By Patrick Wolf

When people think of Vancouver, they tend to think of what they see on TV: the 2010 Olympics, the beautiful mountains, the set of Dead Pool, etc. What they don’t think of is its hidden horrors and poverty. I don’t tell a lot of people this, but I'm originally from Vancouver—specifically one of its worst parts, Surrey. Growing up in Surrey, I remember passing by drug dealers and prostitutes every day. In fact, I passed them so often I even got to know some of them. Unfortunately, I never got to know them that well because they’d always just mysteriously ‘vanish’. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I just assumed what everyone else did: they either got clean or overdosed. Years later I discovered the truth: a serial killer named Robert Pickton was preying on them by the dozens.

What made the situation even worse, though, was that Pickton’s success was partly due to the apathy of people like me. Everyone assumed what I did: the missing either overdosed or got clean. Nobody cared, and so Pickton continued to have his way until his murder count reached the 100’s. In many ways, The Dregs is an allegory of this horror. It’s not afraid to show Vancouver’s darker side (specifically East Hastings Street), and it does so through the use of the brilliant, Swiftian metaphor: the cannibalistic café. So, you ask, is the story any good? My answer: It’s more than good. It’s a masterwork.