My vision of Canada as a country of super-abundance – of land and resources – has to be somewhat adjusted as soon as I step into its big cities. Coming from a developing country like Thailand, which is less than half the size of British Columbia but with a population more than twice the size of the whole of Canada, I know what crowdedness is like. After all, I grew up in a family of ten children who were used to sharing one bedroom for years. But I did not realize how seriously a similar symptom also threatens Canadian urbanites until I sat in a skytrain on my way to Burnaby and saw how very close a new high-rise under construction is to the train track.

As the train whizzed by, I imagined how inhabitants in those towers would have to adjust to the daily rumbling of countless cars and curious eyes of the passengers. Would they have to install very thick curtains to grant themselves some privacy, and to peek through the gaps instead when they want to look at the sky, sunset and/or sunrise, and panoramic views of the city they call home? I am aware that floor space in such buildings is not at all cheap. How many years do these folks have to toil before they can pay off the bank mortgages and claim full ownership to the box units?

And yet the people who can afford them are still faring much better than the homeless which I learn are on a steady rise, a chronic multi-layered issue city planners and politicians have yet to solve effectively. The “tent cities” have turned into a sore point of contention between the occupants and their home-owning neighbours, the city governments and the non-government organizations/activists, to name a few. Back in Thailand, the homeless are more or less a common phenomenon as far as I can remember. But I have no ideas how their counterparts here can survive the freezing cold temperature outdoors when I already find it difficult being bundled up in my well-heated house. It puzzles, and saddens, me whenever I hear about some campers found dead in their tents, or bin divers fatally trapped in donation bins that were supposed to solicit fund to help them in the first place. How Canada with its generosity in helping thousands, if not millions, of the poor and destitute around the world, has been unable to allocate land and resources to accommodate her own people remains a big question I have to delve more into.

And yet one trait of this new home I have come to appreciate is the kindness of ordinary Canadians, even among the homeless themselves. Once I was sauntering around Downtown East Side with a friend, when all of a sudden a car stopped nearby and out of it sprinted a fellow carrying big bags of fresh bread which he dropped on the ground before hopping back into the