People are side-eyeing the City of Toronto after a local reverend received a prestigious city award for her book that told the story of the encampment outside of her church, which was later cleared by the city the same week.
Reverend Maggie Helwig, who is the priest-in-charge and rector of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Church, located in Kensington Market, is the co-winner of the 2025 Toronto Book Award for her work Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community.
Helwig, who has written 13 different books, received the award for Encampment at a ceremony on the evening of Oct. 15. The book focuses on the realities experienced by the encampment that was located outside of her church, before it was removed by the city the following day.
She told Now Toronto that an editor at U of T Press first suggested she write about the experiences of people living in the churchyard, but at first she was hesitant.
“Because there’s a real risk of outsiders writing about marginalized people, it can be problematic, it can stereotype. It can be kind of white saviour-ish, it can have all kinds of pitfalls,” she explained.
But the reverend realized she was in a unique position as someone with access to publication and communication resources, as well as someone whom the homeless community entrusted with knowledge of their experiences.
“That position, in a way, gave me some responsibility to try to communicate some of the realities of this world, of this life, to people who really don’t understand.”
She explained that people have been sleeping in the churchyard since the 1990s, but the encampment began to form around the spring of 2022, with the city getting involved in the fall of that year.
The encampment was partially cleared in November 2023. Helwig says at that time, one resident refused to leave the north part of the lawn, and the city opted to not clear that area. Instead, they cleared the south part of the lawn, adding a fence and concrete blocks. Additionally, they left the small amount of land that is owned by the church untouched.
However, this time around, the reverend says things were very different. The church received a notice posted on its door, sharing the encampment in the yard would be cleared due to fire safety concerns.
“The fire marshal claims they were unable to speak to anyone in the church, but our parish administrator was there throughout, and we were open for evening prayer,” Helwig shared.
She says the notice was unspecific as to how much of the encampment had been declared a fire hazard, and it was not until Wednesday at noon that church officials had clarity that the fire marshal was considering the entire encampment to be a fire hazard and insisting it be cleared in its entirety.
She says when the deadline came, the Department of Transportation brought in heavy machinery and removed everything. The inhabitants, by this time, had packed up whatever belongings they could and left, with the church dedicating a room to storing the belongings people couldn’t carry with them.
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUND
Helwig explained that there are many misconceptions about people experiencing homelessness, including that they are unhoused by choice.
“I mean, the main challenge is that there is no housing. You know, we need to get away from this idea that people are living in encampments by choice,” she shared.
“People are living in encampments because there is no housing, and social assistance rates don’t give you any possibility of getting market-rate housing, and affordable and supportive housing is virtually nonexistent.”
Additionally, people are struggling with privacy. Imagine, she says, living your worst possible moments in the public eye.
“Imagine the day when you’re at the end of your resources, you’re fighting with your partner, you can’t cope, and you are maybe turning to alcohol to feel better, which is a thing people do. But imagine that all of that is happening out on the street because you have no private place to be,” she explained.
“None of us is going to look great having our worst day out in public, but people in encampments are judged by that. They are judged by the worst of what people see…. by people watching your worst day and stereotyping you, and coming to conclusions about who you are.”
Another misconception she wants to address is the notion that people are unhoused because they’re using drugs.
“There are unhoused people who are using illicit substances. It tends to be more of a coping strategy for the intolerable conditions of being unhoused than it is the reason that they are unhoused,” she explained, adding that lots of people use drugs and alcohol to cope with life’s stressors, but those with housing have privacy to do so.
CITY SAYS FIRE RISKS WERE THE ISSUE
In a statement to Now Toronto on Monday, the city said Toronto Fire Services (TFS) issued inspection orders for both public and private properties located at 103 Bellevue Ave. on Oct. 14. The orders called for immediate action to address significant fire risk from combustible debris that had accumulated in the encampments beside the church.
City of Toronto spokesperson Elise von Scheel said on Oct. 16, city staff worked to address the encampments, in compliance with the mandatory order from TFS to “ensure the issues were resolved and everyone was kept safe, in alignment with the Council-approved Interdivisional Protocol for Encampments in Toronto.”
Von Scheel says this year, there have been three fires reported in the encampments outside of the church.
But Helwig says when church officials gave out fire extinguishers to residents of the encampment, those extinguishers were confiscated by the city.
When it comes to relocating people sleeping outside of the church, von Scheel says outreach teams offered shelter spaces and homelessness supports to everyone in the encampments at the site. The reverend explained that about half of the encampment residents accepted shelter placements, which is only a temporary solution to a long-term problem.
“Many of them have been in shelter hotels before, and some of them do not find it a tolerable environment. Most people don’t stay in shelter hotels for long. There’s an extremely low bar for eviction,” Helwig explained, adding that not being on-site for bedchecks, bringing food into the shelter, and other small infractions are grounds for eviction.
NO WAY TO RETURN
Since the encampment was removed, Helwig says that city-hired Garda Security vans have been parked across the street from the church 24/7, ensuring no one can return to the site of the former encampment.
“I’m angry because the church is supposed to be a place of sanctuary,” Helwig shared. “Because, you know, technically, the churchyard is city property, but technically, so is every front yard on Bellevue Avenue.”
She says that the space, which has served as a churchyard for over a century, is now a terrible, barren, policed space.
“It is a desecration of sacred space, really. They put up a couple of signs with lists of rules. One of them is, you can’t light a fire. We have lit the sacred fire at Easter in that yard every year. What are we supposed to do now?”
She shared that the church is currently working on finding the former residents of the yard and trying to ensure that they’re in a stable situation.
“We’re trying to figure out if their housing plans are still effective. We’re trying to figure out people’s emotional and physical health,” she explained.
She says that she does not understand why people could not remain outside St. Stephen’s if the church was willing to work with them to mitigate any fire or safety concerns. But that was not an option presented by officials, Helwig explained.
She shared that Toronto officials are keen to talk about methods to stop another encampment from being constructed in the yard, but her team is not particularly interested. She wants to see them address the real issue: a lack of housing.
“The city seems to think that just chasing people around from park to park and yard to yard is going to have some kind of good effect. I think the city needs to be honest that there is no housing.”
But, she says, it’s not just the city’s problem to solve.
“If the province and the federal government do not step in with significant investments to provide affordable and supportive housing, there will be people living on the street, and the city will apparently just chase them up and down the street forever.”
CITY HAS NO ROLE IN SELECTING AWARD WINNER
While Helwig was named the winner of the Toronto Book Award, administered by the City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library, the city says there is no correlation between her advocacy and the removal.
“The City has no role in selecting the winner; the decision is made solely by an independent jury of writers, publishers and literary professionals,” von Scheel said.
“The jury’s decision is based on literary merit and storytelling, not on City policies or current events.”
The reverend believes this.
“It’s a pretty bizarre coincidence, but I believe them that it is because different departments of the city never coordinate with each other,” she shared.
But the jury made a brave decision, she says, by selecting her book for the honour.
“The jury knew that this would be controversial and potentially upsetting to two parts of the city; for sure, it was very brave.”
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