'The Door Is Open' is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country's "very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 postal prefixes," Bart Campbell dismantles our hard-held notions about poverty, the disenfranchised, substance abuse, and the nature of charity.'The Door Is Open' is one man's story of a transformative journey into the complicated and complex world of poverty.

Finalist BC Book Prize

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

"His narrative reads like a 1930s 'noir' journey into the seamier sides of cities once prowled by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It is this straight-up style that is both the book's strength and, on occasion, its only weak link. Readers looking for a sense of hope will find little of it in Campbell'sgritty descriptions. Indeed, some readers might mistake his unrelenting portrayl of skid row inhabitants as representative of the homeless population across Canada, most of whom are not victims of addiction or mental illness, but of an economy that has been stacked against them for most of their lives, if not for generations before." - Quill & Quire

"What is most refreshing about Campbell's memoir is that it neither self-aggrandizes nor propagates a misinformed political message. His work has an objective tone and each chapter is well researched...this is one of the best books I've read all year." - Discorder

Finalist City of Vancouver Book Prize

Bart Campbell's essays about the downtown eastside of Vancouver and his experiences there as a soup kitchen volunteer have appeared on CBC's Morningside, and in Next City, True Life, Canadian Forum, and frequently in The Vancouver Review. A “non-fictional” excerpt from Bart's historic novel about the 4,000 Relief Camp Strikers who occupied Vancouver in the spring of 1935 appeared in Canadian Geographic Magazine, spring 2001. Bart lives in Vancouver and works as a medical laboratory technologist.

Bart Campbell's profile page