Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in British Columbia are alive and well today thanks to Ryan Vena, his best friend says, as loved ones mourn the death of a man who took it upon himself to respond to overdoses in the Downtown Eastside years before he became a paramedic.
In 2016, Vena founded the volunteer-run Street Saviours Outreach Society (SSOS) as he navigated his own recovery from heroin addiction, setting out with a team of volunteers armed with naloxone to reverse drug poisonings and save lives among people using alone in the alleys of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.
The 42-year-old with a “larger than
