In just about every Canadian city there are now homeless encampments. This is a new phenomenon for Canada, although it's not an unusual situation around our planet. The media has picked up on homelessness, so even if you haven't visited a larger centre recently, you are aware of this new problem in Canadian society, and its starkly obvious presence.
I experienced homelessness for several years, from 1969 to 1972. Born in Canada (Hamilton), my parents moved to the southern U.S. when I was seven. As a foreign national I was eligible for the draft for the Vietnam War, and I registered with the draft board as required when I turned eighteen. As I learned about the wrongheadedness of the war, I became an anti-war activist, which ultimately led to receiving three draft notices in one week in June of 1969. My father, who had been a squadron leader (colonel) in the Royal Air Force (RAF), definitely wasn't happy with my anti-war activism and resistance. He used to call me a "conchy", which is what conscientious objectors were labelled during World War Two.
God knows why, but I agreed to my father's idea of going to the U.K, rather than returning to Canada to avoid induction and then jail when I refused. As a foreign national I would have been sent back to Canada anyway, which would have been a better situation for me, but then I would have missed living on the outskirts of London during the tail end of the psychedelic sixties. My uptight English cousin and his wife readily accepted some rent payment from my parents, but within a month they literally threw me out into the streets of suburban London. I tried living in a bedsitter, with another uptight English middle class family, but again I was thrown out for having visitors. For about a month I was completely homeless, and crashed on bedsit floors of other wannabe hippies and slept on a derelict boat moored on The Thames near Richmond.
One early adventure was visiting the infamous squat at 144 Piccadilly in the very heart of London. Here's the link to the chapter in my memoir which describes the scene:
http://www.eelpie.org/epd_02.htm (Chapter 2 - 144 Piccadilly Squat)
So far as I know, squatting hasn't arrived in Canada yet. It's the occupying of empty buildings by homeless people. Why freeze through a bitter Canadian winter in a tent, if you're lucky, when you can occupy an abandoned building. If I could lay odds with a bookie, I'd bet heavily that homeless people will start squatting in Canada very soon. The "inconvenience" factor of homeless people tenting in parks will then be replaced with the larger public and police outrage that the homeless dare to inhabit empty business buildings. In capitalist societies property rights always prevail over personal survival.
To my eyes, the failing pseudo socialist post WW2 society of the England I encountered in 1969 is now mirrored in the failing neo-liberal society in Canada. I couldn't believe the general wealth and opportunity in Canada when I arrived in September 1972. Back then jobs were plentiful and even a dishwasher could earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living. But . . . we've slowly devolved along with our even more rapidly deteriorating neighbour, the U.S.
These are sad and scary times for all of us, but even more so for those who have been marginalized into homelessness, most often through no fault of theirs, by a fading and devolving Canadian system which is sliding towards the chaos and poverty I experienced in the U.K. half a century ago.
postscript: After crashing around western London that summer I ended up squatting in the largest hippie commune in Europe, The deserted Eel Pie Island Hotel for 1 1/2 years.
Chris at the helm of China Tea Steam Navigation Company circa 1969
No comments:
Post a Comment