VANCOUVER -- TJ Walker's
raspy voice is difficult to make out over the sounds of
the SkyTrain passing overhead and the constant traffic manoeuvring
around him.
But as the slight man shuffles from his makeshift flower
display at the corner of Expo Boulevard and Carrall Street
to the curb, extending a dozen roses out to anyone who glances
his way, his message is clear.
"Flowers for food?" TJ, as he prefers to be called,
asks a pedestrian obviously trying to get out of the rain.
"I don't have a girlfriend," the man shrugs.
"Well, not if you don't give her flowers."
The man smiles, but walks off.
But for every 15 people that walk or drive by the man with
the heaps of roses and carnations near GM Place, one usually
stops and buys, he said. And with those sales, TJ last month
was able to get his first home after 11 years on the streets.
Business wasn't always so brisk for TJ, who has been selling
flowers on the street for five years.
At first, the only flowers he could find were the ones he
and a volunteer weeded out of a nearby community garden.
The wilted fistfuls didn't attract much attention, let alone
cash.
But he continued to sell flowers, he said, because "what
else can you give someone and always get a smile?"
Then one day, two years ago, a man in a Honda Civic stopped
to ask, "How much?"
"Whatever you're happy to pay," TJ said.
The man, Marrett Green, a local businessman and homeless
activist, said he was inspired by TJ's entrepreneurship.
"My heart just immediately went out to him because
he's trying to do something with himself. So I thought if
there's any way I could help him, I would," Mr. Green
said.
It took dozens of phone calls, and a little begging of his
own, he said, before he got his first bite.
Make Scents, a Vancouver-area flower distributor, agreed
to help Mr. Green turn nothing into something. From that
point on, other distributors agreed to do the same, and
Flowers for Food blossomed.
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