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Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community
An activist priest provides sanctuary for an encampment of unhoused people in her churchyard
We think, maybe, that homelessness is some kind of stable state, like being housed except without housing. Without really considering it, most people imagine that people who are homeless live in, if not one place, at least in one condition, that their days are in some way predictable. But homelessness is, more than anything else, a life of constant displacement.
The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and prefer to keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.
Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s lifelong activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused, and it demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.
We think, maybe, that homelessness is some kind of stable state, like being housed except without housing. Without really considering it, most people imagine that people who are homeless live in, if not one place, at least in one condition, that their days are in some way predictable. But homelessness is, more than anything else, a life of constant displacement.
The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and prefer to keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.
Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s lifelong activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused, and it demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.
176 pages, Paperback
Published May 13, 2025
56 people are currently reading
1162 people want to read
About the author
Maggie Helwig
32 books21 followersMaggie Helwig (born 1961) is a Canadian poet, novelist, social justice activist, and Anglican priest.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
June 28, 2025
This has done more to heal my religious trauma than any book I’ve ever read. The author has a beautiful way of noticing things - there’s an acuteness that burrows deep while reading
May 27, 2025
This is excellent, about a homeless encampment in Toronto. Beautifully written and very moving. I listened to the audiobook.
February 4, 2026
As a Christian and a resident of downtown Toronto, I have avidly followed the story of the encampment at St. Stephen’s-in-the-Field church. I have long admired that church’s staff for standing up for the unhoused against the sometimes hostile bureaucratic forces of the city. But reading this firsthand account by the church’s priest made me feel a much stronger appreciation for the love and labour that goes into caring for those with nowhere else to go.
This memoir is incredibly moving, sometimes funny, and often deeply sad. Some of the stories in this book are shocking, like the woman known for “rescuing” (AKA straight-up stealing) homeless people’s beloved dogs, and the city staffer who denied working for the city when approached by a community member—while wearing an official name tag. Others are low-key funny, like the right-wing agitators who attended and recorded one of the church’s services, hoping to uncover antifa scheming, and were no doubt disappointed when the priest just talked about Jesus. This book left me feeling frustrated with our broken housing system, but hopeful knowing that there are people out there who care. If you’ve ever wondered why people “choose” to live in encampments, you will gain new understanding from this book.
This book comes from a secular publisher and it’s not “Christian content” in the sense of being assuming any faith on the reader’s part (although it does contain excerpts from the author’s sermons). However, I would particularly recommend it to a Christian audience because of the way the author embodies Christ’s gentle but powerful love. It’s a reminder of the type of people we are called to be in this world, and our duty to care for our neighbours who are facing impossible odds.
This memoir is incredibly moving, sometimes funny, and often deeply sad. Some of the stories in this book are shocking, like the woman known for “rescuing” (AKA straight-up stealing) homeless people’s beloved dogs, and the city staffer who denied working for the city when approached by a community member—while wearing an official name tag. Others are low-key funny, like the right-wing agitators who attended and recorded one of the church’s services, hoping to uncover antifa scheming, and were no doubt disappointed when the priest just talked about Jesus. This book left me feeling frustrated with our broken housing system, but hopeful knowing that there are people out there who care. If you’ve ever wondered why people “choose” to live in encampments, you will gain new understanding from this book.
This book comes from a secular publisher and it’s not “Christian content” in the sense of being assuming any faith on the reader’s part (although it does contain excerpts from the author’s sermons). However, I would particularly recommend it to a Christian audience because of the way the author embodies Christ’s gentle but powerful love. It’s a reminder of the type of people we are called to be in this world, and our duty to care for our neighbours who are facing impossible odds.
January 10, 2026
While reading this book, I was struck by two things: (1) I cannot imagine the emotional resilience needed to be in a profession that is permanently occasioned by death & (2) the power of the Spirit to sustain Maggie in constructing a community of true openness to the vulnerable and marginalized.
We think, maybe, that homelessness is some kind of stable state, like being housed except without housing. Without really considering it, most people imagine that people who are homeless live in, if not one place, at least in one condition, that their days are in some way predictable. But homelessness is, more than anything else, a life of constant displacement.
December 24, 2025
Maggie Helwig is an Anglican priest at an inner city parish in Kensington Market, the small churchyard of which has come to be filled with an assortment of individuals living in tents, who have nowhere else to go - an encampment, as such places are now known. This has been a source of ongoing struggle and strife with some neighbours and some authorities. Anyone living in Toronto, and probably in most other cities these days, can’t fail to be aware of the growing proliferation of such encampments, and the profound rupture in the social contract they seem to represent. But like a lot of people, though I see encampments around the city and gauge my comfort level at passing through or by one while walking to work, there’s a lot I can learn about the experiences of people living in tbem and those who try to help.
I found this short book invaluable, informative, and moving. What a Kafkaesque world truly needy people dealing with homelessness enter - while I’ve seen that when the city is engaged in dismantling an encampment they often refer to having ‘encouraged the residents to come indoors’ and to having offered placements, it is frustrating to read about how illusory those options can be. Helwig’s theology is humble, robust, and challenging: her moral compass has led her to give herself over to service in a way few of us can imagine. She vividly depicts the attendant disruptions, while also drawing the residents and their challenges lovingly and compassionately. It’s evident that this is work she feels called to do despite its challenges, even at a time when she’s faced her own personal heartache, as her father has passed away and her husband has been affected by dementia.
“During the spring, I had started obsessively watching livestreams from a feral cat rescue facility in British Columbia, and it wasn’t until the summer that I realized that part of my obsession was that these few feral cats were, almost alone in the country, receiving the kind of precise and personal care that should be given to all beings by virtue of their creation. ..[O]n the livestream gentle people tended to fragile creatures, feeding them and dressing their wounds, paying attention to their traumas, learning the complexities of their lives, realizing that they would make decisions even if they weren’t what the staff wanted, even if a cat with advanced kidney disease wanted to go back to the feral colony to die. If the cat rescue livestream was the only place I could find that kind of care, at least I still knew it was happening somewhere.”
I found this short book invaluable, informative, and moving. What a Kafkaesque world truly needy people dealing with homelessness enter - while I’ve seen that when the city is engaged in dismantling an encampment they often refer to having ‘encouraged the residents to come indoors’ and to having offered placements, it is frustrating to read about how illusory those options can be. Helwig’s theology is humble, robust, and challenging: her moral compass has led her to give herself over to service in a way few of us can imagine. She vividly depicts the attendant disruptions, while also drawing the residents and their challenges lovingly and compassionately. It’s evident that this is work she feels called to do despite its challenges, even at a time when she’s faced her own personal heartache, as her father has passed away and her husband has been affected by dementia.
“During the spring, I had started obsessively watching livestreams from a feral cat rescue facility in British Columbia, and it wasn’t until the summer that I realized that part of my obsession was that these few feral cats were, almost alone in the country, receiving the kind of precise and personal care that should be given to all beings by virtue of their creation. ..[O]n the livestream gentle people tended to fragile creatures, feeding them and dressing their wounds, paying attention to their traumas, learning the complexities of their lives, realizing that they would make decisions even if they weren’t what the staff wanted, even if a cat with advanced kidney disease wanted to go back to the feral colony to die. If the cat rescue livestream was the only place I could find that kind of care, at least I still knew it was happening somewhere.”
July 6, 2025
read my q&a with the author here: https://broadview.org/anglican-priest...
September 6, 2025
Mother Maggie embodies everything organized religion should and must stand for. This is Christianity at its best, the very soul of it. Her heart and compassion for her people are enormous.
“In every case, encampment makes visible what has been hidden, forces afflicted bodies into the public eye. For protest encampments, that making visible is the aim, the only real purpose; for survival encampments, it is a side effect. But the discomfort caused to the comfortable is not wholly different.”
“We are sent into this world to plant life in the wasteland. Tell the impossible story: That love is stronger than death, and many waters cannot quench it, and floods cannot drown it. That we are not lost among the graves. Tell it in the face of all the evidence. Tell it even if no one believes you, tell it even if you can hardly believe it yourself. Because without this story, the world is lost. Keep saying this, that our hearts and souls can rise out of the rubble, that life will rise up in the abandoned places, that another world is possible, that we can begin to build that world in the wreckage of this our garden.”
“In every case, encampment makes visible what has been hidden, forces afflicted bodies into the public eye. For protest encampments, that making visible is the aim, the only real purpose; for survival encampments, it is a side effect. But the discomfort caused to the comfortable is not wholly different.”
“We are sent into this world to plant life in the wasteland. Tell the impossible story: That love is stronger than death, and many waters cannot quench it, and floods cannot drown it. That we are not lost among the graves. Tell it in the face of all the evidence. Tell it even if no one believes you, tell it even if you can hardly believe it yourself. Because without this story, the world is lost. Keep saying this, that our hearts and souls can rise out of the rubble, that life will rise up in the abandoned places, that another world is possible, that we can begin to build that world in the wreckage of this our garden.”
November 11, 2025
4.75/5 - This should be mandatory reading for everyone in the the City of Toronto, or any city really. This was exceptionally written. Devastating and frustrating, but full of compassion. I would highly recommend the audiobook narrated by the author. I should have expected the religious (Anglican) lens, given that Helwig is a priest, but this took away from the book for me. I will say that the religious tone is very limited and in no way preachy. Highly recommend.
June 30, 2025
Such a beautifully written book about a dire situation. Maggie Helwig took me right into this encampment and made me experience both the humanity of the residents and the infuriating, practically absurd daily injustices and horrors they deal with. The system is stacked against all of us, and the unhoused most of all.
November 12, 2025
On any given night, in Kelowna, there are a few hundred unhoused people sleeping outdoors, in tents, in shelters. Earlier this year, City officials threatened a local church with $500/day fines for allowing people to camp in their churchyard.
Maggie Helwig writes of her similar experiences as the priest of a Toronto church, fighting City Hall while serving food and kindness to people in need. She lays out how the system is built to justify its existence, not to actually help its clients. Helwig doesn't have the answer to this multi pronged, complex societal issue, but shows that seeing people, listening and compassion is a good start.
Winner of the 2025 Toronto Book Award.
“ I have talked about encampments as a solution of necessity, and they are that. But there are other things I need to explain. And the most important of these is that encampments can also be spaces of grace; that encampments, in a time of great affliction, can be home to creativity and community, healing and mutual support.” P56
“ All the dysfunction most of us enact behind closed doors takes place in public view; and, similarly, none of us would fair very well if we were permanently in public view, if every time we shouted or cried, we had the whole street as an audience.” P87
Maggie Helwig writes of her similar experiences as the priest of a Toronto church, fighting City Hall while serving food and kindness to people in need. She lays out how the system is built to justify its existence, not to actually help its clients. Helwig doesn't have the answer to this multi pronged, complex societal issue, but shows that seeing people, listening and compassion is a good start.
Winner of the 2025 Toronto Book Award.
“ I have talked about encampments as a solution of necessity, and they are that. But there are other things I need to explain. And the most important of these is that encampments can also be spaces of grace; that encampments, in a time of great affliction, can be home to creativity and community, healing and mutual support.” P56
“ All the dysfunction most of us enact behind closed doors takes place in public view; and, similarly, none of us would fair very well if we were permanently in public view, if every time we shouted or cried, we had the whole street as an audience.” P87
July 11, 2025
Devastating in many ways but also very beautiful. At its core, this book is about compassion and community. I enjoyed the relationship between Maggie’s Anglican faith and her activism/work in the community.
October 26, 2025
3.5. As a front line worker for many years, there was nothing in this book that was new or surprising to me. Of course, it was still as disappointing and bleak as it is in my corner of the woods. I am grateful to Maggie and all of the folks that work alongside her to support our vulnerable community members. I found the writing itself to be chaotic but a friend and former co-worker pointed out that perhaps it was an intended effect and I agree, indented or otherwise, it does truly reflect the work. Despite this, it is an important book that I hope finds its way into the hands of many.
June 11, 2025
Important. Provides context and insight into a place that I pass by several times each week. Provides context and insight into the people that all of us pass by daily. Compassion.
August 3, 2025
I’m not religious but I’m open to considering different perspectives. Reading this book was a practice in empathy and left me feeling more connected to humanity.
January 12, 2026
Audiobook: great insight into the St. Stephen’s survival encampment and homelessness in Toronto. The author is the priest at the church beside the encampment - their dedication is incredible and they are able to share personal stories of their continued struggles with law enforcement and encampment residents. Devastating stories of survival within a short lived community. Religious aspects of the book were minimal
December 29, 2025
This is an extraordinary book, telling an extraordinary story. As well as being a talented writer, Maggie Helwig is a fearless advocate for the unhoused and vulnerable. I admire her tremendously.
July 13, 2025
A gorgeous book, will be recommending over and again
December 29, 2025
Maggie Helwig is a living angel and her work in Toronto shows how vital community and collective care are.
July 23, 2025
"....Although this is a story of a small number of people and their relationships to a tiny piece of land outside a tiny church, it is driven by greater powers and principalities; by the relentless machine of late stage capitalism, which devours and discards anyone who is not an efficient economic actor (meaning, sooner or later, all of us)"
A necessary read in dismantling shelter myths and fallacies about who gets to be viewed as human with dignity, agency, and value.
A necessary read in dismantling shelter myths and fallacies about who gets to be viewed as human with dignity, agency, and value.
October 23, 2025
Devastating and beautiful. I don't love making proclamations about "books everyone just has to read", but having now lived in 3 of the biggest cities in Canada, all of which are being ravaged by the housing crisis, I feel pretty aware of the, at best, general apathy towards unhoused communities (at worst, the contempt), and this book bridges that gap in our collective understandings really powerfully. Helwig shows a compassion that humanizes and a dedication to justice that rouses, and I haven't felt that in a while. I hope that others will read and share this too, and that we can collectively make an effort to care better for our unhoused neighbours.
October 27, 2025
Everybody needs to read this book, reflect on their own beliefs, bias and stereotypes, remember the good in others and take action.
December 11, 2025
Heart-wrenching, eye-opening and at times heart-warming. From the first page this snaps you out of the cold, brutal false reality that things are okay in Toronto.
The author and her companions have gone to miraculous lengths to meet people where they are and show compassion, but she’s shown it’s a collective responsibility to treat people with kindness and generosity given the circumstances. If not here, then where? If not you, then who?
The author and her companions have gone to miraculous lengths to meet people where they are and show compassion, but she’s shown it’s a collective responsibility to treat people with kindness and generosity given the circumstances. If not here, then where? If not you, then who?
December 19, 2025
Really enjoyed this. For me, this story is literally close to home as the encampment described in the book is around the corner from my house. I pass by this church all the time when walking to and from the gym or the grocery store. I think for many of us the experience of being unhoused is virtually unfathomable. The author does a good job at helping readers to understand what the experience may be like on a really basic level. You can tell she is a poet as the writing is beautiful. The realities of the huge gaps is services and supports are laid bare and I found myself getting emotional (sad, angry, frustrated, incredulous) throughout the book. The author connects her personal, specific experience of the encampment to larger themes of humanity, loss, grief and compassion. Would recommend.
July 31, 2025
This book has some special connections for me, so be warned that I write with those in mind. Not only is the community which Maggie Helwig describes in my city, but I followed the story at a distance because the church at which the encampment is placed is not very far from where I live in Toronto, but also of the same denomination as we are, but, also, my wife works with the author as well. And we're using this book as our summer reading book this year. So, just noting all those thing for transparency sake.
So, what are my impressions? Encampment is really a beautiful book- painful (definitely!), challenging (absolutely!), but deeply compassionate and grace-filled. It is the story of the encampment which grew up around St. Stephen in the Fields in Toronto from 2021 onwards and the challenges which that brought with the city and the neighbourhood, as well as the inhabitants, who were working through and with their own issues and with life on the streets. It also weaves in Helwig's own story as she was navigating challenging times in her own life, while trying to support this community around her.
The result is a moving story of what good a community can bring for even those whose struggles are overwhelming, as well as the story of the fear of those on the streets can deaden our compassion and how bureaucracy can injure people. It is a story which gives no easy answers, but calls us to see struggling people as people, who deserve dignity and support.
This, I think, is a really important read, especially for anyone who is trying to understand how to deal with housing and with those on the streets. It's empathic, but clear-sighted approach brings the reader face to face with the people who we, all too often, pass by on the streets. It is a challenge to all of us, Christians, non-Christians, whoever- to start considering how do we find a better way to deal with the housing crisis. And I think that challenge is one worth taking up.
So, what are my impressions? Encampment is really a beautiful book- painful (definitely!), challenging (absolutely!), but deeply compassionate and grace-filled. It is the story of the encampment which grew up around St. Stephen in the Fields in Toronto from 2021 onwards and the challenges which that brought with the city and the neighbourhood, as well as the inhabitants, who were working through and with their own issues and with life on the streets. It also weaves in Helwig's own story as she was navigating challenging times in her own life, while trying to support this community around her.
The result is a moving story of what good a community can bring for even those whose struggles are overwhelming, as well as the story of the fear of those on the streets can deaden our compassion and how bureaucracy can injure people. It is a story which gives no easy answers, but calls us to see struggling people as people, who deserve dignity and support.
This, I think, is a really important read, especially for anyone who is trying to understand how to deal with housing and with those on the streets. It's empathic, but clear-sighted approach brings the reader face to face with the people who we, all too often, pass by on the streets. It is a challenge to all of us, Christians, non-Christians, whoever- to start considering how do we find a better way to deal with the housing crisis. And I think that challenge is one worth taking up.
September 20, 2025
an excellent book that aches. written by a remarkable person.
I think the bit that most shifted my view of things was the discussion of how being denied privacy and the inherent right to possession really affects how houseless people are dehumanized.
I think the bit that most shifted my view of things was the discussion of how being denied privacy and the inherent right to possession really affects how houseless people are dehumanized.
October 29, 2025
3.5 ⭐️ interesting and eye-opening, but could do without the religious thread throughout. While I appreciate the encampment discussed was ON church property, I believe that the the writer used her position to preach her agenda, literally.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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July 19, 2025i need everyone in toronto to read this book
August 13, 2025
Mandatory reading for anyone who doesn’t have firsthand experience with encampments
The writing is beautiful and the people won’t leave you
The writing is beautiful and the people won’t leave you
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August 13, 2025would recommend for my fellow toronto residents!
December 13, 2025
Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community by Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig is a must-read book for those of us concerned about the homeless crisis in relation to social justice. Helwig shares her experiences as Priest at St. Stephen-in-the-Fields near the Kensington Market community in Toronto, laying bare the complex issues, the political response, and the loving support and advocacy the parish has offered to those in need. Without becoming didactic or unnecessarily critical in her commentary, Helwig simply recounts the growing requirements of vulnerable citizens and the city’s inability to provide adequate resources and shelter. Although Helwig’s ministry provided vital respite for some, through no fault of hers or of her church community, it ultimately fell short of facilitating long-term solutions. Helwig carefully peels back the layers of injustice that led to the rise of encampments in the city, and writes movingly of those who are caught up in the cycle of poverty, mental illness and homelessness as well as those whose efforts have endeavoured to “hold on to islands of humanity.” Highly recommended. (Maggie Helwig will be visiting Port Perry on June 9th for Heart of the Story.)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews