ONE OF THE GLOBE AND MAIL'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025
WINNER OF THE 2025 TORONTO BOOK AWARD
"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.
WINNER OF THE 2025 TORONTO BOOK AWARD
One of CBC Books's Best Canadian Nonfiction Books of 2025
One of the Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2025
One of CBC Books's Canadian books you should be reading in May 2025
One of CBC Books's Canadian nonfiction books to read in spring 2025
"Encampment is the book for anyone who has ever looked at an unhoused settlement and wondered – how does this happen in a country as wealthy as Canada, in a city as vibrant and seemingly compassionate as Toronto? Encampment is the chronicle of an unhoused community on the doorstep of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church in Kensington Market. Maggie Helwig, the church pastor, becomes a champion of the encampment in her midst and details in exquisite prose the plight of the individuals who make up this unhoused community. It's a difficult book to put down once you start reading and impossible to forget once you finish. Helwig's exceptional storytelling compels us to care. You will never look at an unhoused community the same way again." – 2025 Toronto Book Awards Jury Citation
"Encampment represents an important contribution to literature regarding homelessness." – James Hughes, Literary Review of Canada
"In Encampment, Helwig casts an unapologetic gaze at how our government and society fail to provide homeless people with the basic necessities of life, spotlighting the beliefs and rationalizations that lead to these failures, and the dire implications for the health and well-being of unhoused people." – Christina Palassio, The Philanthropist Journal
"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
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