Homelessness in Canada's far north as the economic boom takes place for some people
The North's job boom brings its shadow: homelessness
Trish Audette , Canwest News Service - September 21, 2008
YELLOWKNIFE - From the sky, the Northwest Territories' legislature building is supposed to look like an steel igloo, nestled against Frame Lake and surrounded by slabs of grey and black rock jutting from moss and low green trees.
On the ground, the area around the territorial government building is home to the skeletons of camp sites cleared by Yellowknife city bylaw officers. A blue sheet stretches out on the ground in one spot, a comforter is shoved at the base of a tree in another. Socks and shirts hang from low branches just off hikers' paths.
"People still like to live on the land out here, grab a tent and live out on the rocks," says Major Jo Sobool, a director of Yellowknife's Salvation Army. "This is the north and that's part of the way of life, to live on the land."
But Room 101 could not be farther from the land. At 3 p.m., this room in a back corner of the Salvation Army building smells of disinfectant. A dozen intoxicated homeless men will sleep overnight on gym mats now piled against one wall.
"There's a segment of the (homeless) population that is alcoholic, drug addicted (and) this is their home," Sobool says.
There are other places in town for homeless people - shelters dedicated to women and children, and the Salvation Army itself has room for 44 people altogether. More room can be made in winter, when the cold sets in.
Room 101 is the only safe drunk tank in town, however, short of a jail cell. Yellowknife's homeless spend their days - in fair weather, at least - wandering between the forests and rock that creep into the city's heart and Franklin Avenue, its main street. As in the downtown cores of almost any Canadian city, the homeless here are seen daily pushing shopping carts or sitting on benches.
At night, 50th Street - home of a massive, cheap bar called the Gold Range Hotel - turns into a circus of people packed onto the sidewalk. A count of their ranks is hard to make, but recent surveys of Yellowknifers done by the city have named homelessness and housing as top concerns.
At least 50 men line up outside the Salvation Army each day for lunch and dinner, no matter the season. Many are from communities along Great Slave Lake - they are men who can hunt and fish, but did not finish school.
"They have these wonderful skills that they come to Yellowknife with, and we can't use them," Sobool says. The capital, and its nearby diamond mines, draw people from across Canada - but it is the end of the road. "They hear the North has lots of work, and there is. But you have to be willing to work, and you have to have the qualifications."
About 1,200 kilometres north, a potential boom holds a similar allure. "Everybody's waiting for the pipeline," says Cindy Stewart, manager of the Inuvik Homeless Shelter. "But for now there's just local stores" and businesses hiring people.
Inuvik, a government town of 3,500 at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, stands to benefit greatly if the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline ever goes through to bring natural gas south. Stewart wants a new name for the old building just off Inuvik's main street, a trailerlike rectangle standing half a metre off the ground. The new name, she hopes, will say more than "homeless shelter." It will be something to take pride in.
"Homelessness is not going to go away," she says. "It will always be here."
Nothing better proved this - in Inuvik or in Yellowknife - than the arrival of new money earlier this year. When the government officially apologized for the residential schools that took young aboriginal people from their families, it also gave survivors one-time payouts of at least $10,000 each.
"After the big payout for the residential school system, I was hoping a lot of them would make the right choice," Stewart says. "But there was no help for them." From Great Slave Lake to the Beaufort Sea, the stories are the same: People who already lived on the streets used the new cash to rent hotel rooms, and buy drugs and alcohol.
"It was crazy, the amount of people that were back broke again. It was sad," Stewart says. "There was a lot of work that needed to be done, a lot of healing that needed to be done." She says she heard stories "from the streets" of people being taken advantage of. "Getting that big cheque didn't change anything for them."
The Inuvik shelter is ultimately funded by the territorial and federal governments, but is overseen by the local Nihtat Gwich'in Council. In winter, it is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it can hold 16 people - 12 men and four women, all over 18 years old.
It is rare for the shelter - the only one in town - to house fewer than 10 people at once. Because Inuvik is the biggest centre in the Mackenzie Delta, Stewart says, the tiny city draws people from all the local communities. Here, too, there is street life along the main drag, Mackenzie Road.
"For whatever reason they travel out of their community," she says. "Some people come here to go shopping, and they end up drinking and get broke." Others come from across the country, looking for the economic good times locals have spent three decades waiting for.