When I lived in Toronto, way back when, there was an urban warrior.
Dressed in army fatigues and armed with nothing but a large plastic bag, the urban warrior had but one task in mind: picking up litter. Over
the seven years I lived in Toronto I saw him all over the
city, slowly but surely making it a better, greener place - one piece of litter at a time.
I often tried to find information about the urban warrior, but to no avail.
He was nameless. He was faceless (not literally, but figuratively). But he certainly wasn't useless.
In doing a little research for this post, I decided to try and look him up again. While I didn't find him, I did find this guy, Mark Giesbrecht, aka "the litter guy." Much like the urban warrior, Mark spends his days picking up litter in Toronto. Unlike the urban warrior, Mark asks for donations/supplies via a large, handwritten sign that he keeps strapped to his back.
While you can't blame, or shame, a guy for asking for money for a job done, I kind of love the fact that the urban warrior did what he did payment, and glory, notwithstanding.
Either way, both the urban warrior and the litter guy are special people - angels, in their own special way.
According to this article from the Toronto Star, incivility and unfairness trouble Mark.
I know how he feels.
Can you imagine the kind of world we'd live in if everyone cared about the planet, and people, as much as Mark and the urban warrior do?
Mark used to be homeless and his dream is to help the homeless. He works seven days a week to make his $450 a month rent (this is back when the article was written in 2009) and he loves morning talk shows "because ignorant comments about the homeless fill him with the indignation he needs to start his day."
I know how he feels.
One last word.
According to David Suzuki, cigarette butts are the most littered item in the world, with 4.95-trillion (trillion!!!) tossed onto the ground or water every year. "Cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, a non-biodegradable plastic, which can take up to 25 years to decompose. The toxic butts are ingested by animals, especially birds and marine animals."
And so the urban warrior in all of us must fight on!
Having lived in the confines of the country, and a somewhat gated community, for the past year, I've missed out on the misery that is the ever-worsening homelessness situation in Montreal.
As winter quickly approaches and being homeless takes on life or death proportions, I can't help but feel that I (and everyone else for that matter) should be doing a lot more to help those that this city seems to have forgotten.
Or chooses to ignore.
Last week, as I made my way from the metro to the office (I'm talking about a very short, maybe three-minute walk max) I counted over five homeless men sleeping on the ground. In the cold. With nary a blanket in sight.
I'm not ashamed to say it made me cry.
But crying won't help anyone.
With municipal elections about to head to the polls (November 3), I thought I'd go online and see what our city's politicians are doing saying about the sitch.
I was surprised glad to see that each candidate had, at the very least, taken the time to formulate a policy re: poverty. I was surprised shocked to see that l'Equipe Denis Coderre had not even announced a position re: the environment.
But I digress.
The Coalition Montreal Marcel Cote seems to have given the issue the most thought. According to the (handy-dandy) diagram created by the Montreal Gazette, his team plans to "build 15,000 social and community housing units over five years with assistance from (the) Quebec government, including a proportion adapted for the disabled or infirm. Develop a bank to make cooperative housing ventures more affordable as needed. Hire inspectors and create (a) database to track landlords and properties which aren't being maintained. Support organizations (that are) fighting poverty."
McGill's Centre for Research on Children and Families recently (2012) reviewed literature on homelessness in Canada. According to their findings, Montreal's homeless population was anywhere between 10,000 and 28,000 people in the early 2000s, with males making up a disproportionate percentage of the visible homeless population (and accounting for 91% of shelter users).
Those who know me well know why this issue is so important to me - and why it touches so very close to home.
A home that I, unlike so many others, am lucky enough to call my own.
if you'd like to help Montreal's growing homeless nation there are any number of ways you can. From simply 1) respecting them as human beings (a simple smile and/or hello works wonders) and 2) education yourself about the homeless to 3) passing on gently-used clothing, bringing food and/or donating money to 4) volunteering... there is definitely something YOU can do to improve at least ONE PERSON'S lot in life.
For a list of resources (mostly shelters), click here and contact the one that speaks to you to find out what else you can do.
Thank you!
