For eight years, James Caughill and his dogs have been walking thousands of kilometres across Canada to raise awareness about the lack of homeless shelter options for people with pets.
“Gives you something to love that loves you back,” he said of the companionship of a dog. “Gives you something that depends on you. Basically, it gives you a reason to live.”
In 2016, Caughill’s father had to move into a long-term care home, giving up the apartment they shared. Caughill thought he found an apartment for him and his dog, but it turned out to be a rental scam and he lost his savings.
He found himself homeless, and he soon discovered there were no shelter options in his hometown of St. Catharines, Ont., because he had a dog.
In order to continue collecting social assistance, he needed a home address and a shelter would have sufficed. A social worker recommended he give up his dog, but for Caughill, that was not an option.
He tried to make due on the streets until winter, using a library computer to search all of Canada for a shelter that would accept him and his dog. His search was fruitless.
“I looked all over Canada, West Coast to East Coast,” Caughill said. “Nothing.”
So he decided to walk from St. Catharines to Vancouver to shed light on this issue.
“Pets are important to people. They are essential. They are family,” said Caughill.
The dog he set out with, Muckwah, has since died of cancer. But that didn’t deter him from pushing on. He’s currently stopped on Montreal’s South Shore, in Longueuil, as he is walks east with his new dog, Muck.
He is on his way to St. John’s and he is raising funds to open a pet-friendly shelter.
‘Between liability and humanity’
A few Montreal shelters do allow pets. Bureaucracy has a role to play in the number of pet-friendly shelters, according to David Chapman, executive director of Resilience Montreal, a shelter where dogs are allowed.
“There’s a kind of tension, you could say, between liability and humanity,” said Chapman. “There’s a risk involved, but there’s also a human gain with that risk. We tend to focus on the human gain.”
Organizations have worked to meet the need for pet-friendly shelter services in Montreal in recent years.
For example, in January 2019, part of the old Royal Victoria Hospital was turned into a pet-friendly shelter. By the time it closed in April, more than 1,000 men and 150 women took advantage of the 80-bed facility.
Then during the pandemic, the former Hôtel-Dieu hospital on St-Urbain Street was turned into an emergency shelter. It allowed pets.
Caughill said there are now more than 300 shelters nationwide that allow pets, but he’s not backing down from his effort.
“Companionship, that’s the main thing,” he said. “You’re not alone. You don’t want to have the sense of being alone. Best part is that I got somebody intelligent to talk to.”
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