Make Affluence History

Eventual winners, "Team Body Battle" prepare at the starting point. "Team Body Battle" finished the course in 20 hours.

The teams set off at the start line

One participant gets stuck in the mud.

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

Trailwalker markers along the path ensured that no one got lost.

Crossing the finish line, olympic curlers, Brent Laing and Craig Savill, used Trailwalkers as part of their training for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

Approaching the finish line!

Exhausted participants approaching the Finish line.

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

Oxfam Canada Trailwalker 2009

The last team crosses the finish line

Participants celebrate their acheivements after crossing the finish line.

"My name is Chris, I've been sitting in the rain here for three hours." Chris has been living on the streets for two years since loosing his job after injuring his back. He worked as a furniture mover, but because his employment was "under the table," he is not eligible for workers compensation. Because of his back injury he is unable to find work and has to live on the streets and pan-handle to get by. "If I had any other option, I wouldn't be sitting in the rain at night in the winter."

S.T. (who asked me not to use his real name) has been on disabilities since he was 18 years old for his heart problems, weight problems and breathing problems. He uses an old respirator here to catch his breath after climbing the stairs to get to his small apartment. Because of his health problems, he is unable to find employment “I would love to get a job and everything else, but I am not capable because of the sickness in my body and people don’t understand that.” The small amount he does get from disabilities is just enough to cover the rent for his room, but after paying his rent he is left with just $250 a month to survive on. Most of this $250 has to cover his hydro bills and whatever is left goes to food, as a result he often has to turn to the streets to panhandle for enough money to put food in his fridge.

S.T. looks in his empty fridge. After paying his rent, there is very little left over to spend on food and other necessities. “How can a person survive on $250 a month with the cost of living in Toronto? And every year the rent goes up!” S.T. asks. “But I’m not the only one. There are hundreds of other people out there like me going through the same thing. I know a lot of people who get disability and have to pay high rent and do the same thing I’m doing. But I believe that if enough people speak out like I do, housing will definitely come down in price. Something just has to be done. There should be more low-income housing, the rent in Toronto shouldn’t be as high as it is; people like me don’t deserve this.”

A delegation of government housing tenants along with members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) came together to attend the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) board of directors meeting. Their goal was for tenants to voice their complaints directly to the board of directors regarding the deplorable living conditions in government housing. They brought with them a compilation of about fifty reports on the conditions in different tenant’s homes.

Val is a tenant of the Toronto Community Housing. Val has lived in government housing for 19 years. Over this period, she says, conditions have steadily gotten worse and worse. This is Val's apartment, where she has baskets and carpets tacked onto the walls to hide the crumbling paint. She describes herself, with a dry sense of humour, as the curator of the 'Tack Art Gallery.'

This is Val's bedroom, where she has baskets and carpets tacked onto the walls to hide the crumbling paint. The whole building is in terrible condition, there are holes in the ceilings, plaster walls are crumbling, carpets are stained and moldy, garbage collects in the halls, and the building is infested with vermin. Val says she does not feel safe in the building as there have been a number of shootings and recently a woman was raped in the laundry room.

M.L (who asked me not to use her real name) is a tenant of the Toronto Community Housing. M.L. is well educated and has a professional background but is now disabled and has arthritis, she is in constant pain despite being on numerous medications and painkillers. As a result, she is unable to find employment and is now completely dependent on community housing for her survival. "As bad as it is here,” she says, “the only other option for me is the street - I’d die."

M.L.'s balcony is completely infested by Pigeons. It is completely covered with eggs, feathers, and feces. There are baby pigeons nesting there and countless eggs, both hatched and unhatched. The TCHC has told her to clean it up herself, but she not physically able to because of her health problems."I just want to be able to grow a little garden out there," she says holding back tears of frustration, "I've tried cleaning it up myself but I break down in pain every time and they just keep coming back! I don't know what to do."

Many of the tennants in this Toronto Community Housing building have taped up the cracks around their doorways to prevent mice and bugs from entering their apartments.

Barbara is another tenant of Toronto Community Housing. After growing up in Jamaica, where she was friends with Bob Marley, Barbara moved to Canada and started a promising career in early childhood development. But Barbara lost the job she loved when Mike Harris’ government cut funding for a wide range of social programs. Barbara managed to find a job working in a big chain grocery store where she injured her back lifting boxes. Because of this injury, and the resulting health problems, she is unable to find employment now and has had to move her entire life and all her belongings into this one room apartment. For years now she has been fighting with Toronto Community Housing to have her transferred to another apartment where she can actually fit all her belongings, but the waiting list for community housing in Toronto currently stands at an astonishing 70 000 and many people have been waiting for decades.

Nancy Baker at the Homeless Memorial at the Church of the Holy Trinity near the Eaton Centre. Here she sits in front of a sign that reminds us that that we best not forget that any one of us could find ourselves loosing control over our lives. Her boyfriend was one of the hundreds of people who have died on the streets of Toronto.

Members and supporters of the Women Against Poverty Coalition (WAPC) leave flowers just outside the entrance to the Yonge-Bloor subway station in the memory of 33-year-old Bly Markis. Bly was brutally beaten and killed nearby. Bly had worked as a massage therapist in California before moving back home to Toronto. Back in Toronto, she was unable to get the proper paperwork together to allow her to continue her profession. With mounting personal and professional problems, Bly found herself living on the streets where she eventually met her killer. Bly, affectionately known as "California," was well-known and well-liked in the community and was working hard to put her life back together.

Candles are lit in the memory of those who have died on the streets of Toronto.

About 20 to 30 people spent the night on the doorsteps of Toronto's City Hall in solidarity with the homeless men, women, and children across the city. Participants were demanding that the City make a clear plan to end the housing crisis in Toronto.

After being turned away by Police for trying to break into the abandoned building behind him, an anti-poverty activist shouts out to the crowd surrounding this abandoned building. Organised by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), housing activists attempted to enter abandoned buildings in Toronto in order to convert them into affordable housing to alleviate the growing housing problem in the city. They were met with resistance from dozens of Police officers who were under strict orders to defend these abandoned buildings, located in the wealthy High Park neighborhood.

These housing activists were were met with resistance from dozens of Police officers who were under strict orders to defend these abandoned properties located in the wealthy High Park neighborhood. Tempers flared on both sides and many of the participants accused the police of being overly aggressive. Some of the demonstrators pointed out the irony of the fact that their tax dollars were being used to pay police forces to "protect" these abandoned buildings, rather than on providing viable alternatives for poor people living on the streets.

after forcing anti-poverty activists away from this abandoned building, police officers stand guard to keep the activists away.

after being forced away from the abandoned buildings by police the anti-poverty activists marched to Mayor David Miller's residence nearby. Here, they are gathered on Miller's doorstep shouting angrily about the Mayor's lack of interest in alleviating the growing housing problems in Toronto.

The Women Against Poverty Collective (WAPC) organized a housing takeover of an abandoned building in downtown Toronto. WAPC is a group of women and trans people who are working together to advocate for safe, affordable and accessible housing for women experiencing violence. A small group of women broke into the building before demonstrations began, and before police could find out which building would be targeted. Police surrounded the building with the women inside. “We’ve learned through history that sometimes we don’t get anything unless we struggle and demand to get it,” says Anna Willats of WAPC, "(today) we will create our own housing. Housing that is controlled by us, for us, that is safe and accessible.” Willats explains that the building being taken over is one of hundreds of buildings in downtown Toronto that have been sitting empty and unused for years.

With the police surrounding the four women inside, demonstrators gathered outside the building, surrounding the police, in solidarity with the women inside. Demonstrators set up tents in front of the house and in the park across the street prepared to camp out there as long as it took for the police to back down and allow the women to begin setting up the building as a safe house for disadvantaged women and trans people.

As the tension mounted down below, Jenn Plyler, one of the women inside the building, led the chants "Housing for women by women now! Housing for women by women now!"

Later in the evening, waiting for the rain to come pouring down (making it very difficult to document), the police decided to make their move. They surrounded the demonstrators, trampled over the tents, and began forcing the demonstrators back away from the building. During the scuffle, one officer can be seen here attempting to restrain a colleague who is getting overly aggressive.

Despite the surprise move by the police, demonstrators refused to back down, linking arms and responding to the police with songs and chants. After the initial struggle, rows of police and demonstrators squared off in the middle of the street staring each other down, waiting for someone to make the next move.

As the rain continued to pour down, rows of police and demonstrators squared off in the middle of the street. Both sides can be seen here taunting one another.

With over 500 homeless people dying on the streets of Toronto since 1989, housing activists accross the city are calling on the City of Toronto to make use of the hundreds of abandoned buildings scattered accross the city so they can be converted into safe and affordable housing for the poor.

Sheila is one of 258 men, women, and children, from Mtakuja village who were displaced in late July 2007 to make way for an expansion of the Geita Gold Mine. “We were invaded by administration police officers in the middle of the night, who shoved us out of our houses. We were not given even a chance to take our belongings,” laments Abdallah Abedi, a former village executive officer, “we were moved here like people in a war-torn country, and now we are all tucked into a small place like prisoners who have committed the worst of crimes.”

During the day most of the adults in the camp for the internally displaced people in Geita are away looking for work. Mwajuma stays behind to take care of some of the children. All 258 of the villagers were dumped in a one-room abandoned building in the middle of the night one year ago. The Christian Council of Tanzania and Norwegian Church Aid heard about their situation and have provided the group with the tents they now call home.

In an interview with the Norwegian Church Aid, Faida Gerald says, “we have lost a lot of things including our sense of belonging, clothes and other household materials. What hurts most is that they buried even already harvested crops, which we would have sold to get some income to buy food and take care of our children.” Their sense of loss is intensified by their feelings of betrayal by their own democratically elected government, as Faida contemplates; “I wonder what they have given to the government to subject us to all this.”

One week after this photo was taken the villagers were informed by the local government that they would be evicted all over again from their current campsite. No provisions have been made for them, however, and they have nowhere to go.

Rukindo lives in the IDP camp in Geita along with the other 258 Mtakuja villagers who were displaced to make way for the Geita Gold Mine. This picture was taken shortly after a court hearing in Dar es Salaam in their case against the company. Rukindo and three others had travelled 1300km to make their case. But they were never even given the chance to have an audience with the judge as the case was thrown out of the court after a suspicious meeting behind closed doors between their attorney, the judge, and the team of lawyers representing the company. In the unlikely event that they can afford to continue with the case, they will have to start all over again. Almost immediately after receiving this bad news, they received even worse news as a letter arrived from the local government of Geita informing them that the inhabitants of the camp were about to be evicted from the area they had been occupying for the past year. Once again, the displaced have to start all over again and try to rebuild what little semblance of normalcy they had attained in the past year.

The Tanzanian government’s Prevention of Corruption Bureau is investigating a corruption scandal involving the compensation for some 900 people who were displaced to make way for AngloGold Ashanti’s Geita Gold Mine in Geita. Mustafa is one of the complainants; here he is showing documents that state that he was promised over 60million shillings (55,000CAD) in compensation which he has never received. AngloGold admits that 875 people have not received the compensation promised to them, but they claim to have given government officials the money needed to make the payments in 1999 and blame these officials “in their lust for money” for the disappearance of the funds.

The home of the Luhanga family in Kahama. The Luhanga’s were among the thousands of families who had been forcefully evicted in August 1996 to make way for Sutton Resources’ Bulyanhulu Gold Mine, which was bought three years later by Barrick Gold. According to Barrick’s own report, Social Development Plan for the Bulyanhulu Gold Mine, there were anywhere between 30,000 and 400,000 people living in the area before the evictions. The company claims that the people living there were nomadic illegal trespassers. But the communities argue that some of the villages in the area had existed long before colonial days.

Twelve years later, allegations continue that during the evictions in August 1996 fifty-two artisanal miners were buried alive in their pits by company bulldozers. The issue has developed into a bitter international dispute involving local communities, NGOs, and the governments of Tanzania, Canada, and the World Bank. The company denies these allegations and maintains that “the way people left this site was in a peaceful, systematic fashion”, reports in the Tanzanian press at the time reported mass confusion, looting, robbery and bloodshed as people fled from police in riot gear. Numerous witnesses have testified in sworn statements that people were being beaten up by the police and were ignored when they told officers that there were still people inside some of the mineshafts as the bulldozers were filling in the pits.

In response to the companies’ and the government’s denials Melania, a Kahama resident, has been collecting these photos of people who claim to have witnessed the killings or lost loved ones during the evictions. “…This one was there when it happened … this one lost her son … this one went back afterwards to try and dig out his friends … this one lost her home and her grandchildren …”

Melania’s two eldest sons, Jonathan and Ernest were among the fifty-two miners who were allegedly buried alive during the evictions. The family owned the pit that they were working in at the time, so Melania lost her livelihood as well as her two children in August 1996.

Deogratios is the traditional witchdoctor, or medicine man, of the community. He was among the thousands of people who were evicted to make way for Barrick’s Bulynhulu gold mine. He remembers being forced from their home by heavily armed paramilitary forces only one day after the Minister of Minerals and Energy had issued an order giving the Bulyanhulu residents one month to vacate the area. Deogratios and his family had nowhere to go so for two months after being forced from their home they were living in the bush. During this time his wife became ill. But with their home destroyed, and without access to his medicines, the healer could do nothing as he sat and watched his wife die.