Homeless shelter can be the starting point

In mid-March, my son and I were walking in downtown Toronto when we passed a homeless man covered in a sleeping bag lying on the sidewalk.

Everything he owned in life was around him. His last meal. His most valuable trinkets. A sweater. A pair of socks.

I looked at my son and said, “That is my worst fear.” He said, “What, that I will be homeless?” I said “No, that I will be.”

Fast-forward to a month later when we were walking in downtown Pictou and I told him I was doing stories on homelessness. I said there are people trying to open a shelter in the county and they are having trouble reaching their goal.

He said, “There is no homelessness here. We don’t have people sleeping on the streets.”

“Yeah, I said, we do. You just don’t see them. That is the problem.”

They sleep near the railway tracks. In abandoned cars and buildings. They pitch tents in the woods and live in campers in the middle of winter.

The saying that seeing is believing is true. People see cancer. They see the devastation of war. They see tragedy that is blasted on the 24-hour news cycle telling them they need to care.

Homelessness is not as visual, especially in a small rural town.

I spoke with people this week who know all about desperation and losing everything because they made some bad choices in life. They are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, classmates and co-workers who lived lives no one would wish upon anyone. Alcoholism, drug addiction, couch surfing and death. No excuses. Some of it they brought on themselves. Some of it society encouraged. Some of it is out of their control.

As they continue to dig themselves out from rock bottom, they wanted to tell their story in hopes of helping others. They struggle every day fighting off their own demons, yet they can only think of others who are still cold, hungry and alone wandering the streets.

Finally, for some reason he can’t explain, George realized he’d had enough.

On stormy winter night, he was sleeping in an abandoned car, high on cocaine, a bottle of rum and a dozen beer. He woke up in the middle of the night as cold as he has ever been, knowing he had to move, but instead opted to go back to sleep.

“I said just lay back, it will all be over soon. I did that for a while and then something woke me up. I don’t know what it is was, but I got out of that car. I still say to this day, it was a guardian angel that said, ‘Get the f– up George. You have to go or else you are going to die right here.’”

He crawled out of the car and through the snow to the closest bank foyer to get warm and then headed to the nearby coffee shop.

“I looked in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. I had gone to jail, been in fights with other homeless people, got sliced with a box knife a few times and I figured if I was going to be there any longer I was going to die.”

He called a friend who took him to detox in Pictou then to Recovery House on James Street, New Glasgow, where he lived for a year and half.

At Recovery House, he attended narcotics and alcoholics anonymous groups as well as in-house support groups and obtaining the services of addiction services at the Aberdeen Hospital.

“I learned how to cope with things and not keeping things in or letting it explode,” he said.

After this, he moved into his own apartment and got a job, but had a brief relapse with alcohol after being sober for three years. He found himself back tenting in Stellarton. After another arrest, he moved out of Pictou County to live with family in Bridgewater.

Today, he lives a quiet life in a bachelor apartment in Stellarton with his dog that he walks regularly. He has a few good friends, but mostly keeps to himself. He refuses to take any kind of prescribed medication for anxiety because he fears this could lead him back to homelessness.

“My plans are to keep doing what I am doing,” he said. “Do the best I can.”

As someone who has survived against all odds, he considers himself a success story, but George knows others in the county won’t be so lucky.

“I see homeless people around all the time,” he said. “I see them at (local coffee shops) in the morning and if I have money I will get them some cigarettes, a coffee and something to eat.”

George refuses to give them money because he knows exactly where they are at in their life.

Until someone is ready to change, it is not going happen, he said. Some people want to change and escape the streets, but they don’t know how.

“Some people did it to themselves, but there are other instances where people didn’t do it themselves, it was done by other people. There is a lot of sexual abuse. A lot of broken marriages. A lot of mental health. They don’t know how to deal with it and alcohol and drugs are their only saviour.”

A homeless shelter would be a place for people to go and not be judged and safe, he said.

“A homeless shelter is going to give people hope,” he said.