Editor’s note: Today, we introduce a new weekly column from former Orillia Packet & Times managing editor Mark Bisset. You can read his column every Sunday.
Snow whirls and hisses in the wind as we carry the last of my mother’s belongings into a shining new Orillia storage facility with bright green doors.
She is in transition to long-term care and everything that remains of her household fits easily into a 10-by-10-foot space; she might say it is all that is left of her life, leaving out her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is not everything by any stretch.
The storage building is brand new. Heated, with concrete floors and lights that come to life as you walk in and flicker off again when you leave without having to touch a switch. Sturdy locks on the doors. Clean, bright, quiet against the howling wind outside.
One of several new buildings, it is surrounded by a sturdy gate that opens with the touch of an electronic fob supplied by the operators. The whole place speaks security, and it must be said that it is nicely done and a good value for our purposes — just $128 per month. There are several such facilities in and around Orillia. Thirty years ago, you would have been hard-pressed to find a single one.
Stats Canada puts the median size of recently built houses at 2,380 square feet. That’s up from 1,317 square feet in the 1970s. In urban centres bigger than Orillia, the median goes up. You might think we’d have room enough for all our things in these bigger homes. But the market for storage continues to be robust.
We have never treated our stuff better.
The storage facility we chose is right next to the Lightfoot Trail. A few days before, my five-year-old granddaughter and I were walking on the trail when we passed the remains of a homeless camp.
“What is that?” she asks.
I do my best to explain: “Some people aren’t as lucky as us to have warm houses, so they are forced to live in tents wherever they can find space.”
“Why?”
“Some people don’t have money to afford a place to live because homes are expensive, or sometimes they have troubles that keep them from making money or keeping a place to stay. Lots of people are trying to help them, but we can’t seem to figure it out.”
I dread another why, because my answer must sound lacking, even to a five-year-old. I dread the suggestion that we just let them live with us. The question and the suggestion don’t arrive, and the subject is dropped in favour of an interesting stick.
My discomfort lingers, and I try to shake it off before it hardens into anger. Because it will harden into anger, given the room. Not the righteous and reasonable anger of injustice, but anger at those in the tents in public places my granddaughter passes, with their misery and hopelessness on full display, and their drugs and their alcohol.
In that hardening, I might be tempted to ask my local leaders to — please — just make these human accusations of our monstrous collective failure move along.
I think of this, padlocking my mother’s cherished possessions into their safe, clean, warm living space.
Mark Bisset spent the past 14 years of his working life as the executive director of the Couchiching Conservancy before retiring in 2024. In a previous iteration of himself, he worked in every news department at the Orillia Packet & Times, a daily newspaper from a bygone era. Mark was the managing editor when he stepped down in 2009. And before all of that, he was a pretty happy kid. He’s a lifelong sailor and gardener who has chosen Orillia as his beloved home for the past 38 years.
