Ninety years ago, it was reported in the local newspaper that 21 “transients” were fined $50 plus court costs, or they could spend 21 days in jail for riding on freight trains. In the 1930s, riding the rails was a common occurrence for unemployed men. It was the Great Depression and the Canadian unemployment rate was very high, over 30 per cent.
The article went on to say that all 21 men opted to serve time in jail. Who could blame them? For 21 days, they would have a roof over their heads and meals to eat.
Another article, this time in Cornwall from last week, reported that their council had just passed new bylaws regarding homeless encampments, specifically that such encampments cannot have tents or structures, and that there are certain parks that they cannot be in. It’s interesting to compare the two incidents, 90 years apart, and see how far backwards we’ve gone as a country.
There has been a rise in homelessness, or as some of the PC police call them “unhoused.” Last summer there was a large encampment in Brockville near Highway 401 until they were sent on their un-merry way by the authorities. These are not isolated occurrences. In large cities and small villages, and in the countryside connecting them, more and more people have no option but to be homeless.
In the 1930s there were camps, and make-work projects for those who were unemployed. A great deal of our infrastructure as a country is rooted in work projects that stemmed from trying to spend our way out of the Depression. It worked to get some people employed until that great employer of the world – war – was ready to create new jobs.
Many of those who are homeless now suffer from the same issues: a lack of jobs. Some have mental health issues; others have just been plain unlucky in life. Very few have chosen to be homeless. It has been often reported that there is the visible homelessness we see at camps and in parks, and then there is invisible homelessness – those who are couch surfing, or living in a trailer or a tent at a campground until it is fall. Then what?
From a top-level, the solution sounds simple – get some housing for these people. But top level solutions are never simple. In Cornwall, there was backlash about turning a former school into housing because it was near a bunch of schools. Many with houses don’t want those without houses to live near their kids’ schools, or be in parks where they play, or be seen near where people work. Many don’t want the problems solved; they want the problem to go away and to cost the least amount of tax dollars to do that.
A common question asked is why don’t “these people” just go and get jobs or “have a work ethic?” Those questions show the lack of understanding of the problems. What jobs? Canada has an official unemployment rate of 6.9 per cent, Ontario is 7.1 per cent, as is the region I live in. But that is the “official” number, and doesn’t take into account people who are homeless, or no longer receiving unemployment benefits, or who slip through the cracks of our social safety net. The number is close to double when those are included.
What is the solution? Evicting people from parks by officers enforcing new park bylaws is not it. Not without having somewhere else for those people in encampments to go. Simply saying they need to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” isn’t what’s needed.
What is needed is appropriate shelter and supports to address any mental or other health issues, along with services to get those people on the road to improvement, and not just sent packing out of town for another community to deal with. If those spaces are in a former school, or near other people, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Something to consider may be not feeling wanted in their community, or any community, may be one of the causes of homelessness in the first place. Community solutions are what is needed.
This column was originally published in the July 23, 2025 print edition of the Morrisburg Leader.
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