OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is a letter from Tyler Dunlop on the issues he's witnessed living on the streets in several places, including locally in Orillia.
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Been quite the journey since June when I ended up circumstantially on the street. I've had a street-level view of the problems Canada's facing and it's decidedly not good.
In August I migrated to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Big mistake. As across Canada, there was no shelter access, no jobs (despite erroneous claims that Nova Scotia was "booming" and "finally developing" as many claimed) and no cheap housing like there was when I lived there annually eight years ago. Foreign investment entities have contaminated the housing market there too.
I spent 81 days dragging Halifax's streets, incomprehensibly bewildered at the congested and unavailable resources (province to province, coast to coast).
Shelters were full with indeterminable waiting lists. Soup kitchens and meal programs were noisy, dangerous and crowded. Crack, meth and heroine were in all the stairwells, alleys and public spaces. I got mugged twice and spent my nights in an abandoned car-lot beside Hotel Halifax.
I also got caught in Hurricane Fiona and nearly bit the bullet. September 17, at about 10 p.m. or so, I'm walking down Barrington Street dejected and lost. All is calm. Two days of heavy rain stopped, yet I saw I was the only one on the streets. Spooked. I heard talk of the hurricane days earlier.
On my way to the lot and bang! Dead calm turns to 210-km jet-screaming winds and multi-directional cold rain and I'm thrown violently across the street and into a guard rail (two cracked ribs). Hang on for dear life. Wind stops. Screams again and I'm torn loose and thrown back across Barrington Street doing backrolls, cracking my head on the wall of Scotia Square.
I'm barely conscious yet my inner voice says "Get up or you're gonna die!" I tried to stand but the wind was too strong so I hang on again. Finally, the wind stops for me long enough to scramble up the ramp to the car lot, soaked, frozen and my head bleeding. I waited it out. Trees are cracking down. I lose consciousness. I wake up and the sun is in my eyes and I can even hear birds. I decided right then Nova Scotia was a no-go.
So, until late October I drag the boardwalk where the tourist ships come in. A homeless B.C. guy gives me a smoke and I ask to play his acoustic guitar. I do one song and he gives me the guitar. Bonus! I play 13 Green Day songs and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska all day and night and the American dollars roll in, making life easier.
So I hop a train back to Toronto (uh-oh) and soon discover there are zero available shelters in the entire metropolis. Oh man. Not good. The weather's growing chilly, funds are dangerously limited and the Toronto streets at night are something out of a Stephen King novel. For a week and a half I play my guitar, sleep wherever I can and see more brutal homelessness than I've ever seen.
As in Halifax, I notice the game has changed. Ten years ago, shelters were available and 90% of clientele were alcoholic, drug-addicted or mentally-ill. Now I'm seeing homeless students, working people, senior citizens, ex-Army, ex-Navy, monastics and more unlikely people. What's happening to this country?
This year alone there are 230,000 "street-homeless" across Canada like me and rapidly accelerating. Soup kitchens are begging for public donations, shelters and medical care are non-existent, police and paramedics are pushed to their limits and Canada is unravelling beneath the notice of the apathetic and domesticated. An atmosphere of deadly terror subservient to all it seems....
I busk enough to train to Hamilton: exact same thing. Three brutal days with the smell of burnt rubber and chemicals permeating the grubby steel-town. I'm outta here!
Then a train to Oshawa...bad move...haven't slept in a week, showered in three and cold temperatures have warped the guitar. I go behind Costco, pretend I'm a rock-star and smash the guitar to pieces, imagining a screaming and cheering crowd. I use what I have and yess! Holiday Inn has one room for 186 per night with a $300 deposit...only thing is: "Sorry sir, but we have no hot water right now."
All I wanted was a shower! Sadly, I meet a 31-year-old mother of five smoking out front. The government paid for two days there and then she's on her own. Said a prayer for her, bummed a smoke and away I went. I hit the highway: guy drives me to North York to a shelter (worst....move....ever) which, of course, is full. They give me a loaf of white bread and wish me well.
My head is spinning like The Exorcist. It's an industrial manufacturing sector. I walk for two days, going nowhere. Finally, I reach Highway 407 at 3 a.m. I chance it. Red flashing lights behind me. Not again. Police drive me to Yorkdale Mall and tell me to panhandle at the GO Station and warn me not to go back on the highway. Wealthy drones all around me. I'm invisible. I'm sick. I'm tired. I sit. Total resignation. Young guy begins conversing with me. "Where you wanna go?" he says."Orillia," I gasp. Then I'm on a bus.
Orillia. I exit the bus but my legs don't work for some reason. Numb. Noodles. Okay....ambulance. Hospital does nothing. Two-hour rest. Emerge is packed. People with blankets. COVID terror. So I walk the streets. Tried to sleep in an alley on cardboard. Not happening. Too cold.
Sunday comes. I go to my old church. A couple puts me up at Econolodge for a few days. Nothing to eat but the kind guests there for some reason give me money. Today I leave. Back on the streets.... Gotta stay focused!
Point in total: Our nation is corroding from inside. Nefarious elite forces or disastrously unfortunate circumstances or both have dissolved both democratic right and capitalistic security.
Orillia is no exception. Awake all night, I see violence, see needles and pipes discarded in any place I hope to sit or sleep. Yet God has helped me the whole way, like He's always done. A Timmie's there, a smoke here, a few bucks and a kind word. Angels in disguise among us.
I warn you: secure your future. Stock up. Prepare. No one is safe and nothing is stable. The dream that was Canada is over. Consumed democracies turn into socialist regimes. Fact. Dark years ahead for all. Be safe out there!
I have hurricane dreams now. Had four so far. I wake up screaming and moaning and it takes me a few minutes to realize where I am (the one last night was me and my homeless buddy Tim in Halifax gambling on who was going to die and I was back in it again, clawing at the pavement and doomed).
Not sure what my future holds or if I even have a future, along with two million others (and growing). Even the modern Christian church has become a transactional (not relational) exclusivist "country club" where, as with every church I've gone to, I'm on the outside looking in, the "undesirable" that Christ commanded we bring in and instead they always treat me like garbage and shut me out.
See you around Orillia...I hope.
Tyler James Dunlop
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