Dear Editor,
I had a conversation with a man yesterday. I’d say he was about 50 years old. He was pushing an electric-assisted bike up a steep hill in our park, struggling with a couple of bags.
I came alongside him and said it looked like a tough slog. He said, “This is the last of this for me…I’m getting a car in two weeks, and I’m digging myself out. I’ve had a divorce and a couple of financial hits, but I can’t live like this. I’m done with it.”
I chatted for a bit, then wished him the best, and we parted ways.
He was “new” to homelessness, and he didn’t like it. He was sober. He was a person “just like you and me” who suddenly found himself in the shocking position of not having a safe place to live because things had gone sideways.
I interviewed people like him when I was working on research for my masters at SFU just a few years ago. There was no easy blame to be laid in many cases. They were not “addicts.” They were mature adults forced to live in tents – renovictions, fires, and even a no-fault car accident that forever changed a life.
Many of us are just one or two paycheques away from just such a situation. I hope that we can see the humanity in homelessness before dismissing those we believe are living rough as “at fault” for their situation.
We don’t “know” anything about them. And we could be just like them if a few bad things happen.
Casey Hrynkow Shewchuk, Maple Ridge
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