This has given us a serious lump in the throat.
It’s no secret that when a stranger with an obvious substance abuse problem gets on the luas or bus, most of us will instinctively avoid eye contact and hope they don’t try to interact with us.
This isn’t out of badness, but probably fear.
That’s most likely the reason this photo, taken on a Vancouver SkyTrain, is going viral.
I saw the most incredible display of humanity on the sky train. A six foot five man suffering from drug abuse and\or…
Posted by Ehab Taha on Tuesday, 2 February 2016
The picture was taken by Ehab Tana, a man in British Columbia, who uploaded it to Facebook and explained what had happened.
He wrote that a “6-foot-5 man suffering from drug abuse and\or mental health issues was being very aggressive on the bus with erratic movements, cursing, shouting, etc.”
“While everyone was scared, this one 70-year-old woman reached out her hand, tightly gripping his hand until he calmed down, sat down silently, with eventual tears in his eyes.
“I spoke to the woman after this incident and she simply said, ‘I’m a mother and he needed someone to touch.’ And she started to cry.”
The post has been shared more than 15,000 times.
Taha concluded: “Don’t fear or judge the stranger on the bus: Life does not provide equal welfare for all its residents.”
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