To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Drug Awareness Recovery Team (DART) has created an award named after its founder, Bob Scott.
Last night during a dinner and ceremony at the House of Ancestors, the Bob Scott award for making a difference was given to Dr. Theresa Healy, an instructor at UNBC.
Healy has been an instructor at UNBC since she came to town in 1994 – which was
originally supposed to be a one year arrangement.
She is an adjunct faculty member in the Gender Studies program, as well as Environmental Planning and the School of Planning and Sustainability.
Healy told My PG Now that she didn’t believe that had won the award when she was first told.
“Last week the UNBC media office contacted me and said they wanted a quote, and I was like ‘well, what for?'”
Aside from UNBC, Healy has been heavily involved in the Prince George community since arriving in town, working with Northern Health for 10 years, running soup kitchen campaigns, and serving as DART’s first board president are some items in a long list of work.
“My great love has always been community based research and activism, and believing in the power of the community itself to figure out what its problems are and its best solutions” Healy said.
“I have the profound belief that everything we need to make change is in the room with us. We don’t need to wait for the government to pass a law or give us funding, we can do those things ourselves.”
She was one of 15 nominations for the award, and even on award night Healy was still in shock that she had been selected.
“I don’t think that what I do is special. I do what I do because I am driven, and I believe in it.”
Emotionally, she said the award is like an Emmy – “except we don’t give our community folks recognition, it is like the jury of your peers saying you did good.”
“I think she is the best one to start for the initial Bob Scott award” said Gary Godwin, the current president of the DART board, who has served on the board since it’s inception.
He said that Healy and Bob Scott had similar stories.
“She ran away from home in her teens. She lived on the street” he said. “She pulled herself up, and is now a professor at the university, a PHD. [Her bio] is almost too much to say, because you can only talk for so long.”
His relationship with Bob Scott started professionally, but not in the way one might imagine.
As a police officer who had been undercover for a year in Vancouver’s downtown east side, Godwin was transferred to Prince George in 1985, where Scott became one of his regular arrests.
“He was a heroin addict” he said. “I would find Bob in an alleyway with a needle sticking out of his arm a few times.”
Scott’s street name was Dak, which is what Godwin knew him as for years.
“After a year or so, he disappeared” Godwin said, saying he assumed an overdose had taken him.
Many years later, Godwin hired a gardener from the yellow pages, “and in pulls this ratty old truck, and out hops Bob Scott. And I thought, ‘oh no, what have I done.’ He comes up and says, ‘do you recognize me?'”
Scott told Godwin that he was clean, thanks in a big part to the Gateway Community Church, and had started an organization named DART. Godwin was asked to serve on the board to “give it some credibility,” and 25 years later he is still there.
DART gives recovering drug addicts and street people a chance to work, make some money, and transition back into mainstream society.
“We have employed hundreds over 25 years” Godwin said. “Many of them have gone on to be very productive people in the work field.”
In 2004, Scott received the British Columbia Community Achievement Award. In 2008, he passed away at the age of 68.
“Bob Scott was a visionary” said Healy, who was the boards first president.
“I had been asked to meet with him because he was a very strong advocate. Somebody at the health authority said ‘he is really great on the community advisory for the hospital, but he is pissing people off. We really need him to be a gentler force,’ and we really hit it off.”
“Bob was a genius” Godwin said. “I have seen a lot of things that have started and collapsed over time. The main guy dies, or moves away and the whole thing collapses. This time, Bob died and the society kept going.”
DART’s operations are continuing to ramp up after 25 years, the non profit is now running six trucks full time and owns all of their own equipment.
“He had such a rough life, he wanted to make a difference” Godwin said. “And he did.”
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