almost an entire block along Pandora's south side. Judged from the nave, it looks in good shape, with a new pastor, a banging house band, a popular youth ministry. On Sundays, 700 people pack the pews to hear Shawn Barden preach.
But the church is at a crossroads. In the next couple months, Central Baptist will decide whether to remain where it has stood for 98 years or sell the property and leave Pandora. 'Being among people at the margins of society is where churches thrive,' says Mr. Barden. 'But the needs of the people here have taxed our expertise, our ability to help.'
Pandora, with its wide, tree-lined boulevards, was once a lush gateway to the downtown from the east. But in the past decade, it has morphed into one of the largest open-air drug markets in Western Canada.
About a third of the storefronts are shuttered. Soup kitchens, charities and mom-and-pop pharmacies fill many of the rest. Half the people on the sidewalk are semi-conscious and bent over – the fentanyl fold, the pose is known. Blankets, cardboard and trash clutter the pavement.
'You see everything here – shootings, murders, overdoses, fires,' says Linda Hughes, who moved into her condo overlooking Pandora's 900 block in 2010. 'It used to be wonderful living here.' Now, she says, misery is the only constant.
The Globe and Mail visited Pandora as part of Poisoned, a continuing series examining the opioid crisis, and the impact it has had on the country. For this installment, we set out to find out what is lost when several blocks of a street effectively disappear from a city landscape, and what can cause so swift a change.
To Conor King, a detective with the Victoria Police Department, what's happened to Pandora can be summed up in a single word: fentanyl.
In the spring of 2013, over a period of days, he watched as the drug ripped through the neighbourhood, 'knocking people off their feet,' before exploding into a wider crisis. Along Pandora where a small number of heroin users had gathered, it was like spraying gasoline on an ember fire.
Although this is a story about what's known as 'the block' in Victoria, it could be about so many other Canadian neighbourhoods that have been left deeply scarred by the opioid crisis, like Ottawa's Byward Market or North Main in Winnipeg. If fentanyl is a national crisis, B.C. is its epicentre.
Unlike Vancouver's Downtown Eastside – a magnet for transient folks and drug users for more than a century – Pandora's swift decline has been far more recent. A decade ago, the sidewalks surrounding Central Baptist were full of tourists, residents and office workers who co-existed with a smaller number of unemployed and homeless folks who congregated beneath the trees.
When he was prime minister, Jean Chrétien visited Pandora, touring the Victoria Conservatory of Music shortly after it moved to its grand, new home on the street. It feels impossible to imagine a prime minister visiting the block the way things are now. Until a few months ago, paramedics wouldn't set foot in the area without a police escort. Drug users – and those who care for them – seem to be the only people there.
Some business leaders and police in Victoria warn that unless the city can get a handle on the decline, the chaos spiraling outward from Pandora risks threatening the entire downtown of the B.C. capital, long considered a crown jewel of Canadian tourist destinations.
Keith Johnson, co-owner of Oh Sugar on Johnson Street, five blocks west of Pandora's 900 block, believes Victoria has a limited time to save the city. 'Ten years ago, the downtown was lovely: vibrant, full of people. It's become a scary place.'
Mr. Johnson and his wife are considering selling the candy shop they've owned for almost nine years, citing the spike in thefts, broken windows, open drug use and dysfunctional behaviour.
'We're so tired of dealing with it ‐ the constant challenges, the stress.' If they can't sell, they may simply walk away when the lease is up next year, he says. 'It's just not worth it anymore."
Twice a week, Central Baptist sends out a street outreach team with sandwiches and hot coffee. Monday nights, staff hand out bags of fresh produce and ready-made meals. To Mr. Barden, it all can feel like 'putting the world's tiniest Band-Aid on a horrible open wound.'
Mr. Barden was named Central Baptist's lead pastor a year and a half ago. He and his wife, a family doctor, and their three daughters traded a quiet mountain life in Fernie, B.C., for the inner city. He doesn't take himself too seriously. But his playful confidence was earned. As a child, Mr. Barden overcame a crippling stutter.
His congregation is divided on the question of whether to stay or go. One side feels morally compelled to remain on Pandora, to rebuild their entire mission around serving the street community, carving out shelter space and serving hot meals, he explains.
The other side say they no longer feel safe coming and going from the church. They don't want their church to become another service agency.
Mr. Barden is keeping mum on the question. He has a cleric's tendency to pull people towards his views and doesn't want to steer opinions on the issue.
But everyone at Central Baptist, he says, can agree on one thing: the church cannot continue to exist on Pandora as it is operating now. 'A church is meant to be open. But at our church, every door is locked,' says Mr. Barden. 'It feels antithetical to who we are supposed to be – like we're doing the gospel wrong.'
And yet, it is no longer safe to keep the doors open. Someone recently snuck inside and smoked fentanyl in front of a room filled with toddlers. Last summer, a staff member was sucker-punched in a random attack. Shortly after, a man exposed himself to two children entering the church.
Last fall, in an attempt to rein in the chaos, officials started pulling down the jumble of tents just north of Central Baptist on Pandora and erecting fencing to keep people from camping on the grassy medians.
The city was forced to act after a paramedic was attacked last July. He was trying to help someone having a seizure after smoking drugs. After being punched and kicked in the face, the paramedic stumbled, barely conscious, to a nearby firefighter, who positioned himself above the injured medic, axe in hand, protecting them from a mob of 60 people who encircled them. Victoria police sent out a mayday. Every available officer in the southern half of Vancouver Island responded.
The next day, first responders and firefighters began refusing to attend calls to the street without police protection, forcing city officials to address the sprawling encampment.
B.C.'s quaint coastal capital, which once considered putting up snowflakes in place of Christmas decorations – too 'prejudicial,' to one councillor – has long been a bastion of tolerance and progressivism. The city of 96,000 opened North America's largest safe inhalation site in 2023. For years, many policy makers embraced the idea that people should be allowed to sleep in tents on city property and use drugs in public.
Two years ago, council voted against a proposed ban on drug use in libraries and community centres. Such a ban, said Coun. Susan Kim, would have fundamentally gone against what those facilities are all about.
People with addictions 'might need to medicate,' she said. 'What if they need to medicate as soon as they're done using a public computer at the library, applying for a job?' Ms. Kim said. 'This just creates barriers to the people we're trying to serve.'
But as the opioid crisis intensified, homeless encampments in the city became increasingly entrenched, lawless and violent. Public support for some of Victoria's most liberal drug policies has been collapsing. A survey conducted by the Victoria Police Department last year listed 'open drug use' as the biggest problem facing the city, according to respondents.
City officials and social service agencies told The Globe the fundamental problem is a lack of supportive housing. Last fall, B.C.'s NDP government opened up enough shelter space to move the 70 to 80 people sleeping on Pandora indoors. The city contracted the non-profit Pacifica Housing to co-ordinate efforts. But nine months on, some 50 people still remain on the block, according to city estimates.
'I know that the community is really frustrated,' says Pacifica CEO Carolina Ibarra. 'Everyone was offered shelter. Not everybody took us up on it.'
The problem isn't a lack of housing, it's that the population is 'unhouseable,' says Sgt. Jeremy Preston with the Victoria Police Department. 'The bar for supportive housing is pretty low – don't light fires, don't threaten the building manager – but for many, that's still too high.'
Gazing down from her condo window overlooking Pandora's 900 block, Ms. Hughes says once or twice a week she watches bylaw officers forcing people to take down their tents. 'It's like whack-a-mole. The minute officers leave, the tents go right back up.'
Pandora residents, she adds, have dealt with a decade of 'noise, drug activity, fighting and threatening anti-social behaviour, not to mention depreciating property values and endless expenses trying to fortify our properties to make them safe.'
Two units in her building spent months on the market before their owners finally delisted them. 'We're trapped here,' says Ms. Hughes. 'We can't sell. We can't move. We can't walk our dogs. We can't walk to the grocery store.'
Street chaos forced the Victoria Conservatory of Music to puts its Pandora entrance, and its grand, oak doors behind black iron gates. It is Western Canada's largest music school, but seen from its front side, along Pandora, it looks permanently closed.
Last year, ChoirKids, a Conservatory youth program, began preforming their annual concert off-site for safety reasons, the group's founder, Jack Boomer, told The Globe.
For the last four years, its concert hall – which country legend Emmylou Harris once called a 'jewel box' – has been operating at 50 per cent capacity because fire regulations require a full house to have a second exit. It's not clear when – or if – the front entrance can reopen. Lost revenues so far total $1.5-million, according to CEO Nathan Medd.
Several of the conservatory's Pandora neighbours have pulled up stakes, including a Subway that had been there for 33 years, a sushi restaurant, a butcher, a 7-Eleven. Opposite the conservatory a billboard outside a strip mall advertises six businesses that no longer exist there.
Patrol officers like Mike Wishlaw are among those who know the area and its people best. Every shift, he's out walking the block, and nearby streets, getting to know the store owners and citizens who populate them.
He spends much of his time helping businesses deal with the impacts of public drug use and erratic behaviour. Over the last few years he has come to know a lot of the folks living rough in the core.
One woman spends her days at a downtown Tim Hortons. She has a tendency to take off her clothes and blurt out sexualized and often racist comments targeting the shop's largely South Asian staff, he says.
Another lives in a tent in a city park, and is convinced that her daughter – who died from a drug overdose almost a decade ago – has been kidnapped and is being tortured. Const. Wishlaw says she wanders residential streets talking animatedly to herself, sometimes screaming or crying – and frequently calls police, begging them to rescue her daughter.
Victoria police, who are routinely called to supportive housing buildings in the city, are frustrated by what they call the 'warehousing' of drug users and profoundly ill people by the B.C. government, and a lack of incentives to push people to try to curb their addictions or treat their mental health issues.
To Const. Wishlaw, the block is what happens when good intentions, smart minds and a lot of money run up against the reality of drug addiction.
'This isn't a housing issue. It's a drug issue. And it's a mental health issue. People need off-ramps: treatment, long-term care. But we don't offer them any of that.'
The buildings are catered with hot meals twice daily, he adds, noting that residents are allowed to smoke and inject drugs inside their apartments, which B.C. Housing confirmed to The Globe.
The housing agency's spokesperson, Laura McLeod, said the approach 'meets people where they are at — housing first, then support for healthy life choices."
Const. Wishlaw is frequently called to the buildings for violent standoffs, drug trafficking and weapons seizures. Earlier this week, police seized a kilogram of fentanyl, a loaded 9 mm gun and $40,000 in cash from a supportive housing facility just off Victoria's scenic Inner Harbour.
He described a typical unit: 'Imagine everything a person has in a street encampment. Now put all that inside a 300-sq. ft. room. You're barely able to move. Even the bathrooms are full of stuff — so they don't use their toilets, their sink. Everything feels sticky. There's no air flow. It smells stale.'
Even Det. Insp. Conor King, a rock-ribbed supporter of harm reduction measures and safe supply, is having doubts. 'Police have adopted very progressive drug policy, but it's worse than ever, and we're doing more than ever. How can we be optimistic?'
The precise starting point for Pandora's decline is hotly debated. But 2013 was a watershed year for the block. Det. Insp. King was running a team of beat cops that patrolled Victoria's downtown core. He started hearing reports from drug users about a new and powerful type of heroin. Drug users were dropping from overdoses on Pandora in waves. Det. Insp. King sent undercover officers to buy drugs. Testing announced the arrival of fentanyl, a devastating new demon that no one – from street users to VicPD officers – saw coming.
In fentanyl, drug cartels operating along the West Coast had found their moneymaker, the detective says. They realized they could slash labour and transit costs by replacing heroin made from farm-grown opium in Afghanistan with fentanyl, a powder made in a lab. B.C was their Canadian guinea pig.
The uptick in chaos on Pandora was almost immediate, the data show. Overdose-related calls more than doubled in 2015 from the previous year to 12,263, according to B.C.'s Emergency Health Services. Police calls from the area roughly tripled, according to VicPD data provided to The Globe. They rose steadily every year thereafter, from 936 in 2014 to 4,034 in 2021, when the encampment on Pandora became entrenched.
Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59 in British Columbia, and account for more deaths than homicides, suicides, accidents, and natural diseases combined. Last year, 2,253 people died from overdose, up from 334 in 2013, giving the province the fifth highest overdose mortality rates of any North American state or province, at 45.7 deaths per 100,000 residents.
Experts are beginning to understand that overdoses are also causing lasting harm to those who survive them. Fentanyl can slow or stop a person's breathing during an overdose, starving their brain of oxygen. This can lead to permanent memory loss, impairment, and impulsive behaviour, creating a hidden epidemic of people with often severe brain damage who are struggling to survive in the city's core.
No one in Victoria has tried to measure the prevalence of hypoxic brain injuries among drug users. But The Globe spoke with 30 people on Pandora over two days in March. All of them recounted suffering numerous overdoses. By their combined accounts, they had overdosed an average of nine times.
This has led to a rewriting of street rules, normalizing behaviours that would never previously have been tolerated, said Jeff Bray, director of the Victoria Downtown Business Association. One downtown Tim Hortons seems to have given up, removing all of its tables and chairs, becoming take-out only.
And it's made the job of caring for people who use drugs infinitely more challenging.
Julian Daly, CEO of Our Place, a Pandora shelter and support services provider, says it is long past time for B.C. to open the door to long-term, involuntary care: 'I make no apology for saying that. That's what my experience has shown me. There is a small group of people who are so unwell they are not able to make an informed choice about their health care. If they do not get help, they will die.'
The pandemic marked yet another downward turn for Pandora. In the years leading to 2020, the number of people sleeping rough in Victoria was relatively stable, at 25 to 35, according to city data. But in April, 2020, when shelters were forced to reduce capacity, the number of tents and shelters jumped to 465.
The B.C. government quickly bought three downtown Victoria hotels, moving 334 people into them. But in 2021, after the homeless count rose again, another 200 people were moved indoors.
Already, two of the leased hotels have been slated to close permanently due to recent fires, damage and disrepair. Then, in 2023, the number of people sheltering along Pandora started to climb again, leading to the current crisis.
To Const. Wishlaw, efforts to restore order on Pandora can feel like 'shoveling water with a rake.'
Councillor Dave Thompson said that as soon as bylaw officers began moving people off Pandora, he started getting calls and complaints about street disorder from businesses and residents in other parts of the downtown. The dysfunction has become 'the biggest problem that Victoria has,' Mr. Thompson says.
Outside the Shoppers Drug Mart on Douglas Street, the city's main drag, Const. Wishlaw asked four people smoking fentanyl in a bus shelter to move along. One, who police noted was in need of a fix, complained of being harassed by security at Shoppers.
Const. Wishlaw estimated that within 15 minutes she would try to steal from another downtown business, since the drug store had foiled her theft attempt. Not ten minutes later, she hurried out of a nearby Winners, arms full of stolen shoes, makeup, sweaters and dresses. She almost collided with Const. Wishlaw and his partner, who happened to be walking past with The Globe.
This is the reason that staff at the Douglas Ave. Shoppers Drug Mart will soon be wearing body-cameras – a first in Western Canada. It's the reason that so many grocers and clothing stores in Victoria's downtown now employ security guards. And it's the reason police give for the majority of the 6,000 calls they get every month from Mayfair Shopping Centre, the core-area mall.
A new Leger poll showed that 73 per cent of Victorians think downtown has gotten worse in the last year, far higher than any other Canadian city. The top reasons given for the perceived decline of the core include homelessness (91 per cent) and drug addiction (87 per cent).
Forty-four per cent of respondents said that they or a close friend or family member had been victim of a crime or dangerous experience within the past six months.
Commercial vacancies in Victoria reached a historical high of 10.7 per cent in February, 2025, up from 6.1 per cent in 2023, according to Collier's, an investment management company.
Brett Lacey, who co-owned Arq Salon says the chaos cost him his business of 28 years. Mr. Lacey once employed 22 stylists and served 800 clients a month. But over the last decade, the uptick in disorder outside the salon chased off an increasing number of clients – and staff.
For years, he kept holding on, 'hoping the next new building downtown would be the light to push out the dark.' Over the years, he invested $500,000, mostly in renovations. Two years ago, he sold Arq for $50,000 — just enough to start over in a salon in suburban Langford.
'I poured my life into the business,' he said, choking up. He remembers coming in at dawn on Sunday mornings to polish the concrete outside the shop to make it easier to clean up blood, urine and feces that seeped into the cracks.
David Screech also decamped from the core last year. The decision to close his furniture and upholstery store came suddenly one morning last summer, after a homeless woman dragged five garbage bags onto his property looking for bottles and cans. Mr. Screech, who has owned Greggs Furniture & Upholstery since 2000 – and worked there since 1981 – gently asked her to clean up when she was done. She ignored him, so he asked again. The woman then grew enraged, started screaming obscenities at him, ripped open the bags and began kicking and throwing garbage at him.
As half eaten burgers and coffee grinds flew past him, Mr. Screech suddenly realized he was done. He couldn't pick up any more garbage, couldn't hose any more urine from his building walls, couldn't replace one more plate glass window. He couldn't face rousing another sleeping person from his doorway, nor another fire in the entryway.
The business was doing great. But the chaos in the core had broken him. And so, he left the woman – still hollering abuse at him – walked to his desk and, with tears in his eyes, e-mailed his landlord, letting him know the business was shuttering. In September, after 70 years in Victoria, Greggs Furniture, which employed nine Victorians, closed its doors.
Pandora hasn't lost Central Baptist yet, but they are facing a similar decision over the next couple months. 'We're trying to ask ourselves: why do we exist? What are we good at? What gets us fired up?' says Mr. Barden. 'And if we cease to exist where we have been for 100 years, what would be lost?'