Bishop-Stall - Down to this: squalor and splendour in a big-city shantytown

Praise for Down to This

The book stinks of cigarettes and cheap booze, of mud and rats and ditchwater and soggy cardboard. It stinks of a reality that most of us have never known, and will probably never know, but that Mr. Bishop-Stall has learned about, and unflinchingly describes. But Mr. Bishop-Stalls rocky cruise along the edge of hell is not the usual post-graduates drug binge and writerly outpouring. He has given us, instead, a painfully frank, clearly and excellently written report about Torontonians we live among, occasionally hear about, but do not know, andface itdo not want to know. Its high time we knew everything this remarkable book has to teach us.

John Bentley Mays in The Globe and Mail

One of the books surprise strengths is its comic, wiseass tonea device that in lesser hands might have been disastrous. A genuine accomplishment, brilliantly balancing humour and horror, steadfastly refusing to stereotype or simplify. I have no idea who Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall really is, but he had a lot of guts to set out on this project, and he has even more talent to have pulled it off.

National Post

Its a wondrous book, a sad and funny, dark and joyous tale that starts out as an observers view of the homeless and evolves, without being maudlin, into a mans journey to mend his broken spirit. A roller-coaster ride of pain and despair, acceptance and healing. Down to This might have a lot to say about the homeless, but it has more to say about our own personal humanity.

Edmonton Journal

Its impossible not to be transfixed because, like the best social documentarists, Bishop-Stall is deep inside his story and doesnt preach or get mired in clichs.

The Gazette (Montreal)

Tent Citys golf club beatings, tuberculosis and soiled bedding make cable televisions Trailer Park Boys seem like a Hallmark presentation. The Pit of Despair, notes Bishop-Stall along the way, is not a conical one, but a spherical hole with no eventual bottom. Writing a book, on the way down, especially one as uplifting as Down to This, mustve been one hell of a task.

Calgary Herald

The book is compelling, often ugly and full of squalor, but it shows real compassion for those who have hit bottom.

Times Colonist (Victoria)

Finely written and bitterly honest, its also a moving depiction of the contradictions embedded in our common humanity.

Macleans

By turns harrowing, hilarious and touching. He has produced nothing less than a masterpiece of urban anthropologya must-read for anyone who pretends to understand the roots of homelessness.

Jonathan Kay in the National Post

The array of carefully drawn and fully rounded portrayals of the spectrum of Tent City residents are the stinking, breathing, laughing, fighting heart of Down to This.

eye Weekly

For Bob Stall and Jacqui Bishop,
the most understanding parents a boy could have.
And for the Dirty Thirty,
the best bunch of derelicts in town.

Tent City is not a city and we dont live in tents. We live in shacks and shanties on the edge of Canadas largest metropolis where the river meets the lake. Theres a fence dividing these 27 acres from the rest of Toronto, and on this side weve built what dwellings we can with the rubble of a scrapyard, a no-mans landfill caught in confusion between the city and private business. Sometimes it seems like a community and sometimes like chaos. Junk Town would be a better name.

Picture a dump, littered with the cast-outs of the last millennium. Refrigerators, stuffed animals, shoes, original paintings on torn canvasses, photo albums, three hundred broken bicycles and toboggans and hockey sticks, TVs and microwaves, lamps and cash registers, headless Cabbage Patch Kids and enough books to start a library or a bookstore or your own education.

Now picture dozens of the countrys thieves and drug addicts, vagabonds and ex-cons. Theyre drunk, hungry and tired of running. Its getting old and getting cold, and one night they find themselves in this place, with the rest of the discards, on the edge of the world but smack in the middle of it all.

They look around and realize that everything theyve been hustling for is right here: stereos and VCRs, room to move, a perfect hideout and waterfront property. They arent way out in the lonesome countryside or the goddamn suburbs or trapped in the same old city. In fact, the city looks perfect from herethe lake, the downtown high-rises, the sun setting beneath the tallest free-standing structure in the worldits like a picture postcard. And best of all, there are no laws and no copsas long as they stay this side of the fence. Its all private property. No one can tell them what to do, no one but Home Depot, the company that owns this land.

So they dig into a corner of the rubble for something they can use to build. Theres so much, they could make anything. But for now they just throw together a few shelters using tarps and old office furniture. They buy some beer, light a fire, call it Tent City and decide to stay. The smoke rises for everyone to see, like a warning or an invitation. They drink and wait.

For almost four years people have been squatting here, and now some days the population reaches sixty or so. The singularity of this place has drawn media attention from all over the world, as well as a flood of well-meaning, but mostly redundant, donationsif only salvation could be bought with wool hats and toothbrushes. This remains, as much as such a thing is possible, a society of anarchy.

The rules are made up nightly. Repercussions are rarely considered in advance, or recorded for future reference. It is a useful, using and sometimes useless place. The castoffs of the megacity are snatched up, played with, eaten, worn, painted over and tossed into the mud. China plates are disposable, pillowcases never washed. If this place has a credo, it is: Grab what you can, stay drunk and mind your own damn business.

The protocol for moving into Tent City is one of invitation or recommendation. I unknowingly broke protocol. I came without a clue and nothing to lose, to learn about this place, write a book and live rent free. During the month Ive spent so far, Ive realized there is no one way to live here and a hundred possible stories to be written. Some people beg, some squeegee windows, some steal, some work jobs, some sell themselves, sell others, sell drugs. Most do drugs, some do nothing at all. I dont yet know what Im going to do.

The rules Ive set for myself are simple: no money or friends, except those I might find from here on in. Ill do what others do to get by, be whatever bum I choose: vagrant, beggar, wino, criminal, busker, con man or tramp, on any given day.

What follows is a record of my time in Tent City.