Camping in the great outdoors

North End

You’ve worked hard all week, it’s a long weekend, the weather is great, and you’ve been stuck in the city for so long. After the daily half-hour commute each way to work in rush-hour traffic, wouldn’t it be great to just pack up a tent and go camping just to get back to nature in the wilderness, perhaps?

For some people, having a job is a luxury; renting a home, apartment or room is a luxury. Just having a tent is a luxury. Some people don’t have any of that and must resort to sleeping under a bridge or, if they’re lucky, in a tent or shelter.

Enter the modern-day campground… wherever in the city you can find an empty lot or perhaps a lush riverbank on which you can pitch your tent. Tent cities are popping up everywhere in the world. For a brief time in the late ’90s in Vancouver I was homeless after an accident at work which led to depression and an inability to work or function properly. Some of the homeless people I encountered were pretty amazing. Most, like me, had always thought that it “can’t happen to (them).” I wasn’t as bad off as some and learned that others, even if they didn’t have much, would have given me the shirt off of their backs.

Since that experience, I’ve looked at life differently, tying not to judge others less fortunate than myself, while trying to put myself in their shoes. I’ve quoted Jesse Jackson many times in the past: “never look down on someone unless you’re helping them up.”

I’ve spoken with homeless people over the years, and the dynamic is certainly changing in the homeless communities. Larry, 31, who has been homeless for most of his life after growing up in a broken home with an alcoholic parent and eventually being put into foster homes, told me that being homeless these days is a lot more dangerousm especially as methamphetamine use has become more prevalent. I shared my homeless story with him, and he said that the days of helping one another are long gone. He, too, remembers when homeless people would look out for each other but said that now they’re more likely to steal from each other. He also mentioned that more people need to arm themselves for protection because of the “unpredictable meth-heads who’ll attack you for looking at them the wrong way.”

I remember going camping and thinking how cool it was to get out of the city. Fast forward to 2025 and the city is where people pitch a tent out of necessity.