They’ve worked for decades helping Vancouver’s most vulnerable. Now they’ve been given B.C.’s highest honour

Two outreach nurses who have worked in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for 40 years were honoured with the Order of B.C. on Monday.

Evanna Brennan and Susan Giles were announced as two of the 14 recipients of the province's highest honour on Monday, joining the actor Ryan Reynolds, conservationist George Reifel and public health officer Dr. Penny Ballem among others.

Brennan, 76, and Giles, 70, have worked as a duo in Vancouver's poorest neighbourhood since the 1980s — witnessing how it became an epicentre of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, before the proliferation of crack cocaine in the 1990s and the onset of the ongoing toxic drug crisis.

Giles says the honour for her and Brennan reiterates that the residents of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) matter and they are not just "throwaway" people.

"Difficult, difficult to love," Brennan added. "But that's all they need, is your love and support."

Brennan said she burst into tears when she got a phone call from the government announcing the honour, with Giles saying she initially thought the call was a scam.

The two outreach nurses were honoured for what the province calls their "innovative" approach to outreach work — what Brennan and Giles call "action-based care."

"It's not complicated. It's just being there where they are at and then doing what it is that they want," Brennan told CBC News.

"You think about it as somebody in your own family, maybe, and lots of people have experienced that, and then you just go from there."

The province says the two nurses were among the first to use cellphones to connect with patients and provide pop-up clinics at housing shelters.

"Brennan and Giles have saved countless lives by providing life-saving medications, such as anti-retrovirals and wound care to those who otherwise would have fallen through the cracks of the health-care system," a statement from the government said on Monday.

The ceremony for the 2023 Order of B.C. recipients will be held in Victoria this fall.

'Empathetic way of being'

After decades of work in the DTES and numerous presentations highlighting their approach to frontline work, Brennan and Giles retired from Vancouver Coastal Health in 2012.

They joined the Lookout Housing and Health Society shortly after to work in its single-room occupancy buildings, and then began to mentor other nurses in the city.

"You can learn anything clinical out of a book," Giles said. "But learning this kind of empathetic way of being — it'll help you.

"Even if you say it'll never work there, you're going to come across folks like this everywhere you work."

The two were also featured in a documentary called Angels on Call detailing their career and their decision to extend their careers post retirement.

Giles said many assumed their careers serving vulnerable people would be "doom and gloom," but she has learned that many drug users are resilient despite numerous systemic barriers.

"We don't ever involve the police because our relationship is very different," Brennan added. "We always want to do everything we can to preserve it.

"We're different and we want to stay that way."