Sylvia Cole doesn't sleep well.
During the seven months she called St. Albert's streets home a good night's rest was hard to come by, and though she has a roof over her head today, sleeping through the whole night is difficult.
"I can't sleep. When I was homeless I never slept, I was afraid I would never wake up."
When she can't sleep, Cole tours St. Albert late at night, visiting her old haunts, seeing people still outside and helping where she can.
"I take my bike and I will look for things from when I was on the street. I look for people like me."
Cole believes her journey, her battle with drug addiction and her time on the streets, helped turn her life around. Now she wants to help others battling the same demons.
"I want to help anyone I can with an addiction, anyone who is struggling."
Looking out over the now treeless field in the path of the Anthony Henday Drive — a place where Cole lived in a flimsy tent — she starts to tear up.
"I go there and I think about it every day and I cry, because that was my home."
Cole's path to that field started long before she found herself living outside. There are a few of starting points: an abusive and unhappy childhood, a series of viciously abusive relationships and a serious drug addiction.
She had been clean for years when she moved to Alberta from Ottawa in the late 1990s and, initially, stayed that way.
Then she met her current partner, who treats her well, but also had a serious drug habit. He re-introduced her to drugs. Cole says the mistake was hers.
In time, the rent money was going to the pair's drug habit, forcing them and Cole's two children to move.
"Every house that we had, we were in there for about six months at a time and then we stopped paying our rent and we got evicted."
When the final eviction notice came, Cole sent her children to live with friends and for the next year tried as hard as she could to hold on.
"We were living in a hotel, we lived with friends, we lived with everybody we could think of, but we just couldn't afford it no more, and so we ended up pitching a tent."
She doesn't remember the first night of homelessness.
"I couldn't even think about it until five days later when I woke up and I was still living in the tent."
Addiction
Cole's drug addiction not only pushed her into homelessness, it kept her there.
She and her partner were deeply hooked on cocaine, crystal meth and alcohol.
Money she earned through odd jobs or panhandling went to more drugs.
"It was getting to the point where I couldn't even live without drugs," she says. "I was addicted to the point where I was going crazy."
She hid her homelessness from family because she didn't want them to know how far she fell.
"I had everything before, I had a beautiful home and everything you could possibly think of and I lost it all, I pawned it all away for drugs."
Before landing on the street, her drug addiction would take everything from her.
"I remember one time I spent $1,000 in one night and it was Christmas time. I had no money for Christmas presents."
Now 16 months clean, Cole says she goes to support meetings several times a week and focuses on her addiction, because staying clean means staying warm, housed and alive.
"I always think now that I have to stay focused on my life now, because if I don't I am going to end up back where I was."
Services
St. Albert has no shelters, no soup kitchens and currently, little in the way of support for the homeless. Cole says despite the lack of services, moving to Edmonton, where there are shelters, was not an option.
"I didn't want to leave because my kids were here."
The city needs to look after its own problems, she says.
"It is not fair to ask people to go into the city, because when those shelters get full you have no place to go."
The streets of St. Albert didn't offer a lot, but eventually she learned about businesses that threw away food. Others would also give it to her, something she's thankful for.
Suzan Krecsy, director of the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village, says homelessness in the city had previously gone unnoticed, but it's a problem that's beginning to draw attention.
"More and more people are actually recognizing the fact that we do have homeless people here and they are responding very well."
A community village will be opening as part of the food bank and will include a shower and laundry services.
The agency now also has a liaison worker, who will help homeless people get services, whether it be something as simple as housing or food or for more complex mental health and addiction issues.
David Berger, deputy executive director with Boyle Street Community Services, says Edmonton's homeless problem isn't confined to a few square blocks of downtown and he knows it reaches to outlying communities as well.
"Homelessness is all across the city. It is not anymore an inner city issue, and hasn't been that way for quite a while."
Homeless have spread across the city Berger says, because just like anyone else, they stick with what they know.
"We find people everywhere and the reason in part is that people stay where they are comfortable even if they are homeless."
After talking with the city's homeless, Krecsy says they come here because it feels safe.
She estimates there are about 20 to 50 permanently homeless people in St. Albert, though that number is always in flux.
Recovery
Fear and shame seem to generally describe Cole's time on the street. She was ashamed of everything she had lost and scared of the unknown.
"You don't know what is going to happen. You don't know when you are going to eat again. You don't know if you are going to ever take a shower."
At one point she nearly froze to death and her weight dropped dramatically.
"It was so cold and I just wanted to die, I wanted to get out of here. I had no hope for help."
In November 2008, she received a note from two Boyle Street workers offering help. They gave her a temporary place to live and helped her into a six-month treatment program.
She says hitting that rock bottom finally allowed her to get control and change her life.
"You know how you put a message in a bottle, well that was me for a very long time, I was bobbing up and down in the ocean and finally I hit the shore and the bottle smashed and I was looking at all the shattered pieces of my life."
After leaving treatment, Cole found a basement apartment and started to set up a home.
"I didn't have no furniture, no nothing, just a tiny little mattress and I didn't even sleep on it," she says. "One day I just sat there and I cried, because I realized I was in a home."
Attending church and other counselling has helped keep her life on track.
"I am not in a dark world anymore, I have found light and I believe in God and I recognize that I am an addict."
Cole also will be speaking at local schools in the months ahead and wants to see St. Albert do more to help homeless people. She says sometimes it feels as though residents wanted to deny the problem existed.
"They don't want to think there is actually homeless people out there who are struggling."
Cole says her life is turning around and despite everything she has gone through, everything she has lost, she is proud of where she is today.
"I am proud of myself for what I have accomplished. I have a home and furniture and a nice little place. I worked hard for it," she says. "I cry almost every day, not because I failed in life, but because I am a survivor."
