Encampment - by Maggie Helwig (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Striking, elegant." - Publishers Weekly, ★ STARRED Review"

An activist priest provides sanctuary for an encampment of unhoused people in her churchyard

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 keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.

Encampment tells the story of Helwig's life-long 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 Robin: their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society's callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused and demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.

Review Quotes

One of CBC Books' Canadian books you should be reading in May 2025

One of CBC Book's Canadian nonfiction books to read in spring 2025

"Encampment shines a light on injustice, but does not easily assign labels of hero or villain. . . [R]equired reading for anyone with a home who hopes to understand the lives of the many who do not." - Shawn Syms, Quill & Quire

"[I]t's this refusal to see any difference between neighbours, regardless of their housing, that makes Helwig's voice and vision so extraordinary, and what makes Encampment such a necessary, clarifying, and life-changing read for so many of us right now." - Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This

"In crystalline prose, [Encampment] sheds light on not only the struggles of the unhoused but the heartlessness of a society that would rather not see them at all." - Publishers Weekly, ★ STARRED Review

"Helwig is a natural storyteller who effortlessly weaves the various threads of her worlds into a rich, compelling tapestry. She is a candid and surprisingly non-judgmental writer. She also has a wonderfully dry sense of humour with an eye for the comical and absurd - a precious asset for a book such as this." - Stuart Mann, The Anglican

"It's like the start of a bad joke: an Anglican priest walks into a homeless encampment. Except it's her churchyard the encampment is in, and the people who live there become her community. She experiences life with them, grieves with them when a friend is lost or a temporary dwelling is uprooted yet again; she administers Narcan and stands with them before the Claw the city uses to tear down their tents. She fights with them, and in doing so invites us to look unflinchingly at a population many of us would prefer to ignore. These people are real, the systems that keep them on the streets are deeply rooted, and it is important for us to see, to bear witness, to engage." - Anneka Weicht, Changing Hands Bookstore

"Helwig is a priest, human rights activist, poet, caregiver, friend, mother, Mother. And she is, most admirably, a reader--a reader of sacred texts, yes, but also a reader of a city, of a neighbourhood, of bureaucracy, of poetry, of law by turns incensing and nonsensical, and of a community frequently deemed illegible or illegitimate in their living because the living looks different. With this book, Helwig maps a space for difference. Encampment enacts the gesture of a hand reaching out to meet another, of a question being formed, and of a need--however difficult to translate its utterance--that is listened to with respect and responded to with attention. Reader to reader, Helwig asks us: How might we better live together?" - Claire Foster, Type Books

"Helwig's Encampment is an urgent call for compassion, part memoir, part homily. In eloquent prose it takes us on Helwig's journey as Anglican priest and activist into complex engagement with city staff, lawyers, politicians, and the unhoused community she works tirelessly to learn from and assist." - Martha Baillie, There is No Blue

"If you have seen a homeless person or an encampment and wondered who, why, or how, this is the book for you. Maggie Helwig's storytelling from the front lines of Toronto's housing tragedy is vivid, vital and profoundly human." - Shawn Micallef, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto

About the Author

Maggie Helwig (she/they) is a white settler in Tkaronto/Toronto, and is the author of fifteen books and chapbooks, most recently Girls Fall Down (Coach House, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, and was chosen as the One Book Toronto in 2012. Helwig is a long-time social justice activist, and also an Anglican priest, and has been the rector of the Church of St Stephen-in-the-Fields since 2013.