INDEPTH: MUNICIPALITIES
Tent cities and squats in Canada
CBC News Online | November 25, 2004
Squatters evicted from the Tent City site (2002)
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Go to any of Canada's larger cities and you'll find squatters camps. In greenbelts and abandoned buildings, under bridges and overpasses, they're homes for the homeless. Many of the camps are illegal, though landowners and politicians often turn a blind eye, allowing them to exist away from the public gaze. In other cases, the settlements take centre stage in high-profile disputes over land use rights.
The following is a look at some of the squats that have captured the headlines in Canada in the recent past. Click below to navigate by city:
Calgary |
Montreal |
Ottawa |
Toronto |
Vancouver
Calgary
In May 2000, Calgary police knocked down a number of huts in a hillside park where it was believed more than 20 people lived. They found only one man on the site, who had been there for more than a year. Police found evidence that wild animals had been snared and roasted on the site, although some nearby residents claimed the carcasses were those of household cats and dogs.
Montreal
In January 2002, Montreal's new mayor, Gérald Tremblay, came under criticism after city firefighters used sledgehammers to smash up a collection of shelters under an overpass in Old Montreal. The structures, home to six men, were deemed to be fire hazards. Mayor Tremblay said he was not informed of the decision to remove the shelters.
Tent City site (2002)
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In July 2001, a group of young squatters took over an abandoned, privately owned heritage home in downtown Montreal. Then-mayor Pierre Bourque allowed the squatters to resettle in a city-owned former drug-rehabilitation centre. He was later criticized for rewarding the squatters with a shelter while 8,000 low-income earners waited for subsidized housing. Relations between the squatters and the city quickly soured. A police riot squad evicted them in October 2001 after the city accused them of vandalism and creating fire hazards.
Ottawa
In June 2002, anti-G-8 protesters set up a squat in Ottawa to protest the housing situation in that city. They named it the Seven Year Squat, after the length of the waiting list for subsidized housing in Ottawa. Days later, after the G-8 meetings ended, Ottawa police in riot gear cleared the squat, using pepper spray to subdue and arrest the protesters.
Toronto
Toronto's Tent City began to take shape in 1998, when a group of squatters erected lean-tos and makeshift huts on the former site of an iron foundry in Toronto's port lands. The "city" started with only a handful of squatters but grew to a community of more than 100 people before being shut down.
In November 2000, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment ordered Home Depot, which owns the land, to evict the squatters, saying the site was contaminated with heavy metals left over by the foundry.
Early the next month advocates for the homeless defied the order and brought Tent City's first prefabricated structure to the site. Soon, unsigned notes appeared on the doors of the squatters' homes stating that Home Depot had to "secure" the site, and requesting occupants to leave. On Dec. 20, 2000, Home Depot placed concrete barriers at the entrances to the site, saying they wouldn't allow any more shelters to be brought there.
One day later the company relented and allowed two portable homes into Tent City. The city reassured Home Depot that it was busy scouting for a new, safer shelter location in the port lands.
Within a year Toronto city councillors approved a plan to establish a community of prefabricated houses near the Tent City site. The federal port authority objected to the location because it might one day be needed to unload heavy cargo from freighters in the dock.
| NUMBER OF HOMELESS |
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Estimates of the number of homeless in Toronto range from 60,000 to 70,000. But advocates for the homeless say those numbers are low because they are based on shelter use and don't take into account those who live in parks or encampments, such as Tent City.
A planned census of Toronto's homeless was put on hold after advocates said street people were afraid the count would reveal their hiding places and make them vulnerable to eviction.
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On Aug. 29, 2002, the Toronto Star reported that Home Depot was attempting to set up manufactured shelters on the Tent City site before winter. The company had joined with Homes First, a non-profit housing agency, to get the housing on the site, but a company spokesperson said those efforts were blocked by city hall.
Lyons said city officials told her the land could not be registered as an emergency shelter and that Home Depot would have to go through a rezoning process that could take up to two years to put housing on the land.
One month later, security officers hired by Home Depot forced the squatters off the Tent City site and a new fence was erected to prevent the site from being squatted again.
Vancouver
Protesting a lack of affordable housing in Vancouver, hundreds of homeless established tent cities in city parks, leading a city councillor to remark in October 2003 that many citizens worried the parks were being taken over. "Where will it stop?" asked councillor Jim Green. "In many ways it's reflecting negatively on the homeless," he said.
At any given time there are at least four tent cities in different parts of downtown Vancouver. Hundreds – some say thousands – of people live in them.
On Sept. 14, 2002, a group of homeless people and activists occupied a building in Vancouver's downtown east side. The building had been a department store, but had been vacant for nine years. A week after the occupation began, police made a series of arrests at the site, but the squatters returned days later, demanding that the building be converted to low-cost housing.
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List of big city mayors, from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities:
Vancouver: Larry Campbell
Surrey: Doug W. McCallum
Calgary: David Bronconnier
Edmonton: Bill Smith
Regina: Pat Fiacco
Saskatoon: Don Atchison
Winnipeg: Sam Katz
Brampton: Susan Fennell
Hamilton: Larry Dilanni
Kitchener: Carl Zehr
London: Anne Marie DeCicco
Mississauga: Hazel McCallion
Ottawa: Bob Chiarelli
Windsor: Eddie Francis
Toronto: David Miller
Gatineau: Yves Ducharme
Montréal: Gérald Tremblay
Laval: Gilles Vaillancourt
Québec: Jean-Paul L'Allier
Longueil: Jacques Olivier
Halifax: Peter J. Kelly
St. John's: Andy Wells
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Watch Brian Stewart's documentary "Cities: The Last Colonies"
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