What I learned from a year in my yoga pants

I love winter. I confess it’s my favourite time of year. I love the extremes of the season, even though I know it seems like a contradiction for someone in my line of work. I am a street nurse, which means my job focuses on homeless people and their health. Winter is brutal and unforgiving for those without a home, and as we’ve learned over the years, homeless people can freeze to death.

Homeless people have taught me many tricks of the street-nursing trade, such as the patching qualities of duct tape and how to dress for the job. I have a wardrobe of yoga pants that I wear under rain pants and over long underwear (silk is best if you can afford it), along with fleece and merino wool tops and waterproof gear. I’ve learned how to layer to prevent dampness and stay healthy. I used to be teased by Marty, one of the residents of Toronto’s Tent City waterfront encampment, because I was always chewing on vitamin C.

In my line of work, the weather keeps you busy, but what does a street nurse do when she’s unemployed? Go on Employment Insurance, try not to feel discouraged and look for work. After all, homelessness is not disappearing.

So how could a street nurse be unemployed then, you ask? I ask myself that, too. After 22 years of street nursing that included work on declaring homelessness a national disaster, fighting for improved shelter conditions and witnessing the return of tuberculosis and bedbugs, unemployment happened to me. I had just completed a generous and twice-extended social-justice fellowship when I found myself in the grim situation of looking for work in a recession. Even though homelessness was increasing, the job market for street nursing was not.

Publication Date: 
2011
Location: 
Toronto, ON, Canada