JCK-at-large SITE

We had a two-fold invasion over the summer: the geese and the homeless.  They both laid claim to most any vacant space in our summer town — the parks, the picnic areas, the boardwalks, the bike paths.  And they definitely left their mark. Leave a flock of Canada Geese in your picnic area for a day or two and the picnics are over, believe me.  Give the homeless free range of the streets and parks, and the town starts to look like a sprawling slum, Woodstock revisited.  

The geese love our harbour area for its gentle and inviting access from the water.  Those fishing boat ramps seem perfectly designed for old ganders — with or without fishing poles!  For them, this means the welcome mat is out: “Welcome to our lush, green, grassy world.”   They guide their hatchlings up the slopes onto terra firma to graze for a day or two in those lovely parks, loll in the sun and give the next generation a taste of the good life.  The homeless also find our town welcoming and inclusive.  In fact, our logo, out on the freeway, reads “Ontario’s Feel Good Town.”  I think the homeless consider that an invitation to spread out wherever it feels right and do their own thing.   I guess it’s an issue of democratic rights.  As John Stuart Mill said, “In a democracy, society has no more right to ignore the whims of a single individual than that individual has to ignore society.”  I doubt that John Stuart had any inkling about where that might take us. 

Of course, it is not easy to oust the visitors once they lay claim.  Just try shooing a gaggle of geese off your lawn as they settle down.  The diamond-marked heads of those in charge begin to bob and weave, the eyes adopt the menacing glare of a warrior, a pink tongue darts out from that shiny black beak, you may pick up a hiss.  Far from backing down and moving off, a big gander will stand his ground and dare you to trespass on your own property!  Some well-meaning pedestrians even testify to being whacked by a flapping wing!  Similarly, you will find the average homeless encampment quite steadfast and unmovable.  These people post People Not Problems! signs, and remind us that The Humans living here are protected by By-law 54!  Once they take over an unfenced area and throw up their encampment, the powers-that-be prove altogether powerless.  In our town it’s the beautiful Brookside Campus along a stream, once home to a juvenile reformatory which is no longer needed — as if anyone can believe that!  Brookside is slated for redevelopment.

So you could call it our “overrun summer” — and I’m not talking Council budget.  The prospects of stemming the tide of our unwelcome visitors were very dim.  But just when one might have given up hope, behold a welcome surprise!  It was awaiting on one bright morning when I joined the dog-walkers along the harbour front.  What to our wondering eyes should appear but a half-dozen floating harbour lights some thirty feet out on the lake, bobbing in the waves.  They lit up the early morning waters with an orange and back glare, like the scariest masks of Hallowe’en.

“The geese hate them!,” said one lady, as though she had discovered lapis lazuli, walking her two groomed pomeranians along an immaculate path of interlocking brick.  She pointed to the harbour lights.  Soon we had a gathering of dog-walkers who all agreed. This was the best news of the summer!  “The geese are afraid of the lights!” 

We had a laugh over former summers, and all the failed attempts to repel the geese: stuffed coyotes along the shoreline, roll-outs of construction fencing in hideous orange plastic….  The geese got used to them all and waddled on by to leave their indelible residue everywhere.  Now at last, we thought we had found something that would work!  Floating harbour lights!  And according to the owner of Pip, our affable Golden Lab, the geese had risen up in a great honking skein and taken their gaggling hordes elsewhere!  No one seemed to care where.

As it happened, there was a small homeless encampment nearby, strewn across a grassy knoll like the ruins of Philippi, just a stones-throw away.  And someone connected the dots: “Now, if we can just find some harbour lights for the homeless!”  The dog-walkers shared a few laughs, and litany of grievances: the homeless were sleeping in the doorways and on the park benches.  The Banks on King Street were having to keep the doors closed after hours….

“They took over the pedestrian walkway at the train station!… always sunny and warm over the tracks — they even have an atrium!  When VIA RAIL finally got them out, they had to close the walkway!  So now, to cross the tracks and board your train, you have to wait til they open up the walkway — five minutes before departure!”

We had a report on a cathedral which “had to put a chain link fence around their property out of ‘liability concerns.’” 

“They inspected one of the encampments in Toronto and found a two dozen firearms!”

“They had a murder in Kingston — inside the encampment!”

“And what about Clarence Park? … a haven for drugs and criminals… Residents are putting together a huge petition to City Hall … and we know where that will end up!”

But our geese were gone!  On this peaceful shoreline, in this fraternity of dog-walkers, that was all that mattered. “Now to get rid of the homeless encampments!”  Our informal gathering was all about getting back to the pristine normalcy of our lovely summer town.  I thought we could even have closed the assembly with a verse of “Let the lower lights be burning, send their gleam across the waves.”

Trouble was, that old hymn carried a rebuke. As the familiar lines began to sing in my head, from summers long past, there was a troubling reminder:

“Brightly beams our Father’s mercy, from his lighthouse evermore, But to us he gives the keeping of the lights along the shore…Let the lower lights be burning, send their gleam across the wave; Some poor fainting, struggling seaman, you may rescue, you may save.”

Indeed, the familiar words called for something quite different than celebration from we, the happy citzenry of our summer town, taken up with “harbour lights to repel the homeless.”  These words carried the reminder that we already have harbour lights for the homeless!  They are the church!  And getting the homeless of move along can hardly be the priority of the church!  This old hymn was a call to see past the litter, to extend the incarnation of the One whose calling was “to preach the gospel to the poor… to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives… to set at liberty them that are bruised.”

In short, they called us to create something more beautiful than tidy sidewalks and immaculate neighbourhoods: to create, as Malcolm Muggeridge put it, in his description of Mother Theresa on the streets of Calcutta, “Something beautiful for God.”