Personal Dispatches — November 4, 2026

This morning, I ate pasta salad for breakfast.

I wanted eggs. Toast. Coffee. Something hot.

Instead, I had a chocolate bar, chili and rice, meat sticks, and pasta salad to choose from.

Not exactly the Ritz.

But here’s the remarkable thing.

I actually had a fucking choice.

I could eat whatever I wanted. Whenever I wanted. Or nothing at all.

And I’d woken up naturally.

Not to shelter floodlights or somebody else’s schedule. Just my body deciding it had slept enough.

A grown man, experiencing something approaching childlike enthusiasm and wonder over choosing pasta salad for breakfast.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?

Until you’ve lost the freedom to make those decisions.

Six months ago, I sat in this very same room at the Oasis Inn, writing Nobody Is Coming.

Room 301.

I’d lost my apartment and was trying to understand how my life had come apart.

Then came Richter Street, Bay Avenue, the wheelchair dispute, the loss of my shelter bed, and another hospitalization.

Some good people along the way. Some genuinely difficult circumstances.

And an education in what homelessness takes from you.

In Things I Miss, I wrote about the loss of ordinary decisions. When to bathe. When to rest. Whether I could close a door and be left alone.

There’s a difference between being provided for and being free to live.

Yesterday, after leaving Kelowna General Hospital, I returned to Room 301.

Of all the fucking places.

I lay on the bed and cried.

I’d paid for the room myself. I had no permanent housing arranged, and no certainty about how long I could stay.

But I had a bed. A bathroom. A door I could close.

And nobody telling me where I could put my wheelchair.

For a little while, I could stop.

---

But there’s another lesson in all of this.

I’ve written extensively about what homelessness has taken from me.

My home. My privacy. My independence. My health, in ways I’m still trying to understand.

But what has it given me?

An education I never wanted, in a world I thought I understood.

I’ve met people I might otherwise have walked past. Heard stories I might never have been told. Witnessed extraordinary kindness from people who had almost nothing themselves.

Cruelty, indifference, generosity, humour, resilience, and compassion, sometimes within minutes of one another.

I’ve learned how fragile our assumptions about security really are, and how little we sometimes understand about the lives unfolding around us.

None of that makes homelessness a gift.

I wouldn’t recommend it as a fucking educational program.

But I can’t deny what the experience has taught me.

Or the people it’s brought into my life.

Homelessness didn’t give me wisdom. People gave me reasons to question what I thought I knew.

And lately, more people have been showing up.

The outpouring of positivity and support surrounding these dispatches has been genuinely humbling.

Michelle Hewitt, whom I met at the Pandosy Waterfront election event, offered to help follow up on applications and inquiries.

Not take over. Not tell me what to do.

Just help carry some of the weight.

Vincent Jones raised questions about how institutions measure success.

We count hospital beds, shelter beds, discharges, and referrals.

But what happens afterward?

Does someone have somewhere safe to sleep? Can they manage their health? Can their wheelchair get through the door?

Or have we simply moved them from one organization’s responsibility into somebody else’s uncertainty?

Even the smallest comments have made me reconsider what I’ve said, what I’ve thought, and what I’ve done.

Whether I’ve been fair. Whether I’ve understood something correctly. Whether there’s another perspective I haven’t considered.

And that’s important.

Because these stories aren’t just about me. They’re about all of us.

---

I’ve been thinking about a painting.

In January 2022, I interviewed documentary filmmaker and adaptive surfer Murray Siple for All Access Pass on CiTR 101.9 FM in Vancouver.

Murray directed Carts of Darkness, a documentary about homelessness, survival, and people whose lives are too easily overlooked.

During our conversation, he spoke about people not knowing he had painted.

Something about that stayed with me.

One afternoon, I went out and bought paints.

No expectations. No grand artistic ambition. No idea what I was doing.

I simply started playing with pigment.

And something happened.

I created a painting.

Not because somebody taught me how. Not because I’d set out to become an artist.

Because I’d listened to another human being, and something in his experience had opened a door in mine.

Years later, I’m looking at that painting again.

Mountains. A turbulent sky. A brilliant sun. Earthy colours worked into a rough, visibly woven canvas.

And I’m wondering.

Who is the artist?

The person who places the pigment on the canvas?

The person who wove the fibres? The hands that built the frame? The people who collected the minerals, prepared the pigments, made the brushes?

What about the person who taught the painter to see?

Or the people whose lives inspired the painting in the first place?

We might sign one name in the corner.

But how many people helped make that painting possible?

Perhaps that’s what these dispatches are becoming.

I may be the one holding the brush, but the canvas belongs to far more people than me.

The people I’ve met in shelters. The healthcare workers. The strangers on the street. Those who’ve helped, those who’ve challenged me, and even those whose decisions have caused harm.

The readers who question what I’ve written and make me look again.

Each leaves something on the canvas.

Sometimes they change the picture entirely.

And sometimes, simply listening to someone else opens a door you never knew existed.

---

Yesterday, I met a man named Cubby.

His legs were severely twisted, and he propelled himself in a hospital-style wheelchair using a crutch like a kayak paddle.

We talked about finding ways through difficult circumstances.

And something about that conversation has stayed with me.

We don’t always get the outcomes we want.

Sometimes we simply figure out how to get through another day.

Sometimes through determination. Sometimes through sheer stubbornness.

And sometimes because somebody else offers to help.

I keep thinking about climbing a mountain.

Not the beautiful summit photograph.

The climb.

Your legs burning. Your lungs burning like knives cutting through each alveolus.

Your nostrils raw. Your mouth so dry it feels stuck shut, your tongue dragging against your teeth.

The last moisture on your brow running down your face.

Your muscles screaming.

Another breath. Another step.

Eventually, you’re no longer thinking about the scenery.

You’re just trying to survive.

Then the ground levels.

You lift your head.

The sky. The distant mountains. The landscape stretching beneath you.

All that distance travelled.

You know there’s a descent ahead. More mountains waiting.

But holy fuck.

Look at that view.

---

Maybe that’s what this morning has been.

The summit of a very small mountain.

A cheap motel room. Pasta salad for breakfast. A little privacy.

And the realization that the world isn’t entirely made up of unanswered phone calls and institutional indifference.

I’m still homeless. My medical challenges remain. My finances are uncertain.

I shouldn’t have had to lose my shelter bed to experience these ordinary freedoms. And the kindness of individuals doesn’t excuse the failures of institutions.

But I refuse to let everything that’s wrong prevent me from recognizing what’s right.

People are listening. Questioning. Offering to help.

And making me question myself.

This isn’t simply my story of climbing a mountain.

It’s about everyone climbing their own.

Some carrying burdens we can see. Others carrying things we’ll never know about.

Some struggling alone because nobody has noticed. Others surviving because someone finally did.

And maybe the most important thing isn’t reaching the summit.

Maybe it’s recognizing the person struggling a few steps behind us.

Or remembering the one who helped us get this far.

I’m tired. Really fucking tired.

I want to sleep.

Yet here I am, sitting in a comfortable motel room, writing about what it feels like to finally be able to rest.

Maybe that’s the journalist in me.

Maybe I’m too stubborn to stop.

Or maybe I’m beginning to understand that the painting will never really be finished.

There will always be another brushstroke. Another perspective. Another story that changes what we thought we were looking at.

For now, the bed is waiting.

And for once, I get to decide when to use it.

Tomorrow might be another climb.

But right now, I’m sitting at the top of a very small mountain, looking out at everything we’ve come through.

And the view was never mine alone.

---

Featured artwork: Original painting by Randy Millis.

Related interview: All Access Pass, Season 7, Episode 7 — Murray Siple, originally aired January 26, 2022, on CiTR 101.9 FM.

Original interview: All Access Pass — Murray Siple, January 26, 2022⁠. Murray’s remarks are paraphrased pending verification against the recording.

Editor’s Note — November 4, 2026, 2:53 p.m.

After publishing this dispatch, I returned to my January 26, 2022, All Access Pass interview with Murray Siple on CiTR 101.9 FM and found the conversation that inspired my painting.

Murray described travelling to Mexico to write a book, becoming restless, buying house paint, and experimenting with murals. When he shared his work, people were surprised to discover he painted. Murray admitted he hadn’t known he painted either.

That stayed with me.

Sometime afterward, I went out, bought paints, and began experimenting with pigment. No expectations. No particular ambition. Just curiosity.

And I discovered something about myself that I hadn’t known.

It’s a small but important clarification to this story. Murray didn’t teach me to paint. He didn’t even suggest that I should.

He simply shared his experience.

And without knowing it, he helped change mine.

Original interview: All Access Pass — Murray Siple, January 26, 2022⁠

Related documentary: Carts of Darkness — Murray Siple, National Film Board of Canada

Murray’s documentary follows men experiencing homelessness who collect bottles and race shopping carts down the hills of North Vancouver. It’s a remarkable exploration of people, adversity, freedom, and the lives that exist beyond our assumptions.

Revisiting Murray’s work and our conversation has reminded me how profoundly documentary storytelling can influence the way we see other people—and sometimes ourselves.