Since I met Tyler Dunlop in January 2023, he’s often used the word “unmanageables” to refer to people like him who are chronically homeless.
That term might seem insensitive — disparaging, even — but it’s one I’ve grown to understand, in context, over the past 16 months as I’ve watched him struggle with mental illness, homelessness, and alcoholism.
On that frigid January day, I met Tyler in a downtown Orillia cafe for an interview that would fundamentally change how I view chronic homelessness.
After more than a decade on and off the streets, Tyler admitted he was ready to throw in the towel, and he wanted me to tell his story about his choice to pursue medical assistance in dying (MAID).
He spoke about the horrific experiences he had as a child, his concurrent mental health disorders (he lives with schizoaffective, bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders), his repeated — and failed — attempts to work, live, and integrate into the world around him, and how alcohol has continually served as a coping mechanism for both his mental health and the harsh realities of living on the streets.
As these struggles compounded over a period of years, despite repeated attempts to access meaningful and successful help, he saw MAID as the only way out, and he had already begun the process, though the federal government would ultimately delay MAID access for mental health purposes.
Disturbed by what I’d heard — this was a 37-year-old, willing to work, and by all counts intelligent and well-spoken man — it took me a couple of days to write his story, and I wasn’t prepared for what would happen next.
Over the ensuing days and weeks, my inbox was flooded with hundreds of emails from across the country, as readers were shocked and began offering up all manner of housing, work opportunities, and mental health resources.
What I gathered from these emails was a sentiment that a single, national, herculean effort could change the tide of Tyler’s life. That, given enough material resources, the past could be wiped away and he could start anew.
It was a noble sentiment, and one I momentarily shared, but it ultimately proved inadequate.
I began forwarding these emails to Tyler, who eventually connected with Tim denBok, a Collingwood-based writer who would go on to help him in innumerable ways, one of which was to assist him in penning a memoir about his experiences on the streets.
It is called Therefore Choose Life: My Journey from Hopelessness to Hope, and I saw glimmers of that same sentiment in how the title of Tyler’s narrative was framed: that he could transition, in a relatively straightforward fashion, from a place of chaos and pain to one of peace and hope.
Over the coming months, as Tyler worked on his manuscript with Tim, I’d occasionally keep in touch and travel to Collingwood to share cigarettes with him over cheap coffee.
For periods of time, he managed to remain sober, work a day job, and write, and during those periods we’d have insightful conversations about homelessness, politics, and philosophy. When stable, Tyler is an interesting person to be around, and we grew to become friends.
However, these periods were broken up by several relapses with alcohol, during which Tyler would disappear, his mental health would deteriorate dramatically, and he would invariably wind up back on the streets.
My phone would be flooded with angry, mistrustful voicemails, in which Tyler would cast our friendship to the wind, and emergency services were often dispatched to either find Tyler or check on his well-being.
Throughout these periods, Tim managed to connect Tyler with mental health resources, including lengthy stays at the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene, during which he would become sober, stable, feel badly for his actions, and endeavour to try again.
Most recently, months after his journey to hope had been catalogued — almost wilfully cemented into place — by both his memoir and its resulting news coverage, Tyler relapsed on alcohol after experiencing difficulty in a supportive housing environment in Penetanguishene.
This episode led him back to the streets of Orillia as resurgent winter weather hit the city this March, when I reconnected with him while he was half-dead, living in a tent in the forest.
“I don’t know what kind of help I need at this point,” he told me. “I mean, the system doesn’t seem to be able to accommodate something as complex as my situation, so I’m basically going to die out here.”
During that interview, Tyler told me a sense of social isolation is among the harshest feelings he faces while on the streets, and he said that feeling serves as a trigger to use or relapse with alcohol. He reaches points with his mental health where he feels “depressed” and “very cynical,” which leads to relapse and, ultimately, further bouts of homelessness.
Through these experiences, I came to fully appreciate the term “unmanageables” as Tyler has used it, but not in a way that’s disparaging to the chronically homeless.
The resources that exist, the services we offer, are simply unable to manage the complexity of Tyler’s issues in a lasting way, and it’s he, and he alone, who suffers immeasurably for it — despite the continued efforts of many organizations and people, both local and from far beyond.
The journey to hope, should it exist, is a meandering and harrowing path for people in his position.
Tyler is far from alone in his plight: Homeless shelters around Simcoe County are routinely full, and although there are many who experience “situational” or relatively one-dimensional bouts of homelessness, there are also many who live with concurrent mental health disorders and addictions like he does.
Although Tyler has had benefactors to help him access resources in recent months, he has told me of countless difficulties accessing meaningful help in his years on and off the streets, whether through wait lists, discriminatory remarks, social isolation, or seemingly unnavigable barriers.
When I zoom out, and imagine the tens of thousands of people in his position across Canada, I can’t help but feel a sense of malaise and futility for their situations, as we seem to be wholly incapable of effecting real, wholesale change for this segment of the population.
I don’t have the answers, but I do know we need to do far more because, despite it all, Tyler does wish to continue on living and to try yet again.
“The human will to live is an incredible thing, but it gets depleted after a while,” Tyler told me earlier this week. “Like, tonight, I’ll be sleeping in pitch-black darkness in the cold.”
Greg McGrath-Goudie is a reporter at OrilliaMatters.
