Homelessness in a pandemic means ‘hardship on hardship’
Recently while I was driving through the countryside one night on my way to a speaking engagement, I hit a deer.
As I stood in the middle of the road looking at the poor thing, tears filled my eyes. The terrified deer, a young doe, tried several times to get up and run away, but with her legs broken, could not. Then, pathetically, she began to slowly crawl away until she was swallowed up by the dark forest. When a police officer arrived, I told him where the deer had gone, hoping that he would put her out of her misery. He told me that he couldn’t because she was on private property. “The coyotes will get her,” he said, as if to reassure me.
I am an animal lover. I have three cats, a rabbit, and a degu — most of which are rescues. Needless to say, this was a traumatic experience. But what made it worse was watching through my tears as, one by one, the other drivers slowly manoeuvred around the accident scene, without so much as even stopping to ask if I was all right.
I learned an important truth that night: the lack of love that I encountered is one that those who live on the street experience on a daily basis. As Mother Teresa once said, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for and deserted by everybody.”
The 19th-century Scottish-born Canadian poet Alexander McLachlan often wrote of the homesickness of Scottish immigrants to Canada. In one poem, titled “The Snow-Storm,” he said:
“Once he was rich, but got poorer, poorer / As hardship on hardship ’gainst him were pressed.”
The phrase “hardship on hardship” describes well the lives of many of those who are experiencing homelessness during this pandemic. You may have no toilet paper, but they may have no toilets. You may have to stay home, but they have no home to shelter in. You may have to wait in line for groceries, but they may go days with nothing to eat. You may have to wash your hands more, but they, often, can’t even shower. “We’re in this together,” we are told, but they are frequently forgotten. “Practise physical distancing,” we are told, but they may be crammed into crowded shelters.
For the past six years I have been photographing, and along with my dad, telling the stories of people experiencing homelessness in major cities throughout the world. Here are the photos and stories of two such individuals.
Recently, I met Selina outside Fred Victor Housing at the corner of Queen and Jarvis streets in Toronto. Through a broken face mask that she had to hold in place, she told my father and me that her life — already hard before the pandemic — has become almost unbearable. “Where do you sleep at night?” my dad asked Selina. “I don’t. I walk around,” she replied dejectedly. When my dad asked Selina if she is eligible to receive financial assistance from the government, she said she didn’t have an address to send money to.
When we came across Darryl, he was sound asleep in the recess of a store on Yonge Street, across from the Eaton Centre. “So, do you know anybody here?” my dad asked him. “Um, my grandpa,” he replied. “(But) I can’t see him because of COVID.”
Darryl said he has no friends in Toronto. “So, you’re having to live on the street right now?” my dad asked. “Yeah,” he answered. Darryl then told us that he would prefer staying at a shelter, but hasn’t been able to find one. Hearing this, I made a few phone calls and found out that he could stay at Good Shepherd Ministries.
I have taken as my motto another saying by Mother Teresa: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” I think we would all do well to adopt the same attitude toward people experiencing homelessness.
Leah den Bok is in her final year of a bachelor of photography program at Sheridan College. Her fourth book, “Nowhere to Call Home — Photographs and Stories of People Experiencing Homelessness, Volume Four” will be published his fall. Her website is humanizingthehomeless.org.