Photo: Kate Bouey

Linda Price speaks during a memorial event for Vernon's street people.

A woman who suffered years of addiction and homelessness returned to where it all began Thursday – Polson Park.

Linda Price said she ran away from her Williams Lake home 40 years ago, and ended up sleeping rough in Polson Park for two months at the age of 12.

“I fell into a false sense of freedom from prescription drugs and alcohol,” Price told a crowd in the park where they were marking a day of remembrance for those in the street population who lost their lives over the last year.

Price said she had fled from a world of poverty, alcoholism, mistrust and abuse yet her life fell into the same pattern. It took many years to overcome the downward spiral caused by drugs.

Now clean, she said, “There is hope.”

“Once again this year we've lost 15 men and women and that's not from overdoses,” said Rev. Chuck Harper, who organizes the annual event.

Harper said people had died from illness, including cancer, and from murder – referring to the death of Willie Bartz in July.

He also said there were a lot of missing people in this community as well as others across the province and the nation. He did not elaborate.

“We need to speak loudly and clearly about the homeless and poverty in our city,” Harper said, blaming the media for the uproar over homeless camps in local parks.