EXCEPTIONALLY SIMPLE (contd)
The largest men’s shelter in Canada, situated in downtown Toronto, has a capacity of over 400 clients. Most are users of one substance or another. Many suffer from mental illnesses. Some have become permanent residents, with nowhere else to go. A few are just passing through, trying to get back on their feet. Most have been unemployed for years.
My work with the Family Health Team in that shelter did not require direct contact with the men, but I passed them in the halls, I saw them outside every day I came to work, and I filled in temporarily in another office just beside where scraggy, roughened, defiant, charming, timid and wise-cracking men lined up to get their daily drink.
What I saw there was humanity. Broken , yes. Bruised, used, abused, angry, disheartened, unsound and embarrassed. But still human. I saw men making the best of things and men resigned to their lot. I saw men furious with the life they’d been dealt and men so intoxicated they could not sit upright in a chair. Yet I also saw humour, resilience and friendliness extended everywhere. I had more polite exchanges in the hallways of that shelter - “ Excuse me”, “I’m sorry”, “How are you today Miss?” – than I ever do on the streets of Toronto, as if being poor and disenfranchised made some all the more careful with manners.
I didn’t expect that at the end of two months it would be hard to leave. But PD Bureau knew where to place me next: in a short-term facility designed to care for homeless and under-housed men and women recovering from surgery, an injury or an illness, or needing a safe place to get back on track with medications – often HIV anti-virals.
Temporary help agency checklist
