Camping out isn't all fun and games

Posted Feb 2, 2012 By Terry Bush

EMC Editorial -A camper I'm not.

A year and a half spent travelling the wilds of British Columbia and Alberta in my early twenties pretty well cured me of all that camping foolishness. As comfortable as the wooden verandah of the ski school on Vancouver's Mount Seymour may have been for the three months I intermittently squatted there between trips, my semi-homeless days are thankfully long gone. There's a tin shack over Kaladar way whenever a more rustic mood strikes but the comforts of home are truly appreciated.

That said, some of the aforementioned comforts slipped away last Saturday night. And, we barely noticed.

As usual, now that the party days have sadly, (thankfully) come to an end, we were parked in front of the television set in the living room as we usually are on Saturday evenings. The only thing out of the ordinary was a movie had taken the place of the usual hockey fare because of the All-Star break. It's good to even up with the better half occasionally to keep the peace and it's even better when she thinks you're giving something up when you're not.

Then the power went out. Part of Mare's self-imposed job description is to be ready for all eventualities and so she scurried off to light and retrieve her vast candle collection. I went out to get more wood for the fireplace, lit the fire in the woodstove in the garage and we settled in for the evening pioneer style. The flickering candles and the warm glow of the fire had a nice calming effect, something the television definitely lacked. Sitting there, feet up, we felt a whole lot better than we had ten minutes earlier for some reason.

We stayed that way for an hour or so not doing much of anything. And then the power came back on. Talk about a buzz kill. We were overwhelmed by the noise and light so we turned everything off and picked up where we left off doing absolutely nothing but gazing into the flickering flames and shadows.

It wasn't long before the power went off again to a symphony of expiring smoke alarms but we didn't care. Eventually I strapped on a headlamp left over from our trip to the Amazon and we made ourselves something to eat. When the call of nature summoned we just added our two cents worth to the pristine blanket of newly fallen snow outside as the big fluffy flakes hid any evidence of our transgressions. And seeing as neither of us enjoys a toasty bedroom, the lack of an electric furnace for the evening wasn't cause for concern.

When the morning broke and the black faces of the digital clocks alerted us to the fact that the Hydro crews still hadn't solved the problem, we put a pot of water on the woodstove for coffee and continued to enjoy ourselves. Snow was gathered in pots and placed in front of the fireplace. Washing while hovering over a pot of warm water in the bathtub may not have had the revitalizing effect of a good shower but it sufficed. It was all very quaint actually.

At the same time one can't help but wonder how some of our grandparents managed to do this day in and day out. Get up throughout the night every night to throw a couple more sticks of wood into a very inefficient woodstove and then up again at 5:30 to do chores. Feed that woodstove all day long, heat up all your water on the stove and basically work from morning to bedtime to keep everything going smoothly. Sometimes we forget how tough it was just a couple of generations ago and how hard it still is in most of the world and for many in our own country especially this time of year.

Through divorce, abuse, job loss, addiction or mental illness, many find themselves on the street without the basic necessities of life. These folks wouldn't find our sixteen hours without power a quaint experience and many would give anything for the chance to experience a roof over their heads if the only requirement was to work as hard as our grandparents did.

We tend to judge people we see sitting on the street or sleeping on a big city grate without giving a second thought to how that person has ended up there. "Just a bum," we say as we go about our business.

Last weekend a couple hundred people slept out in Belleville's Market Square for the fifth annual "Sleep Out So Others Can Sleep In" event. Another ten raised awareness in Bancroft's first event. Over $13,000 was raised from the two events, money that will be put to good use. Hopefully a few more communities will take up the challenge as well. In a country as rich as ours, nobody should have to sleep out in the cold. People shouldn't be turned away from shelters or transitional housing for lack of space.