For 20 years, Russell Dickson has lived outdoors in the urban wilderness. He’s finally ready to come inside
Russell Dickson doesn't know when he'll get used to sleeping in a real bed again.
For a while, he slept on the ground, his sleeping bag and tent the only things separating him from the cold, hard Earth. (He wouldn't recommend it.) Then he slept on a sign advertising a nearby condo development. Next - for years - a thin piece of plywood. Finally, about a year ago, he was gifted a cot, which, by lifting him a few inches off the ground, changed his life. You go to sleep a lot better when you're off the floor," he says.
But it was different when he crawled into a bed this past September - the first time he says he'd slept in one in about two decades.
A local organization that supports Toronto's homeless had rented him a hotel room where he could recover from dental work before venturing back into the woods. The first night I went in there, I stayed awake all night," he says. ... I could not get used to sleeping in a bed with covers."
In a city of 2.8 million, Dickson, a tall man with long greying hair, a quick smile, calm demeanour and cloudy blue eyes, lives largely out of sight. For the past 20 years, he says he's resided in a blue-tarped tent atop a secluded, wooded hill in the middle of Toronto, watching condos shoot into the skyline as the years went by.
His time living outside makes Dickson a rarity in Toronto. Homelessness has risen dramatically in recent years, but many cycle through periods of sleeping rough between stretches in a shelter or subsidized housing. According to data collected in 2021, only two per cent said they strictly sleep outside. Few, if any, have lived in the urban wilderness as long as Dickson.
After speaking with his long-time employer, outreach workers and local police, the Star confirmed Dickson has lived at his current spot since at least 2009, and likely longer.
But now he's ready to move back indoors, though a lack of affordable and subsidized housing in Toronto makes it difficult to say how long he'll have to wait. When that day arrives, Dickson plans to bring his cot with him.
It was his doctor who urged him to look for housing. A lingering spinal injury he suffered as a child would make a simple fall - especially near his hidden home, where he might not be found - disastrous, he explained. And that's the only reason," says Dickson, who recently turned 61. Otherwise, I'd just be happy to stay outside."
There's a lot he'll have to get used to when he moves back inside. The ease and privacy of his own washroom. No longer having to fret over whether his water will freeze or his can of heat" will run out of fuel or if he remembered to put his food away, so the raccoons don't, once again, break into his home.
The other people.
His is a mostly solitary existence aside from the wildlife and occasional mountain biker. Dickson doesn't own a phone or computer and says he's never used the internet. It seems, as the world around him trudged forward, he's stayed in one place where," as he puts it, no one sees you - and I don't bother anyone."
He'll miss this place, and the animals he shares it with. He says he came across the spot long ago, after he snuck off during an elementary school field trip. What a nice place to go and hide," he remembers thinking.
Dickson was born with another name, a fact he says eluded him for much of his youth. He spent his first few years on Moravian 47, a small reserve in Chatham-Kent that's home to the Lenape (Lunaapeew) People of the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown.
When he was a young child, at the height of the Sixties Scoop, he says authorities came to take him and his siblings away. Eventually, they were put up for adoption. Though they kept him and his younger brother together, his sisters went to another home. But he insists he's not a victim. He says his father was abusive. I had no objection to them coming in and getting me out of there."
He was taken to the suburbs of Hamilton. His new mom was strict but fair." His new dad was more laid-back. However, by the time he'd reached his late teens, his adopted father had died, and his adopted mother wanted him out. He says he never saw her again.
He stayed at the YMCA in Hamilton for a time. After working at the Hamilton Spectator, where he stuffed the newspapers with flyers, he hitchhiked around southern Ontario and eventually settled in Toronto. For a period, Dickson, who hadn't graduated high school, worked as a bartender but soon slid into a pattern of living from one job to another." By the late 1980s, he was delivering handbills, work he still does today when his back acquiesces.
There have been moments throughout his life, Dickson says, where it felt like he was a promotion or new job away from getting ahead - an alternate path where he'd have the means to buy that sports car he had dreamed about as a kid - before the opportunity fell through.
Through all of it, there were dust ups with the law that left him cynical about the justice system - and frequent movement. He bounced around the city, at times renting, other times sleeping on a friend's couch or at a hostel or shelter, an environment he says only brought trouble.
Sometimes it was through a fault of mine and sometimes it wasn't," Dickson says about his earlier stints of homelessness. And sometimes I thought, Ahh, heck, I'm just going to live outside.'"
Life continued that way until he moved to the hill he now calls a home. (To avoid disturbing his home or displacing Dickson, the Star agreed not to disclose his tent's location.)
I was going to only stay out there till about fall, save up my money, go and get a room again, you know, start all over," he said. But he fell in love with it, particularly the bond he developed with the local deer and other wildlife, which over time got used to his presence. (He hadn't yet warred with the raccoons.) Some days he'd wake up to fawns laying steps from his tent, and they didn't flicker a thing."
This is the life," he thought. I'd rather have this than being inside, neighbours yelling at each other. Things like that." For the first time in a while, he felt safe. He felt happy.
Steps from one of the city's busiest thoroughfares but surrounded by trees, Dickson has enjoyed a front-row seat to nature - the rabbits, the coyotes, the wild turkeys that appear in late summer, the golden eagle that used to come around before all the construction. But it's not all idyllic. Hardly. The winters are harsh. The summers swarm with bugs, which has taught him the perils of using scented soap. Even washing your clothes can prove a magnet to mosquitoes, he says.
There was a learning curve, but through trial and error, he discovered how to make his life a little bit easier: Breathable laundry bags helped prevent mould, a constant threat. Cotton clothing is preferable to polyester, which melts when lit and can cause severe burns. Spicy food is typically eschewed by animals looking for a meal. And once they get used to your scent, explains Dickson, wildlife - or, more accurately, the sudden absence of it - will let you know if someone has been poking around your tent.
In a windstorm, falling trees around his home can make the ground shake. Then there was that July day in 2013 when Toronto was deluged with a historic downpour, and the top of his tent roared with pelts of rain. God, please," he recalls thinking. He tried his best to stay still and not touch side the of the tent, so water wouldn't come crashing in.
In the warmer months, his days have been spent walking the city, sometimes delivering handbills or collecting bottles. Maybe he'd read a book (he lists Pierre Berton, Tom Clancy and Stephen King as some of his favourite authors), pick up a newspaper or go see an afternoon matinee at the movie theatre.
Did he get lonely? Not really."
For years, he says he actually did have a human neighbour. A man similar in age lived about 50 yards away in an underground cellar constructed with found wood and lit by battery-powered string lights. One outreach worker described it as an apartment," ten degrees warmer than ground level. You'd be surprised where you can find some people living," Dickson jokes.
Aindrea Kiss met Dickson near the outset of the pandemic. She works as a nurse at Sanctuary Toronto. Dickson first stopped by after the drop-in service he had relied on to shower and shave suddenly shut down, and it became difficult to find somewhere to stay warm.
I often think, Where did he come from?'" said Kiss, who, after nearly four years working in homeless outreach, has never met anyone who's live outside as long as Dickson has.
After they met, Sanctuary helped him access medical and dental care, bought him the cot, and rented him the hotel room after his dental surgery, which she believes led him to consider moving back inside. She remembers how he talked about the joy of getting to watch the evening news.
He's really been coming out of his shell," she said. But it could take years before he can move back inside.
On top of what he makes distributing handbills from time to time, Dickson also collects ODSP. But with the average one-bedroom apartment in Toronto now listed for nearly $2,500 per month, it's not nearly enough to fetch his own place.
He recently added his name to the list of more than 84,000 households in Toronto currently waiting for subsidized housing. The city says the average wait time for a senior with a homeless priority stands at about four years. (Applicants must wait, on average, 14 years to get into a one-bedroom apartment.)
Besides the neighbours and the comforts most of us take for granted - including, of course, the bed - Dickson will eventually have to adjust to the hush provided by four walls and a roof, another thing that kept him up in that hotel room a few months back.
It was quiet," he says. When you're sleeping outside, you got noise outside your tent all the time. Insects, rodents, quadrupeds, owls and things like that. Things that you get used to. You get used to the raccoon coming around you. You know exactly almost to the minute when he's going to show up."
Unable to sleep, he remembers looking up at the night sky on the hotel balcony. I'm just sitting there saying, Yes, this is beautiful.' And the best part," he continued, No mosquitoes!"
Ben Mussett is a Toronto-based general assignment reporter for the Star. Reach him via email: bmussett@thestar.ca