Bud Osborn

Following his prolonged struggle with heroin addiction and alcohol dependency,[2] Osborn became a founding member of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and advocated for the creation of a legal supervised injection site.

In 1997 he met Ann Livingston, with whom he had a romantic relationship, and who was involved in running an illegal supervised drug injection site.

[1] In 1998 Osborn was appointed to the Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, where he advocated for legal safe injection sites,[1] working closely with MP Libby Davies.

[4] He and Livingston helped the leadership of the Portland Hotel Society, the nonprofit that ran the housing project where Osborn lived, organize the display of thousands of white crosses in Oppenheimer Park, representing the people who were dying in the Downtown Eastside.

Following that protest and many subsequent ones, the Portland Hotel Society opened Insite, the only legal supervised injection site in North America, in the Downtown Eastside in 2003.

[6] He died on 6 May 2014 at the age of 66 after being hospitalized for pneumonia and a heart condition,[3] and was remembered at a street memorial attended by 200 people.