AN HONEST DAY’S WORK
Resident of Dwayne’s Home gains pride by clearing snow — while in his wheelchair
Dave Cummings shovels the sidewalk Thursday near Dwayne’s House. Cummings lives in the building for homeless men and says he prefers shovelling snow to panhandling.
Many days this winter, as I’ve trudged to and from work, I’ve come upon someone remarkable.
On a sidewalk in downtown Edmonton, a man in a wheelchair is either shovelling snow or chipping away at built-up ice.
I was curious about the man, so this week I approached him.
His name is Dave Cummings, he says, born in June 1959 in Peace River. He has worked construction, pouring cement and at various odd jobs.
A few years back, Cummings says, he got into a scuffle in a downtown Edmonton mall. He was thrown over a glass barrier and fell two floors. He ended up badly injured with two pins in his leg. He’s not paralyzed, but immobile, which has put him in the wheelchair. It also led him to live in his current apartment at Dwayne’s Home.
Dwayne’s Home is a private apartment facility for homeless men at 100 Avenue and 102 Street. They pay $1,000 a month for room and three meals per day.
When I walk past Dwayne’s Home, there’s often plenty of guys hanging out, smoking, talking, not doing much of anything. Cummings, though, keeps busy.
Cummings says he does some panhandling now and then, but his main thing is the snow shovelling. Why do it? “Because I’m bored,” he says. “It’s something to do. It takes me all day. I start in the morning and I don’t finish until the sun goes down.”
“He’s our ice scraper man,” says Dwayne’s Home program director Tim Gardner, who added many passersby will stop and give Cummings money for his efforts.
“It works very well for him,” Gardner says. “It’s a good little gig ... He’s in a wheelchair scraping ice and he does very well. Not only that, our managers will throw him a few bucks because they’re grateful for what he does — and the next-door neighbour. So he’s smart. He chops wood and warms himself twice. He’s out there, he’s not freezing, people offer him cigarettes. So I admire that, really, in him. He could just sit around and feel sorry for himself, but he doesn’t.
“I’ve known David for about 15 or 20 years and his story is a tough one. He used to run on the streets and get into trouble ... Then, of course, his health has let him down and he’s ended up with us.”
I ask Gardner what the philosophy of the business is.
“We don’t want to see people dying on the streets.”
The highest praise for Cummings comes from Dave Martyshuk, who founded Dwayne’s Home and owned it until this past summer. He still owns Pyramid Housing, another downtown residence for the hardest-tohouse.
Martyshuk used to rent places to oilpatch workers, but entered the social housing market in 2007. At that time, his own brother Dwayne, who used to be a manager at Suncor in Fort McMurray, was in the grips of cocaine addiction.
Dwayne once mentioned to his brother that it would be fine to have a place for addicts where they could live, have services delivered, and work together to beat their addictions.
In 2010, Dwayne died from his addiction. His brother named Dwayne’s Home after him. About 140 men live there, with slightly more than that at Pyramid Housing.
Martyshuk says when men arrive, they’ve often been living in alleys or in the valley. They’re dehydrated, exhausted, nervous and quiet. The main thing is to get them some food, some rest and attend to their needs.
The idea is to get them healthy and see if they can rebound. As for their addictions, they’re allowed to drink beer at the apartment dining hall, but no hard drugs or liquor is tolerated.
“They’re not all successful,” Martyshuk says. “Some of them are really tough. We take the hardest of the hardest.”
As for Cummings, Martyshuk says: “You should have seen him when he first came in. I didn’t think he was going to live past a month ... Compared to when he came in, it’s like night and day. He’s got something to wake up for and that’s what we try to instil down there.
“Dave is incredible. He likes to keep himself busy. He likes to be productive. He’s a very proud man. I can do anything you can do, and if I don’t do it better, I’ll be surprised — that’s his attitude. He’s 10 feet tall and bulletproof.”