Ivan and Kevin

After a nice evening with Mark at a local Morrocan restaurant I went to the next Ctrain station. On my way I passed under the same bridge where I met Kevin back in June.

I saw Kevin sleeping with a cowboy hat (the baseball cap that I bought him in June got stolen a few days later). Besides him Ivan was sitting. He told me that Kevin is in a bad condition nowadays and that he takes care over him.

Ivan also told me that he is from Colombia, he talked quite a bit about his country. He came here to Calgary when he was 15. While working as a superintendent on construction sites he started drinking and eventually found himself on the streets.

Like Kevin he went through all kinds of mood changes during our conversation. First we talked about politics and that Calgary as a very rich city isn't able or willing to help roughly 5000 people to get of the street. Ivan compared the gap between the poor and the rich in Calgary with the situation in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s.

In between he showed me the suit he was wearing and which he bought used for a few bucks and said: "You see now I look like them, but I am not like them." Pointing to business people walking by.

After I asked why they sleep under that bridge he told me that Kevin and he aren't allowed to sleep in Drop In shelters anymore because of their suspicious contacts to criminals. He eventually became aggressive and showed me how to behave when dealing with criminals - including showing me the wooden planket with three large nails he was sitting on.

Later on he started crying while talking about his stepfather who punched him 16 times into the face on his birthday when he was a teenager.

Before I left we hugged each other and he began sweeping the waste that he and Kevin produced while sitting under the bridge.