Homeless suffer in record-breaking cold

by Jonathan Martin

During Southwestern Ontario’s record-breaking cold spell, the majority of Windsorites huddled within the confines of their homes.  Some don’t have that luxury.

On Feb. 28, the panhandlers who frequent Windsor’s downtown area were missing from the street corners.  Instead, many were warming their wind-burned faces and cracking skin within Windsor Street Help Homeless Centre.  They’ve taken to calling it their house, and 56 year-old Christine Wilson, its administrator, ‘Mom.’

Wilson lived on city streets across North America for several years herself.  After being extracted from her Native Canadian family as a child, Wilson was moved into a Canadian Indian residential school and then lived in a foster home where she, along with other children, was sexually abused.

“Back then we weren’t believed (when saying we were abused) or even when we were believed, nobody cared,” she said. “We weren’t real people to them.  That’s not how they looked at us.  And we knew that.  We knew people were being paid to keep us in their houses and we were taught that we had to be grateful that anybody was allowing us into their house.”

At 15, she decided to try her luck on the streets of the Rose City.

As she speaks, her hands, twisted and gnarled with the frostbitten memory of a winter much like this one, but in another life, wring out their worry.

“It was about four decades ago,” she said.  “And I’m walking on the street because I can’t walk on the sidewalk because the snow’s waist-deep.  There is a Windsor police officer pulling up beside me, well, a couple cops in a cruiser, and I say , ‘Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong!’  They told me to get in the back of the car and they said, ‘No, we know you didn’t do anything wrong.  We’re trying to get you out of the cold.’”

Telling that story brought to her mind another similar one, this one far more recent.

Brandt Huber volunteers at Wilson’s shelter.  Last month, on his way to volunteer, he came across a body on the sidewalk.  He realized it was that of a 13 year-old girl, barely conscious, hypothermic and soaked to the skin.  Wilson said “probably hundreds” of people passed by her before Huber stopped.

“In the case of someone who might freeze to death, like suicide, they’re rarely reported,” said Wilson.  “If there’s news about a death, there’s oftentimes you’d hear the person died of ‘natural causes.’  There’s nothing natural about freezing to death.  Most people think you can go to the shelter if you’re homeless.  That’s not true.”

According to Wilson, whose shelter is privately owned, in order to be accepted into a public shelter, the applicant must first qualify for welfare.  Welfare only covers a two week stay.

Twenty-seven year-old John Affleck is one of the few who made it into the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter, which he said he considers a blessing.  He’s only been there for a few days and, with a maximum allowance of two weeks in-house, he said he’s trying to make the most of it.  Even with a roof over his head, though, he said “It’s [the cold that’s] definitely affected everyone’s attitude.  Everybody’s definitely been grumpy, that’s for sure.”

“I ended up on the streets at 15,” said Wilson.  “It was brutal.  But I made the choice one day, I made the very conscious decision that I’d rather get raped by strangers, really, than live one more day in that hellhole.”

Wilson said she soon learned what it took to survive a life on the streets.

A shadow passed over her face as she recalled feigning madness to scare off her abusers.

“I learned how to act crazy, and I mean really crazy.  It’s one of your guaranteed protections.  It’s an armour that they (enemies) can’t get through because many people are afraid of crazy people.  Bottom line.  So, we’d practice and we became these horrible, monstrous-acting people.”

She went on and her tone changed.

“One guy, I bit his face so hard.  Yes I did.  Yes I did.  I had to.  He stopped raping me.  That was the last time anybody touched me.  I sank my teeth into his face.  He was afraid I was going to eat his face.  What can I say?  That’s one existence.  It’s just the way you have to become.  Your teeth, if that’s your only weapon, you have to use your weapon.  I don’t like telling that story.  It’s so horrible.  But it’s true.”

She said she was a “bright kid,” which she thinks helped her survive.  She managed to pass a few high school classes after teaching herself to read without a grade school education. She said at one point a child psychologist wanted to apply for government funding so she could test her for Mensa, a society for individuals whose IQ test results land within the top 2% of the population.

She said her intelligence earned her a place as leader of a Goonie-style ragtag bunch of street-kids.  She said the sexual abuse she suffered tarnished her concept of self-worth, but she knew she was “a cute kid” because she could sit on a curb and make enough money panhandling to feed her entire gang.

“I know this one restaurant hated us because we paid all in change,” she said, laughing. “We lived on one meal a day that way and oftentimes we’d have enough left over for a pack of cigarettes we’d portion out between ourselves.”

She said if they were truly lucky, they’d rent a room until the landlord evicted them.

Wilson said she’s passionate about the Windsor homeless, who she describes as “her people.”

“I know what it’s like to be homeless,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be helpless.”

She said she’s tired of being overlooked.

“You know what, Canada?  It’s time to wake up.  Enough of that.  It’s time for all of us to wake up and save lives.”