September 16th
I have gotten to know Phillip a little bit thanks to reconnecting with Davit. Phillip has been homeless for about five years. He says he now secured a place in Scarborough but still comes downtown. He built a structure underneath the Gardiner which his friends are now living in. He says he started getting clean and is going to start an apprenticeship to hopefully get a job and quit all together.
People have to wanna quit he says. According to him if someone really wants to quit, they will, it might take three or four more times. We spoke about recent times and he said that shutting down the city during Covid was worst thing they could do, it caused a lot of problems for people like him. According to Phillip some people on the streets are really bad; they always have self-interest in mind and they are only willing to help you if they know they will get something back from you. “If someone does something good to me or for me”, says Phillip, “I am going pay it forward, always”.
Marcel is a recurring figure in Reed in the Street’s videos on Instagram. Reed has an enormous following. He informally interviews people living with homelessness and addiction. I recognized Marcel from his videos and stopped to speak with him in front of a pharmacy on Queen Street East. He told me that people take pictures and videos of him without asking now that he is Internet famous, but says he does not mind as long as people ask. He is from Nigeria and came to Canada about five years ago for a better life. He has a dream of starting his own business in “farming”. Marcel spoke a bit about addiction and its power, specifically referring to dopamine, saying; “why do you think they call it dope? Because of dopamine”, referring to the artificial flood of dopamine that occurs when using particular drugs such as cocaine and opioids. Marcel is pictured with his palm facing outward, demonstrating a highly offensive gesture in Nigeria that should be avoided.
I noticed Ola at the corner of Queen and Church streets. She is another person featured in Reed’s posts and caught my attention because she is a Polish woman with a particularly sad circumstance. We spoke in Polish and English. She told me that she does drugs because of her sadness, her depression. I showed her a video that Reed has posted of her and she was very curious as she had never seen any of the videos before. She was surprised at how unwell she looked in them. She was also very curious about the comments that people leave and agreed with many of the sad ones posted to the videos.
Ola was sat with a friend named Joe who told me he is from Manitoulin Island.
While speaking with both Ola and Joe there was a man nearby high on what I was told was fentanyl. He progressively lost mobility until he lay down flat on his back. I asked if it was concerning and they told me he was going to be fine.