Larry Campbell has been appointed the Downtown Eastside provincial advisor.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail

Larry Campbell, the former chief coroner of B.C., former mayor of Vancouver, and former senator from the West Coast, is talking about the cool, new part-time job he’s taken on for the province.

Fixing Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. In six months.

We’re conversing about the many disparate viewpoints that exist around what a solution might look like when he asks if I’ve ever heard the story about the six blind men and the elephant.

“Six blind men are asked to touch an elephant and say what they believe they’ve touched,” Mr. Campbell explains over the phone. “So, one guy touches the side of the elephant and thinks he’s touched a wall. One touches the elephant’s trunk and thinks it’s a snake. A third one touches a tusk and thinks it’s a spear and so on. No one realizes it’s an elephant.”

B.C.’s former chief coroner Larry Campbell takes on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – again

The moral of the story is that their postulations are based on........

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