Life on the street ‘not recommended’

One of the benefits of working in a downtown newspaper office is that it’s handy to people who want to come in and talk about all manner of things.

We have people with problems, people with causes, people with complaints — the gamut — who drop in to talk. We get folks with gripes about the system, with political axes to grind, with beefs against City Hall, or with “a good news story” they’d like us to write.

We’re sort of like an arm of government. When our reception desk rings my local, or my name is announced on the PA as being wanted up front, I’m never sure who it’s going to be or what it’s about.

One guy who was in awhile back pulled off his shirt to show me the sores on his back and demanded that he receive better medical treatment.

But, just as often, they’re here with a press release or a poster or just a request to help with getting the word out.

I had quite a few of them this week, but one was especially interesting.

This time, it was a tall fellow with a few missing teeth, a friendly smile and a pleasant manner who wanted to talk in private. His name is Gary Rembish, who describes himself as an unofficial advocate for the homeless in Kamloops. We met once a few years ago, he reminded me.

Rembish, who lives on Schubert Drive, was homeless for several years before he got straightened around. Now he buys fast-food burgers for street people and talks to anyone who will listen about what we need to do to help them.

After making good money driving heavy machinery for 27 years, his life started falling apart. His marriage broke up, he was out of work, and he made a decision — based on economics — to live on the street.

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said of the experience, which lasted about three and a half years.

He was here, he said, because he wanted me to listen to an interview he did with Arjun Singh on the former councillor’s Your Kamloops blog.

“I think it would really help people understand,” he said. “Maybe you could put something in the paper about it.”

He’s changed, Remish said. He used to be not a nice guy, but that’s not the way he is now. Rembish is battling some health issues, including being legally blind, the result of having a small tumour removed from his head. That doesn’t slow him down in his quest to speak for the homeless, though.

So I promised I’d give the interview a listen, and he was off. A short time later, I was on Singh’s blog.

The 26-minute interview is worth the time, and is more or less an expanded version of the chat Rembish and I had in our office. One thing that struck me about it is a seeming contradiction in his opinions of street people.

“I’ve met a lot of very intelligent people on the street,” he says in the interview with Singh. He talks about the comradeship of the street, where people share cigarettes and food and some laughs and try to help each other. “One buddy will get some wine and he’ll share it with another buddy.”

But, he also talks about the addictions — especially to alcohol — of the homeless, and their readiness to steal whatever they can to support those addictions.

While Rembish often gives them food, he won’t give them money, because they want to spend it all on alcohol, he says, and the homeless often have no respect for themselves or for others.

But those seeming inconsistencies are, perhaps, just a reflection of the fact that homelessness is a complex issue and the homeless are as complex as anyone else. Fundamentally good people, toughened by circumstance, are in survival mode and act accordingly at the moment.

Rembish has a piece of advice for those who are approached on the street by somebody looking for a handout, or who may have a particular perception of the homeless.

“Just be yourself, just have a little compassion. . . don’t snub us. . . don’t put us down.”

The interview between Rembish and Singh is one of the best entries I’ve seen on the Your Kamloops blog. Singh is back to posting more regularly now since the lull after the civic election, and he recently announced he intends to take the blog “to the next level” with what he calls “Kamloops Citizen Media.”

It will, he says, fit in somewhere between mainstream media and what comes from government. The Rembish talk is a good start.