Michael Stewart and his daughter survey the remains of an encampment along the banks of the Rideau River in Ottawa before cleaning up.Michael Stewart/Supplied
Michael Stewart is an Ottawa-based children’s author.
The abandoned encampment was about 45 metres from the bike path and couldn’t be seen until my daughter and I were nearly upon it. Once in full view, my daughter let out a sad whistle. Two tents, one large six-to-eight person and a collapsed four person, were central to a garbage heap. Wooden pallets, chop-shop bike frames and scooters, lines strung between trees, and shopping carts. That’s the easy stuff to haul out. The part that makes you feel like you’re really making a difference. The piles of refuse, the cups, batteries – so many – cards, cutlery, needles, bongs, screws, soaked clothing, slewing toward the river shore like encampment tailings, all had us wondering if this was too much for our first 20-degree day of spring.
The birdsong lured us deeper. A cacophony of mostly redwing blackbirds, but also present were nesting geese, normally skittish wood ducks, and an unhealthy-looking muskrat that peered at us side-eyed not a metre away. Innumerable holes meant more woodland friends. I was angry on their behalf. We’d clean up for them.
We live on the Rideau River. Close enough that its flood waters have lapped against three sides of our house. When I’m not working, you can normally find me on the water paddling, or in it swimming. During winter, I ski and skate on it. I test salt levels for the Ottawa Riverkeeper in the nearby Sawmill Creek. I love the river. Each spring my family cleans up a few encampments that overwintered along its shoreline. If you don’t do it early enough, the geese lose their nesting sites and the understory soon makes for hard garbage picking, so I like to do it in early April before the wind blows more refuse into the waters. This time I recruited my 17-year-old daughter Penny.
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I tell my daughters there could be treasure. This time there was.
It was a big site. One of the worst I’ve encountered, with the exception of the winter a group took over a small island and somehow managed to bring onto it a ride-on lawn mower (it’s still there). That site required the National Capital Commission and the city to step in. But my daughter and I would tackle this one, one bag at a time.
I have a complicated relationship with the unhoused along the river. I can understand the desire to live somewhere quiet. I have compassion for the mix of reasons why they are unhoused in the first place. I really hate the mess they make.
A large, six-to-eight person tent, surrounded by trash, was central to the camp.Michael Stewart/Supplied
So, we hauled and we picked, and we began to learn about the former resident. An encampment is a little like an archeological midden. The contents can teach us. They were biologically female. Young, likely in their early 20s, but maybe as young as 19. We found journals and sketchbooks. We learned their name. They were addicted to drugs but were trying to be safe. Most of the “sharps” were stowed (we use “stick proof” gloves as we clean up). Dozens of surgical gloves and condoms suggested they tried their best. The used Narcan meant they must have had some very scary moments. They liked stuffies, played Magic, Pokémon and Dungeons and Dragons, and could tie a mean knot. By the well-thumbed copy of Little Thieves by Margaret Owen, we share a love of cozy fantasy. Spray painted signs begged for AAA batteries, and they used a lot of them (very hard to pick up, by the way).
After four or five hours of clearing, we finally made it to their garbage heap.
By this time my compassion was waning. I was hungry and tired of encampment smell, a mix of mould and BO (cleaning the tent we wore N95s). I’d nearly been stuck by a loose sharp and my back was sore. I wasn’t excited by the prospect of the garbage within the garbage. But then we found something that changed everything. Amongst the scores of plastic trays of carrot mini-muffins (they either love these or never want to see another one), were bags upon empty bags of wild bird seed. And I realized something. The person who had lived here was here for the same reason I was. The same shared love of the creatures and nature. And, yes, they weren’t able to keep the site clean over their many months of habitation, but they chose to spend scarce money not on drugs, or batteries, or food, but bird seed.
They had brought the birdsong. Along with the nesting geese, the usually skittish wood ducks, and the worse-for-wear muskrat.
Of all the belongings Michael Stewart hauled out of the encampment, it was wild bird seed that caught his attention, and his emotions.Michael Stewart/Supplied
Suddenly, I was accepting that this person had lived here. It’s a special spot full of furred and feathered friends that helped to see them through a miserable winter.
When we were done, we dried out the notebooks and journals. Inside we discovered that they attended college, possibly for design or writing. On the back cover, they had written “I am radiant and fantabulous.” It’s an affirmation I’ve wanted for my own girls. They drew well, hands – famously difficult – and flowers. Their writing was often disjointed and contained warning signs of severe mental health challenges. I soon felt voyeuristic and set their notes aside. The writing, although often lyrical, lacked coherence and in one passage we read seemed to have been written as drugs took hold, with strong flowing script degenerating into chicken scratches that kept going, as if in the hope that the meaning would be clear when they woke to morning birdsong.
I can only imagine the challenges of living with comorbid mental health disorders and addictions while trying to survive. I do know it’s messy. We all need cleaning up after, and I no longer resent it. I didn’t know them, but I can now better see them. The next day I returned to the site for a final pick over. The weather had returned to crisp spring, the air now fresh and clear, rang with birdsong. Maybe they’ll return one day, sit, and, seeing how someone shared their love of birds and the river, they won’t feel so alone.