It was the champion of the homeless. Born in the late 1990s, when a combination of deep cuts to welfare and affordable housing were pushing hundreds of destitute Torontonians onto the streets, the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee firmly established itself as the voice of the most vulnerable. The social activists, academics and business people who made up the TDRC — as it was also called — took up the cause with evangelistic fervour. In the fall of 1998, a cluster of homeless deaths and dire warnings of a harsh winter ahead became the ominous backdrop to its concerted cry for help.