Mugged, Drugged and Shrugged

Dispatches from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside ..".Meet Bonnie Fournier, not just "Mom" to so many, but a gifted psychiatric nurse who took loving care of them as she patrolled the city's poorest postal code in her health van night after night, year after year. Cleaning their wounds was only part of her job; what was just as important was the friendship, practical advice and kindness she dispensed with the bandages and medicine. Before she started working on the Health Van, Bonnie did the medical assessments of people in cells in the Downtown Eastside's (courthouse)... Bonnie is one of the Downtown Eastside's heroes and her story will inspire you-and break your heart." Stevie Cameron, Author of On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women (insert photo) Bonnie Fournier was born in Powell River, B.C. in 1944. She graduated as a registered psychiatric nurse in 1966 following three years of hospital training at the Essondale (later Riverview) Hospital in Coquitlam. In 1968 she began to specialize in forensic and addictions nursing. She is now retired and lives in Coquitlam, B.C. She is the proud grandmother of three grandsons.