Bob Scott threw a dart into the universe.
It is still right on the mark, here on the 10th anniversary of Scott's passing.
This award-winning social advocate was prodded into action by the pointy tip of another sharp lance. It sucked him down whenever he plunged it in, filling his veins with the poisons of addiction. It was almost unfathomable to those who knew him then that one day he would be the toast of the town and a Prince George Citizen of the Year nominee.
"I found him a couple of times in alleys, passed out, the needle still in his arm," said retired RCMP Const. Gary Godwin. "I arrested him a few times. He was still an active addict."
Apart from working the downtown streets and alleys of Prince George, in those days, Godwin needed some pruning done at home, so he called a random gardener from the business listings.
"Dack was Bob's street name. And there was Dack," Godwin said, remembering the landscape maintenance truck that pulled into his driveway in about 2000.
"Tattoos. Skinny as a ghost. Scraggly beard. I thought, woah, what have I done? I hope he doesn't recognize me."
But Scott got straight to the awkward point. "He said 'do you remember me? You arrested me more than once. Remember? But I've turned over a new leaf.'"
Scott talked about how he had embraced the steps of sobriety that were keeping him focused on his yard maintenance and gardening business, a family enterprise he'd known since childhood. The floral beauty of Quesnel is still vividly connected to Scott, thanks to his landscaping efforts in the 1960s.
That was before he slid as deep as one can go into hard and heavy drug use and still somehow survive.
He wondered himself how he managed to live through this period in his life, but once he surfaced from drug use and applied himself to his former passion, landscaping, he found a perfect entanglement with nurturing greenery and nurturing other addicts. Scott proudly told Godwin that day that he was giving his fellow addicts struggling through their first steps of sobriety a chance to work alongside him in the care of lawns and flower beds.
There was more, Scott told the agog police officer. He believed his recipe of grassroots hard work could be formalized into a program that would beautify Prince George and give meaningful growth to people who had few other chances to build a productive life.
Godwin remembered what came out of Scott's mouth next, and it changed the course of his own Mountie's life.
"Bob said 'I need some credibility. Could I ask you to sit on our board, for this new group I have going? So I said 'yeah, sure.'"
Scott took to calling his paradoxical association with Godwin the Smoky & The Bandit Show. Addict and cop would go out together to conduct fundraising speeches or raise awareness at events.
Together they would generate interest in the Drug & Alcohol Recovery Team (DART) and the work done by their all-addict yard, garden and odd-job team. The work would keep them out of their previous cycles and keep them gainfully employed, subtracting them from their previous lives of crime and building them towards a sustainable, lawful life.
DART is closing in on 20 years of operation. Scott passed away of emphysema on July 18, 2008. The organization he founded is healthier and helping more addicts than ever before. The DART concept grew into a not-for-profit company based out of a warehouse in a downtown light industrial area. Godwin is now the president of the board.
The executive director of DART team is Glen Grant, who coordinates more than a dozen people in the summer and about 30 people in the winter. Seasonally, they switch between lawn trimming, garden weeding, gutter cleaning, power washing, trail maintenance and other odd jobs to snow removal, sidewalk clearing, firewood stacking, garbage removal, and much more.
DART has ongoing contracts with major companies and local government and they take on day-to-day calls for household help.
"The person I think of most is Bill Higman," said Grant.
"If anything epitomizes what DART is all about, it's Bill. He suffered from mental health issues and addictions together, he was sleeping in alleys, he was a train wreck. He said this many times: DART saved his life. People had to work hard to stick with him, he was not easy, almost unworkable at times, but he came around because DART is about loving people and not giving up on people."
When Higman passed away in 2016, he had his own house, and was living a productive life.
"We've had some abject failures too," said Grant, not wanting to falsely glorify DART's human resources record. "You can't control people's decisions. We are dealing with powerful forces, we are dealing with brain injuries, we are dealing with traumatized people, people who have strong competing influences sometimes. People make new mistakes, sometimes. People fall away, sometimes. But that just makes it even more impressive when you see it work for so many others. You know it's difficult to struggle with their addictions and all the circumstances of their lives, and yet for so many of our workers, they get back on their feet and they stay up on their feet, and they do great work."
DART has a fleet of six trucks and six trailers, provides the workers with snowblowers, chainsaws, weed-whackers, lawn mowers, yard aerators, and various hand tools. Some tools require formal certification to operate, and workers can attain those. Safety gear is also provided. They get a fair wage for their efforts, they get appropriate supervision, and when the day is done, each DART employee can look back and see what they've accomplished.
"This is hard work, physical work, but it's a job and it helps get people on the right path," said Godwin. "It's not a forever job, although sometimes people are here quite a while. That's OK. It's a stopgap to get people transitioned into mainstream life. For some, there aren't really many other options."
Denise Poitras is a recovering heroin addict, but she's the heroine of her work crew. A trail maintenance team was buzzing and snipping their way down one of the Hudson's Bay Wetlands trails, trying to keep up with this year's strange spring bounty, and it was Poitras who led them along. She's been with DART for seven years, one of the experienced veterans the new recruits look to for guidance and the management team relies on for leadership.
Along with her was Ivan Kusnezoff, with two years of DART under his harness.
"You have to have patience," said Poitras. "We are all at different levels of recovery and just readiness to face the day, and we all have to remember that."
"We lead by example," Kusnezoff added. "It's a community. We benefit from each other."
"Since I've been at DART we have had three deaths, so I've seen the loss of what addiction can do. You become family through stuff like that," Poitras said.
She openly calls DART the reason she has transcended her own addiction and the downward suction it had on her life.
"My plan is to get up every day and come to work," said Kusnezoff, and that one-step-at-a-time philosophy is what gets him through the clawing fingers of the past and advancing towards a happier future. He urged other addicts willing to make a positive change to join him.
"Give DART a try, one day at a time," he said. "It's a good place to work. And having a job gives you that credibility and a direction. A good direction."
That direction was pointed out by Bob Scott, who had a precise vision 20 years ago of what a lawn and garden company could do for society, one addict at a time. That vision was as sharp and true as a dart.
