Shelter now.

That’s what anti-poverty activists are asking for. Enough safe, clean shelter beds so homeless people don’t have to risk their lives sleeping on the streets, in the parks or alleyways of Toronto. 

And possibly freeze to death. Like Michel Avon almost did. 

“On the street, I froze both of my feet and couldn’t walk no more,” said Avon. “I was about to die there.”

Then he got housing. But only after he’d lived on the streets for 18 years.

“It’s fucking rough,” said Avon. 

“It’s ugly. You don’t feel nothing. You don’t feel the cold no more. You’re hungry but you’re not. You can go without food for a few days. You can be up for a week. And then sleep for three days.

Last week, on Feb. 2nd, I drove up to London, Ontario, to shoot some film footage of the locked-out workers picketing outside the Electro-Motive Diesel plant for a documentary I am working on. The company, the only one to make locomotives in Canada, is owned by Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest equipment manufacturer. They had locked out the entire workforce of 450 workers on New Year's Day after demanding wage cuts as high as 50 per cent.