From encampment to housing: Shelter says one man's journey shows what's possible

It'd been several weeks since Nicholas Singcaster had heard from Conrad Tremblay, the 62-year-old unhoused man he had been visiting at a camp on a small patch of grass between a railway and a bike path. 

They'd missed each other a few times. Plus, Singcaster was getting ready for the winter ahead with the mobile clinic he runs for the Old Brewery Mission, one of Montreal's biggest homeless shelters. 

As an outreach worker for the shelter, Singcaster had met Tremblay last summer, a few months after the clinic launched. It was created in response to the growing number of homeless people in the city, which by some estimates doubled during the pandemic. The lack of space in shelters has meant many are having to sleep in the street or in camps like Tremblay's.

"We decided to reach out to people instead of waiting for them to come to us," Singcaster said.

He'd grown attached to the chatty man with the organized tent, regularly making visits to check up on him. 

Tremblay spent three winters living outside and had figured out all the ways of making doing so possible. His setup included a barbecue, a clothesline, an insulated tarp, a drainage ditch; meticulously placed items sat on top of a bookshelf next to his mattress propped up by milk cartons. 

He regularly cooked for encampment neighbours, unhoused friends, and when CBC visited him last September, was letting one of those friends, Geneviève, sleep in his tent. Every night, to pay for food and supplies, he set off on his bike and found aluminum cans in people's trash.

Singcaster helped Tremblay with other things: filing paperwork and taxes. The kinds of things that take a backseat to surviving; the kinds of things needed to get back into housing. And that's what was next on Singcaster's list for Tremblay: finding him a new home.

"You're not spending another winter here," he'd told a skeptical Tremblay. 

So when the first big snowfall hit in November, he drove up to the dead-end road leading to the overpass near the camp to see how his friend was doing. When he walked over, the tent was caved in.

Singcaster rushed over, worried Tremblay was pinned underneath the snow, but his neighbour said Tremblay had been taken away in an ambulance after a cardiac issue. Singcaster called a few hospitals, finding him at the Jewish General and in a bad way.

On top of the heart problems, Tremblay had developed a serious leg infection from a fall on a rusty piece of metal. His leg was operated on and then his heart to repair an arrhythmia. In all, he spent three months in hospital. 

He told Singcaster he didn't want to go back to the camp. "This is it," he'd said. "Find me a place. I'm ready."

Singcaster got to work. He enlisted Tremblay into the Mission's housing program, which located two possible units he could stay in, overseen by landlords willing to participate. As it turned out, Tremblay was a good candidate for a rent subsidy since most of his affairs were in order.