E V I C A C A T I O N

Find out what it means to me.

E-V-I-C-A-C-A-T-I-O-N.

Sock it to me.
Sock it to me.
Sock it to me.

Meet Sneaker.

Sneaker the turtle lives in a lobby aquarium at the Oasis Inn in Kelowna.

He was named by a three-year-old kid sometime around 2010, and somehow the name stuck for fifteen years.

Tonight Sneaker is silently drifting through his tank observing:
families,
tourists,
construction workers,
pool kids,
and one exhausted journalist accidentally living through what I’ve started calling an Evicacation.

And honestly?

He may currently be handling things better than I am.

Live from the Oasis Inn pool deck.

The clouds are rolling in now.

The pool lights are glowing electric blue against the darkening sky, and the whole place has this strange peaceful energy tonight. Not luxury. Not resort life. Just… calm enough to breathe for a minute.

There’s a young family here with a tiny little baby. Bright-eyed little guy. Kept staring at me earlier like he was trying to figure out what exactly I was.

Which honestly is fair.

Because from the outside I probably looked like some exhausted half-broken guy sitting poolside in a wheelchair talking into his phone while trying to emotionally process:
hospitalization,
eviction,
government bureaucracy,
mobility failure,
and a turtle named Sneaker.

And honestly?

That’s pretty much exactly what was happening.

The Evicacation officially began when my housing situation collapsed almost simultaneously with my body deciding:

“Yeah, we’re done here.”

Hospital.
Severe dehydration.
Critically low magnesium.
Pain.
Respiratory symptoms.
Hands going numb.
Exhaustion so deep I could barely think straight.

And somehow the expectation immediately became:

“Please continue functioning as a fully operational citizen while navigating twelve disconnected systems simultaneously.”

Need emergency shelter support?

Excellent.

Please:
fill out forms,
upload PDFs,
get hotel quotes,
coordinate transit,
navigate shelters,
translate ministry requirements,
translate hotel requirements,
wheel around the city,
compete against strangers for rooms,
and somehow remain emotionally regulated through all of it.

Simple.

And before you even speak to a human being, the system starts talking to you.

Over.
And over.
And over again.

“Please note that abuse directed towards any member of our staff will not be tolerated and may result in termination of your call.”

Again.

“Please note abusive language and behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Again.

“Thank you for your patience.”

Again.

“The estimated wait time is 25 minutes.”

Again.

Like the system fundamentally assumes desperation naturally escalates toward aggression.

Not:
“Are you safe?”
Not:
“Do you have somewhere to sleep tonight?”
Not:
“What happened to you?”

First comes the warning.

And honestly that says something bigger about institutional poverty in Canada right now.

Because more and more, support systems increasingly feel less like support and more like behavioural containment infrastructure.

At one point today I was explaining to the Ministry of Social Development that physically wheeling myself around Kelowna while coughing up my lungs and losing feeling in my fingers maybe wasn’t the world’s strongest stabilization plan.

And honestly?

The ministry worker herself actually sounded decent.

Human.
Grounded.
Trying.

But the system itself feels like it was designed by committees that rarely interact directly with exhausted people in real crisis.

Not really.

Not beyond policy language.
Not beyond forms.
Not beyond theoretical accessibility.

Because if they had, somebody might’ve realized that:
“two nights in a hotel then shelter”
is not actually stabilization for somebody recovering from hospitalization while using a wheelchair and struggling to physically propel themselves around the city.

Somebody might’ve realized accessibility buttons should actually function.

Somebody might’ve realized wet hands and wheelchair rims don’t mix.

Somebody might’ve realized maybe don’t design bathrooms that feel like intake processing at a provincial corrections facility.

At one point I remember thinking:

“Why doesn’t the ministry just call the hotel directly?”

Instead I somehow became the exhausted middle-management layer connecting:
government bureaucracy,
hotel administration,
public transit,
mobility logistics,
and my own collapsing nervous system.

Meanwhile the hotel owner — whose English wasn’t perfect — somehow understood the assignment faster than everybody else.

I emailed him the request.

A while later I got possibly the greatest sentence ever written during the entire Evicacation:

“Kindly see this on attachment.”

And somehow?

That solved more problems than half the institutional infrastructure I dealt with today.

The Oasis isn’t fancy.

Parking lot’s cracked.
Rooms are older.
It’s not the Hilton.

But honestly?

They’ve fixed the place up pretty nicely.

There’s flowers everywhere.
A communal barbecue.
Families hanging around.
Kids swimming.
Plants around the courtyard.
The pool lights at night actually look kind of beautiful.

It doesn’t feel nearly as rundown as it used to years ago.

And weirdly?

That matters emotionally when your whole life suddenly turns into survival logistics.

The family that owns the place has apparently had it for over thirty years.

And honestly?

That tracks.

Because despite the age of the property, there’s still this sense that actual human beings run it.

And when I started explaining all the ministry paperwork and shelter supplement chaos to the clerk, she just sighed knowingly:

“Oh yes yes…”

Not dismissive.

Not annoyed.

The sigh of somebody who has clearly watched exhausted people arrive carrying their lives in bags for decades.

And then there’s Sneaker.

Sneaker the Turtle.

Lobby aquarium resident.
Calm observer of human chaos.
Floating witness to the Evicacation.

The clerk told me Sneaker was named by her grandson when he was three years old.

That grandson is eighteen now.

Sneaker himself is apparently around fifteen.

So somewhere around 2010 a three-year-old kid saw this tiny sneaky turtle silently gliding around an aquarium and basically decided:

“Yep. That’s Sneaker.”

And somehow the name stuck.

Honestly?

That makes him even more legendary.

And sneaky is exactly the right word for him too.

You look away for two seconds and suddenly he’s silently repositioned himself somewhere else in the tank like a tiny reptilian submarine.

Just drifting around the lobby observing generations of stressed-out humans checking in and out of life situations.

Families.
Road trips.
Construction workers.
Pool kids.
Tourists.
Exhausted journalists on accidental Evicacations.

Sneaker has seen some things.

And honestly, tonight I kind of relate to him.

Quiet.
Tired.
Floating through institutional chaos.
Trying not to get scooped out of the tank by the universe.

Meanwhile outside the aquarium:
the ministry says two hotel nights counts as stabilization,
my wheelchair caster tried to assassinate me in traffic,
and the food crisis request got denied because apparently I had already experienced enough crisis earlier this month.

So I guess we won’t be eating steak tonight with that fifty bucks I asked for.

Which honestly sounds absurd when you say it out loud.

Like there’s apparently an administratively acceptable monthly crisis quota.

Congratulations citizen.
You have already reached your maximum emergency allocation for May.

Please try suffering again next month.

And somehow in the middle of all that, humanity kept leaking through the cracks all day long.

At one point on the bus I started talking to some school kids.

One kid told me he played trumpet.

I asked:
“So what’d you learn in school today?”

And he said something about learning he wasn’t using the trumpet properly.

Then he told me he wanted to become a rap producer.

And my exhausted magnesium-depleted brain immediately heard:

“Rap trumpet.”

And suddenly I could hear it.

Boom bap trumpet loops.
Transit percussion.
Wheelchair hip-hop.

Something about the way he said it made me start bobbing my head.

Then he started bobbing his head.

Then suddenly we’re riffing rhythms back and forth on a city bus while I’m running entirely on stress chemicals, government paperwork, and beef stew.

And at one point I started freestyling:

“All the people to the back of the bus…
Back of the bus…
Back of the bus…”

Then:

“All the people to the back of the bus…
Don’t make a fuss…
Just back of the bus…
So I can make room to get off…”

Because I need to turn wide.

And because right now I can’t turn right very well.

And suddenly the whole back of the bus is laughing.

Smiles everywhere.

Not laughing at me.

Laughing with me.

Laughing because for a few minutes everything became playful instead of terrifying.

And the trumpet kid’s eyes just light up.

Like:
“Yeah! Yeah!”

Like he could suddenly hear the beat too.

Like a little creative switch flipped on in his brain right there on Kelowna Transit.

And for a few seconds…

The Evicacation disappeared.

Which honestly mattered more than people probably realize.

Because the official crisis-management plan I was basically given today was:

“Okay we can maybe do two nights in a hotel… then you’ll need to go to shelter.”

Shelter.

While:
recovering from hospitalization,
using a wheelchair,
dealing with respiratory symptoms,
hands going numb,
and physically struggling to propel myself around the city.

And somehow in the middle of all that, a bus full of strangers ended up creating the most emotionally normal moment of the entire day.

Not the institutions.

Not the systems.

The people.

Then later a woman on the bus proudly unveiled her Happy Slice pizza like she was presenting Renaissance artwork.

Actually took it out and showed it to me.

And honestly?

It looked incredible.

That’s the weird thing about days like this.

Humanity keeps punching through the cracks in the system.

But physically?

Today was rough.

My wheelchair is not rolling properly anymore.

The chair itself isn’t old.
I think the caster bearings are binding up again.

Today it got bad enough that I actually had to physically push myself downhill because the chair didn’t even want to coast naturally anymore.

And then came the moment that honestly scared me most.

I was going downhill in a bike lane I’ve used countless times before when the chair suddenly hard-locked sideways.

Instantly.

Violently.

The chair jerked left and threw me toward the middle of the road.

And if traffic had been there at the wrong second?

I probably would’ve been hit today.

No exaggeration.

And the weird part is your brain just absorbs it into the day.

“Yep. Almost died. Anyway…”

Then you continue to the ministry office.

And the ministry bathroom?

It had all the charm of a prison bathroom.

Bright lights.
Grey epoxy floors.
Grey walls.
Metal bars.
Institutional silence.

And then this absolutely insane sign on the door:

“5 MIN TIME LIMIT!!
WARNING WILL BE GIVEN THEN SECURITY WILL ENTER!”

Which is objectively hilarious when you use a wheelchair because literally everything takes longer.

Position chair.
Transfer.
Adjust clothing.
Move carefully.
Wash hands.

And then comes the next problem.

The automatic accessibility buttons didn’t work.

Not the upper one.
Not the lower one you can supposedly hit with your foot from chair height.

Neither.

Completely dead.

Which honestly feels like the perfect metaphor for institutional accessibility.

There’s a button.
There’s signage.
There’s compliance.

But the actual functionality?

Good luck.

And then comes the next problem.

The hand dryer.

Mounted somewhere apparently designed for six-foot-tall standing people with orangutan arms.

Because from wheelchair height you can barely even reach the damn thing properly.

So instead of confidently drying my hands like a functioning adult citizen, I’m sitting there awkwardly air-drying my hands like a surgeon waiting to enter an operating room.

Because if your hands are wet, you can’t properly grip wheelchair rims.

That’s not philosophy.

That’s physics.

Wet hands slide.

So there I am in this prison-energy accessibility washroom trying to regain enough traction to physically move myself back out the door before Security breaches the bathroom like I’ve barricaded myself inside a federal compound.

And yes, I immediately started joking with myself:

“If this guy walks in while I’m on the toilet maybe I’ll ask him to wipe my ass too.”

“Sorry sir. Mobility issue. Maybe give me another ten minutes.”

Dark humour becomes survival equipment during the Evicacation.

And honestly the most absurd part?

The room technically is accessible.

Grab bars.
Push button.
Transfer space.

Somebody somewhere proudly checked an accessibility compliance box.

But technically accessible and practically humane are not the same thing.

And that realization honestly applies to almost everything right now.

Housing.
Transit.
Shelters.
Government systems.
Healthcare.

Everything technically functions.

Until an actual exhausted human being has to use it.

And honestly?

If Craig and Melissa hadn’t been helping me today with traction power and hills and logistics and physically getting around, I don’t know how I would’ve managed.

That’s the reality underneath all this.

I’m exhausted.
I’m physically struggling.
I’m scared about what happens if the room falls through.

But somehow…

I’m still noticing people.

Still joking.
Still talking to strangers.
Still vibing with trumpet kids.
Still feeding turtles.
Still sitting by glowing pool water under storm clouds.

And somehow underneath all of this…

…I started writing again.

Not emails.
Not technical notes.
Not legal filings.

Stories.

Feature stories.

The kind of writing I always loved most.

And maybe that’s the strangest part of the whole Evicacation.