Book Review: All Our Sisters - Stories of Homelesss Women in Canada

Walk a mile in their shoes, goes the old adage, wisdom that former Calgary Herald reporter Susan Scott repeats in the introduction to All Our Sisters: Stories of Homeless Women in Canada. But Scott does more than trace the steps of Canada’s homeless women — she talks to them, in coffee shops and at shelter lunchroom tables. Her reporting is mostly devoid of the maudlin moments that others, fascinated by the urban underbelly, cannot resist. She makes us feel the female perspective on poverty and homelessness, then attempts to get at the political root of the problem.

The book is composed of discrete portraits of thirty-nine women in cities from Vancouver to Ottawa. Scott recounts their life stories, mapping narratives without passing judgment. It is sometimes difficult to tell which city she’s reporting from, as the book is organized by topic — addiction, mental illness, foster care, and prostitution among them — rather than place. But the collective voice is a compelling one; homelessness becomes the main character.

Most notable is Scott’s insistence on extracting insight from the unlikeliest of sources. Barb, a forty-nine-year-old former homeless woman with multiple personalities, emerges as one of the most self-aware, articulate, and reflective women in the book. “You have to give us back the hope we may never have had,” she says, summing up the challenge policy-makers and social service workers face: the near-impossibility of teaching “new coping skills” to women whose indifferent or abusive families never prepared them for the world. Instead, they’ve learned to self-medicate away their traumas, finding acceptance only on the streets.

Scott ultimately recommends Mavis / McMullen Place, a co-op housing development in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, as a model solution. But as she explains, the book is only meant to be a springboard to further research and reform. It’s a beginning, with a much-needed focus on the female perspective.