{"id":156138,"date":"2025-07-07T17:25:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/father-daughter-travel-world-highlighting-plight-of-street-people-newmarkettoday-ca\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T17:25:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:25:04","slug":"father-daughter-travel-world-highlighting-plight-of-street-people-newmarkettoday-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/father-daughter-travel-world-highlighting-plight-of-street-people-newmarkettoday-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"Father, daughter travel world highlighting plight of street people – NewmarketToday.ca"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While walking along Dunlop Street East in downtown Barrie on an extremely hot day recently, a young woman and her father could be seen interacting with a homeless person in the shaded doorway of a storefront.
The father asks a woman in a wheelchair questions about her life on the street, while his daughter kneels in front of her, camera pointed at her face, as the shutter clicks away while she speaks.
Leah den Bok, 25, is the young photographer. Her father, Tim den Bok, records the conversation.
Together, they are compiling artistic portraits and the stories behind the subjects<\/a> for a series of books called Nowhere to Call Home<\/em><\/a>.
The wheelchair-bound woman is named Taylor, who is in her 20s. She tries to hold her head up for the photos, but is struggling with the day's extreme heat, compounded by the intense sun reflecting even more heat off of the sidewalk where she sits.
"You have beautiful eyes," Leah tells Taylor, as she focuses her camera. "Have you had any water yet, today?"
Taylor slowly shakes her head, as she begins to nod off.
The duo cut off their photo shoot and interview, as Taylor seems to be suffering from severe heat stroke. She has no water with her.
Leah and her father help her out by pushing her away from the area to a nearby McDonald’s in an effort to give her a respite from the heat. They also buy her lunch, plenty of water and a large iced tea.
Their compassion on this day may have just saved this young homeless woman from injury or worse.
Leah and Tim were announced last month as recipients of the Governor General’s medal<\/a> for their Humanizing the Homeless project<\/a>, which includes photos and stories of homeless people in Ontario. They have also travelled the world documenting the plight of street people.
Each of the four books features 40 to 50 photographs and stories of homeless people worldwide, with the aim of humanizing and shining a spotlight on the issue of poverty. They are currently authoring their fifth edition, with Tim as the writer.
“We came to Barrie to interview and photograph people experiencing homelessness for our ongoing project, Humanizing the Homeless<\/em>, which is an accumulation of photographs and stories of people experiencing homelessness with the goals of humanizing them and shining a spotlight on their plight,” Leah told BarrieToday<\/em>, while seated in the McDonald’s.
She keeps a close eye on Taylor, who has parked in her wheelchair at the next table as she struggles with her meal.
“So, we were out looking for people experiencing homelessness who will be willing to share their story with us, how they ended up on the street and also let us take their photograph to put in our series,” Leah said.
They both reside in Collingwood, so it was a short jaunt to the city.
They chose Dunlop Street because it’s busy and has a lot of people experiencing homelessness there. There are a lot of individuals in groups, and panhandling with signs, she says.
“It’s interesting today, because there’s a heat warning with it being over 30 degrees, and people out there are literally hardly surviving. There’s nowhere for them to go, and it’s really sad,” Leah says. 
“I think it’s even more important on days like today to show people the reality, when most people are at home in their air conditioning and not even thinking about it.”
How does Barrie compare to other cities in regards to homelessness?
“I think, for Barrie’s size, being a smaller city, the homeless population is quite immense,” she says. “It’s almost comparable to Toronto and Hamilton — some of these bigger, more populated cities, in terms of seeing homeless individuals on most street corners and most intersections. You're always going to see somebody there, and often different people, (as) there are so many individuals.”
The duo says Barrie has quite a large homeless problem, and that more can be done about it.
“There are not enough shelters and affordable housing,” Leah says.
She’s been photographing in Barrie since the beginning of her project around 2015, and since then, says it has gotten a lot worse.
“Before, we would only find people around the Bayside Mission Centre, but now you kind of see them everywhere."
The Salvation Army Bayside Mission Centre is located downtown at the foot of Bayfield Street, near the Five Points. 
Leah says there are many factors, such as addiction and mental health, but to her, the leading cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing.
“And I have seen it myself, being in my 20s, and I can’t even afford a place,” she says. “I can’t imagine individuals who have chronic homelessness and poverty. It’s next to impossible to get a job, to get off the streets and get a place that’s affordable.”
Years ago, Leah and Tim say they saw a need to take it on as a project, to address the problem of homelessness and shine a light on it.
Through all of this, her biggest inspiration of all is one which hits close to home.
Her mother, Sarah, was homeless as a child in the city of Calcutta in India. She was rescued by Mother Teresa, and later adopted by a family in Stayner, about 40 minutes west of Barrie.
“If it wasn’t for Mother Teresa dedicating her life to help the homeless, (my mother) would not be alive. And I wouldn’t be alive,” Leah says.
Although not the direct cause for her to begin the project, it was more a “subconscious draw to caring for this community, because my mother was a part of it.”
After asking the people on the street she meets if they would like to take part in the photography project, the duo offers to pay $10 for their time, and also Tim Hortons gift cards, donated through the Cards for Change charity program.
“We are just spreading their good work by giving out cards, additional to our project,” Leah says.
A lot of the homeless people they meet are strong and resilient people — more than most people.
“Some individuals have been out there for 10 or 15 years, sleeping through winter … and the whole climate. They are right out there in the elements,” Leah says.
“And most people, even me, on a day like today, out there (in the heat) for an hour, and thinking, ‘I’m hot and I can barely do this,’ they're out there all day and they have no choice … It’s either that or you just die. You could easily, on a day like today, just decide to give up and not drink enough water, and you just die.”
As for Taylor, who is sitting nearby?
“I think she was really struggling today, so we didn’t have much of an interview,” Leah says. “After about two minutes, I was seeing sweat dripping off her hair, and I was starting to feel kind of concerned for her safety, so we just cut (the interview) off.”
Leah and Tim continue with their day and their project in Barrie.
“Our ultimate hope would be that homelessness would be eliminated,” Leah says, as they pack up and headed out the door of the restaurant.
"(We hope) the government would recognize it as a real problem and would implement the appropriate housing and the programming required because there are places in the world, and even Canada, like Medicine Hat (in Alberta), where homelessness has been eliminated,” she says.
“It’s very much possible," Leah adds. “It just depends on the need being seen. So, we're really hoping our work will show people that, and that it will end here, too, and that we don't have to continue to do (our project) anymore.”
 
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