Dougie Bruce didn’t let his volunteer census-taker get one question in before his life story came cascading out, amid tears, laughter, a little flirtation and an impromptu powwow song in honour of a mother he never knew.
“I got no family. No one was there to help me,” said Bruce, who said he was born in 1970 and became homeless at age 12. “I survived my own way.”
That way, said Bruce, involved selling drugs as a teenage gang member, spending some time in jail for robbery and earning scarred knuckles from fighting, among his many reminders of violence. He said he’s seen a woman get raped at the McLaren Hotel, lost his best friend to suicide and cries when his thoughts turn to his only daughter.
“I’ve got an addiction problem, an alcohol problem,” Bruce said from a back office of the Main Street Project. “I make my own decisions. I’m still here.”
Bruce was one of the first wave of people to sit down for Winnipeg’s first-ever homeless street census. The 24-hour blitz began Sunday night at downtown shelters, including the Main Street Project, the only one that doesn’t mandate that clients be sober.