Angry protesters shouted and swore as Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and a Vancouver city councillor toured part of the city's poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside Wednesday afternoon.

Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean bows her head Wednesday while taking a tour of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside with her husband Jean-Daniel Lafond.
(Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Coun. Elizabeth Ball appeared to be the target of the demonstrators, who accuse city council of focusing on the 2010 Olympics while ignoring poverty and crime in the area.

Jean held a 90-minute, closed-door meeting inside the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, a facility for female drug addicts. The troubled neighbourhood has one of the highest proportions of drug addicts in North America.

A group of women refused to allow Ball inside the centre, leaving her waiting on the sidewalk for about an hour until the Governor General emerged.

"If a few people outside decide it's their place to close doors, it's not really an issue for me," said Ball.

Jean and Ball then walked a few blocks through the neighbourhood to a Chinese classical garden for a reception with Mayor Sam Sullivan. Protesters followed them during the brief walk, shouting and heckling.

Jean, who was accompanied by security officials and a police escort, smiled throughout the walk.

Hecklers, some of them from the city's militant Anti-Poverty Committee, taunted the civic politician and asked Jean whether she thought she was getting an "unsanitized" view of the Downtown Eastside.

"Way to help out," shouted one man. Another welcomed Jean as "your f---ing highness," and others chanted "homes, not Games."

Another demonstrator told reporters the Governor General wasn't the target of the protest, calling her "irrelevant."

A planned photo in front of the Chinatown gate was cancelled and Jean and Sullivan were escorted to their cars.

With files from the Canadian Press