Published on April 13, 2025 by CTV News
Michael Wesley knows how hard it is to find a place to live.
For four years, he often lived in a tent in the bush, saying he felt safer there than being on the streets in Timmins and Kirkland Lake, Ont.
“It’s hard living out there,” the Cree man from Moosonee, Ont., said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca from a transitional home in Toronto on March 18. While he was homeless up north, he said, he survived on scant meals and nearly died from drug overdoses. He said he lost contact with his whole family and children during that period. “I used a lot of drugs just to hide my pain and hide all the loss that happened in my life. And it didn’t help. It made things worse.”
He says he longed to turn his life around and find housing, but there were few options and resources to help the homeless in northern Ontario. He decided to move to Toronto about a year ago, escaping the rampant drug use around him.
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