A rugged-looking man of medium build wearing a reflective vest, a baseball cap and riding a bicycle while towing a small cycling trailer, pedals along in the rain and pulls up to a homeless encampment on Victoria Street, not far from Barrie’s downtown.
He greets members of the New Life Fellowship Baptist Church, a congregation based in Innisfil who are in the midst of setting up a folding table where they will be laying out containers of food and drinks for the inhabitants of the homeless camp tucked away under the tall trees nearby.
The man offers advice and asks about clothing and other supplies they have brought with them.
His name is Greg and he's 55 years old. He didn't want to provide his last name.
His mission at this stage of his life seems to be to spearhead a lot of the outreach efforts on the ground when it comes to finding and supplying the city's unhoused residents with whatever it is they need — whether it be clothing, a tent to sleep in, shoes or toiletries.
If anyone needs anything at all to survive on the streets, Greg is usually the one who is able to find it and deliver it, no questions asked.
BarrieToday first spoke with him at the end of May, just after a heavy downpour. Greg was trying to dry out supplies of clothing beside the tent where he lives in another encampment closer to downtown.
Born and raised in Barrie, Greg says he worked in a local factory for 29 years before retiring early. He became separated from his wife, and ended up homeless and penniless.
While on the street, he started an outreach effort with the local Salvation Army. After a while, Greg started running outreach himself. He began collecting food and giving it to the organization.
He says he had "all kinds of people" helping him with it at the Salvation Army.
Meanwhile, Rev. Christine Nayler, of Ryan’s Hope, was using her organization to get food to the homeless.
“She wondered why I was taking so much food all the time and she asked me to start her outreach,” Greg tells BarrieToday. “So I went to work with her and my people followed."
From there, he went to New Life church after they asked him to help train them with their burgeoning outreach program.
Greg is self-taught when it comes to his outreach skills and experience.
“If you don’t know the streets, you could get yourself hurt,” he says. “You don’t know the people and they don’t know you. And if you are stepping on their grounds, you could get hurt.
"It’s not that they want to hurt you, it's a defence mechanism. They are protecting the only thing they have.”
Greg says people living on the street get robbed nightly, sometimes.
“They go to sleep and, boom, everything they own is gone.”
His efforts have created a logistical problem, which is mostly one of available storage space. Greg uses a storage unit for his supplies.
“All this stuff here can go in an instant and I’ll have to start over again. I’ve started over 15 or 16 times,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.
At this point in the conversation, a 20-something woman shows up and climbs into one of the tents Greg has. He says she had been missing for a while, before he found her again. There was worry she was caught up in human trafficking, but thankfully that was not the case.
She arrives to get some things from Greg’s stockpile, mostly clothing and footwear.
“Somebody’s down that way setting up a new tent,” she tells him.
“OK, maybe I’ll go down.” he replies. “I found some shoes, they're right there in this bag. Really snazzy-ass shoes, too.”
Many of the tents scattered around the city come from Scouts Canada, Greg says.
“They send them here, bits and pieces. I’ve got to figure out which tent is keepable and what isn’t," he adds.
Greg himself doesn’t have much in the way of belongings, mostly just outreach supplies. His tent is packed full, leaving just enough room for him to sleep.
He also rescues clothing from all over town.
“I’ll pick them up and take them to a laundry on Thursdays,” he says. “Everyone is allowed four loads for household. I’ll do like 12 and I’ll use that whole laundromat at once, myself. And I do it every week.”
Greg describes a situation where one man had gotten a job, but ran into a problem.
“He was so happy with himself, (but) the only thing holding him back was a pair of work boots. It was 4 p.m., he needed them by six in the morning. He got them. A brand-new pair of work boots from Cookstown Outlet Mall. I had to call through Busby," he says.
Greg says he also has a footwear rescue at one of the shoe stores in town, but wishes he could be cut out of the transaction.
“Why can’t they just walk outside once in a while and look out in front and see somebody with holey shoes and just give them a pair of shoes,” he laments. “I’m going to do it anyway. Why doesn’t the store just do it?"
Greg admits he's no shoe salesman, but with the experience he has rummaging through shoes and getting them to those who need them, he says he can tell somebody’s size pretty close.
“(But) it’s hard to get 13s, the most difficult size to get," he says.
There are certain people he has on record in regard to sizes of clothes, as well as their likes and dislikes.
“We have pre-made bags now for certain people,” Greg says. “You have to. I’ve given somebody clothes one night and the next night they’re shoeless. And shouldn’t be.”
Greg’s outreach work is a 24-hour-a-day job.
So what drives him to do this?
“If I don’t, then I start thinking, and when you start thinking, it’s not good sometimes. ‘What are you doing?’ And you end up like the guy behind you,” he explains.
“I don’t want my kids to look in the newspaper and say, there’s my dad. He’s homeless.”
Greg says he needed to be on the street.
“Because I had to become part of the homeless (community) to get into their trust, so I could help them. Help the people that don’t want the help from the outside, but they need the help. So, I can help from within,” he adds.
“And I can bring more people in that are more qualified than I am to assist the people in need. So, if there’s someone that really needs to go to detox, I’ll have them there in 24 hours flat. One of the churches I work with, they’ll do everything in their power to help you get there.”
Greg says many people get to that last step and they pull back out.
“The church is realizing, and I told them, I said, 'Rehab, I’ve been there, I’ve done it.' It took me three go’s in it. It takes people a lot to go to rehab, never mind stay there. It might take three times until they get comfortable, to know what they are doing and what they are in for.”
He's unsure of exactly how many people he helps in the community.
“Everyone I know. Every encampment that I know of, and I know most of them,” Greg says.
“Some of them are just outside of town, and some of them are people that don’t want to be in civilization. They come out once a month on payday, do their shopping and go back. They don’t want anything to do with today’s world. Fair enough. They don’t want us going in. There’s certain camps I can go into and nobody else can, just because they don’t want people to know where they are.”
He doesn’t question anyone about why they’re homeless or why they’re living in the local encampments.
“If they want to tell me, they tell me. I don’t pry into their business. Sometimes it takes about a month, then they’ll come and talk to me,” Greg says.
He describes an experience recently, which all too often is part of his daily struggles trying to help homeless people keep going after setbacks sink them deeper in despair.
“There was a fire down here and I got a call at around 5:30 in the morning, so I went down, because I personally know the people. I spent the day trying to rifle through (the woman’s) stuff. They had enough clothing to cover them both, and they are back to normal again.”
Greg says they were housed, up until a month or two ago, before they found themselves living in an encampment.
“It was just one strike of bad luck. She didn’t work (and her partner) did, then he couldn’t. So then they were done. They couldn’t pay the rent.”
“I don’t know how people do it,” he says of renters. “You seriously have to have a two-income household, and even then rent is more expensive than a mortgage, because rents I’m seeing now, because when I doubled up my mortgage when I did own a house, it wasn’t as much as rent is (now).”
The young woman is still in the tent, rummaging for things and asks about nail polish.
Greg answers: “I might have clearcoat ... metallic red, blue and maybe yellow. You’ll have to let me find it because I moved everything out of that tent, and I can’t find anything.”
This is just one reason why he needs to get a bigger tent, “so when I go in there I can find the women’s hygiene stuff,” he says, as supplies are piled along the different walls.
Greg says he's thankful for many businesses who are generous and offer help, such as a Shoppers Drug Mart in Alcona.
“They're a good source of donations, best one I’ve ever seen,” he exclaims.
“I think it’s once a week they go through their shelves, and anything that’s about to expire, even jewelry if it’s too dusty, I think she throws it in there, too,” Greg says. “The girls like it. They need their makeup. And colouring books — you wouldn’t think it, but they like colouring, painting, with markers, pencil crayons, everything.”
One wonders how long Greg can keep up this pace of work while living outside in the elements.
“I’ve been trying to find a place for over a year and I can’t even get into this building here,” he says as he points to a multi-storey apartment building next to the encampment.
“And I don’t know why. I’ve tried four times. I’ve sent in an application. I don’t even get a reply. They have a low-rental there and I want it. It’s still available and it’s perfect for what I need."
He also wishes he could relax and lay on a bed, “not having your back being blown out, and to have a shower. And not to be woken up in the morning by a phone. It’s constant. Non-stop,” he says.
Greg says he once lived on North Street in a ground-floor apartment, where he brought in his supplies and distributed it to the needy.
“It was like a drive-thru. I would be getting all the rescues (supplies) delivered right to me,” he says. “As they came in, I rotated them with my stock. Half my room was storage for the outreach. The fridges and stuff. It would be in one day and then out the next.”
The young woman pipes up again: “Do you have any electrical tape?”
The interview ends and Greg is left to go back to doing what he does best — finding, fixing and helping outfit his community with whatever it is they need.
And they need a lot.
