Earlier this week, Canadians made headlines for crashing the Stats Canada website. We took selfies of the mailout in droves and gleefully posted them on social media, eager to show the world how excited we were to be counted. As it turns out, we’re all statistics nerds and incredibly eager to participate in the return of the long-form census. While I’m just as keen as my fellow Canucks to do my part and contribute to the accurate record keeping conducted by my national statistics agency, there was another reason I was unbelievably excited to receive my census information in the mail: for a long time, I didn’t think I’d receive one.
While some homeless individuals are counted in the census, not all are. The people that are counted are those who were lucky enough to find beds available in shelters, or to have a couch on which to crash on “census day”. People sleeping in offices or homes in secret, or those not fortunate to have a roof at all, may not be counted. The Stats Canada website doesn’t give much information on this point, only saying that it is “very difficult to count people who are not in a private or collective dwelling on Census Day”. This is a sad reality, and the main reason I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to receive a Census.
Quite some time ago, I left an abusive situation and subsequently found myself homeless. I had no fixed address, and survived solely off the kindness and generosity of my friends. My weight plummeted to 88 pounds as my mental health deteriorated. For a long time, I didn’t think I’d ever get out of that situation, and I was convinced that I’d be homeless forever.
I remember crying tears of joy when I got the call that I had been approved for a new home; a small but cozy place with lots of natural light and even more security. My abuser wouldn’t be able to find me, and I finally, for the first time in a long, long time, felt safe.
When the census arrived that year and in all others, I cry those same tears of joy. To me, the census is more than just a collection of random data about my life; it’s a reminder that I’m lucky enough to be housed, to have a fixed address, to be able to have my life back after losing years of it. I often think of the other women I met in similar situations, and I hope that they are safe, that they are in a place where their lives can be counted too.
I can’t speak for my fellow Canadians, but I am sure that many of us have similar stories – of feeling as though we had no value and suddenly finding it again. The census is more that just boxes to complete to me – it’s a reminder that I am home.