Living in the middle of the Gabriola woods
See those sticks, carefully wedged between the two trees? They make a nice seat. Then there’s the ring of stones on the ground in front of the seat — a campfire circle, it seems. A bit further along there are clothes draped on a tree. Pillows and bedding hang from a log, probably to air out.
I don’t know how many people live in the Gabriola woods, but apparently somebody’s been living here. And there. And elsewhere as well. I presume it’s a matter of necessity, not choice.
Filed in Gabriola Island,Gabriola people 3 Comments so far
3 Responses to “Living in the middle of the Gabriola woods”
Sal on 10 Mar 2010 at 3:55 pm #
Very sad to see this happening here.
kathryn molloy on 10 Mar 2010 at 4:02 pm #
thank you so much for exposing this. I’d love to see the local newspapers report on this too!
as the executive director of People for a Healthy Community, we see the effects of homelessness nearly every day. people are cold, tired, hungry and sick. the lack of affordable housing and mental health and addiction services are appalling and indicate the gross negligence of our government. the real sad thing is that 30% of our clients are kids. i have no idea how many of them are living outside, nor do i have a sense of how many are living in sub-standard, unhealthy dwellings because that’s all they can afford.
Gabriolan on 10 Mar 2010 at 8:08 pm #
Kathryn — I’m glad you think that blogging this is a good idea; I always wonder. If I were homeless and living in the woods, I’d be horrified if I thought that somebody had stumbled across my camp, and I certainly wouldn’t want some interloper to publish photographs of my things.
On the other hand, I keep finding camps like this one. I hope that telling people a bit about them will help to raise awareness about the problem we seem to have with homelessness on Gabriola.