Friday, June 14, 2013

DOWN TO THIS: SQUALOUR AND SPLENDOUR IN A BIG-CITY SHANTYTOWN

By Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2004.

True story of the year the author spends living in Toronto's tent city.

An absolutely great book!

The incident in this book which most stands out for me involves a group of church people, known to tent city's residents as the purple people eaters, and particularly one sixteen year old girl in this group. She is grabbed by one of the homeless men. She is understandably shaken, and the reaction she gives, which she was trained to give in her Judao-Christian castration pen of a church is "Just pray for him." However, the residents of this shantytown enact real justice and kick the guy and his girlfriend out. You also don't get the sense from this incident that the church people actually took a leaf from Jesus by actually trying to speak to the homeless where they were at or even getting to know them on a basic level.

This book has so many great incidents and happenings that to tell about all my favourites here would be to tell the whole book. Just go out and get a copy.

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