Vancouver Pride Cuts Ties with Embattled Recovery Centre

The Vancouver Pride Society has ended its partnership with Last Door Recovery Society for this year, meaning the recovery house will not participate in the parade, have a booth at the festival grounds or be allowed to associate its Sober Lounge event with Pride.

Last Door was recently accused of trying to delete social media posts by survivors and community members about allegations of sexual assault by a contract employee.

The recovery house’s response to these allegations “focuses on denial of any responsibility,” says Michelle Fortin, co-chair of Vancouver Pride Society.

“Any organization should aim to do good work and then, if the community says you’re not, you have a responsibility to listen,” she says.

Fortin says Pride has asked Last Door to reflect on its responsibility and review what harm was done and how it could have better protected people it works with.

It’s possible Last Door will be back for 2024 if management shows it has done this work, she says, adding no organization is ever permanently “banned” from Pride.

For the last 14 years, Last Door has hosted an event called Sober Lounge at Vancouver Pride under the banner of its affiliate organization, Clean Sober and Proud.

The Sober Lounge will take place Sunday, the same day as the Vancouver Pride parade, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., according to Last Door’s event website.

Fortin says the Sober Lounge will go ahead as planned but is no longer associated with Pride.

When The Tyee requested comment from Last Door last Thursday about what happened, the recovery society said it couldn’t comment “out of respect for the alleged victims.” It shared a link to an online statement about a former employee, 50-year-old Adam Haber, who has been charged with sexual assault.

The same day, Clean Sober and Proud’s website updated its Sober Lounge event poster, removing Vancouver Pride as a partner.

Haber worked as a fitness trainer for Last Door from December 2017 to January 2023 and has been charged with three counts of sexual assault, according to New Westminster Police. The alleged assaults took place in 2012 and 2013. None of these charges have been proven in court. New Westminster Police has issued an appeal for people to come forward with information or if they were victimized.

All charges relate to alleged assaults of former clients of Westminster House, a substance-use recovery facility for women, whom police say Haber met through his involvement as a client, sponsor and later contract employee at the men's-only Last Door.

According to reporting by the CBC, survivors say Last Door staff were aware of allegations against Haber.

In the statement on its website Last Door denies it knew anything and says it fired Haber the day after allegations against him were published on social media.

‘Clean’ implies people who use drugs are dirty

Derek Schwetz, a queer person and volunteer with the Vancouver Pride Society, says they’ve been urging Pride to end its relationship with Last Door since news broke about the sexual assault allegations.

Schwetz told The Tyee they’d contacted Vancouver Pride and explained their discomfort. They say they told Vancouver Pride they were no longer willing to volunteer.

Schwetz says they were uncomfortable with the partnership because they’re a sexual assault survivor as well as a former drug user. Partnering with an organization that is accused of being complacent about predatory behaviour and uses words like “clean” to describe sobriety shows a lack of understanding of the reality of many queer people, Schwetz said.

“Clean” implies people who use drugs are dirty, they add.

When Schwetz contacted Pride to say they would no longer be volunteering, they were told over the phone that Pride had ended its partnership with Last Door.

“It completely took the wind out of my sails in the best way possible,” they said.

Schwetz says they’re willing to once again volunteer with Pride, but would like to see some other improvements, including having the society better represent the communities they serve, “including Two Spirit people, trans people, people who use drugs and the whole diaspora that comes under the queer rainbow.”

To do that Schwetz would like to see more representation on the Vancouver Pride Society board and more services for people who use drugs.

Pride has had mobile harm reduction workers who would walk around with Narcan, but it would be a positive step to also have a harm reduction tent which would operate as a supervised consumption site, Schwetz said.

Without this, queer people who use drugs are excluded from Pride, they add.

Fortin says the Pride festival does not have a supervised consumption site. The festival has worked with harm reduction teams for at least the last seven years, and volunteers focus on safe consumption and safer sex, she says.