By Kendall Worth
 |
| We need housing, food and transportation, but we need social connections too! |
If I was to give this post a subtitle, I could call this post, Reasons why 3 people recently proved it is difficult to make a Social Circle here in Halifax. Being part of our large population of people on income assistance, and living in poverty, is not the only reason.
So first there is Florence, (as usual not her real name) one of the 3 people who I got together with for this interview. As Florence and I were sitting down to have this interview, 2 friends of hers showed up who gave me permission to name them Dan and Rebecca, for the purposes of this blog. Note that neither of them are income assistance recipients. However they did tell me that it is no surprise to them that life is as I describe in my blog.
Florence told me that from 2002 – 2006 she was at Dalhousie and her friends were those she met at school. Dan and Rebecca moved here 3 years ago for work, and, from their experiences, to establish having a Social Circle here in Halifax, you have to do one or more of the following:
Have to be going to school here.
Be employed working at a type of job where you have coworkers who you socialize with at work and potentially outside of work.
Doing Volunteer Work in your community
Live the Christian Life and Worship in church on Sunday.
Dan and Rebecca have now lived in Halifax for three years, they have gone to “Meet-ups”, but they did not successfully make friends who they can socialize with at those events.
Florence is only back in Halifax visiting, 20 years after living here for 4 years. She now lives in Toronto. Her, Dan and Rebecca all know each other because they grew up together in Manitoba. During the interview Florence told me that she found out about my blog from someone in Toronto. Anyway what Florence had up her sleeve is that she wanted to introduce me to Dan and Rebecca. Making friends in Halifax is difficult and when Florence saw my BLOG, and saw that I sometimes report on friendships and social isolation, like this one, and elaborated on in this post, she agreed that: unless your personal life includes doing any of things listed in the bullet point list, making friends here in Halifax is difficult. This is why all three of -- Florence, Dan and Rebecca, -- have pointed out that even though they have a higher income than if they were on Income Assistance, it is still hard to make friends in Halifax.
Florence experienced it, while she was living here, and Dan and Rebecca are now experiencing it. One thing that can make it hard to build lasting friendships in Halifax is how often people come and go. Some people come here to study at Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, or Mount Saint Vincent and move away after graduation. Others come here on a military posting and may be transferred to another city after a few years. You can spend months getting to know someone, getting together for coffee or going to community events, and just when it starts to feel like you have a friend you can count on, they have to move away. You can still keep in touch, but you miss having someone nearby to call when you want company or need someone to talk to. For those of us who call Halifax home and are already dealing with social isolation, having to start over again and again can be one of the hardest parts of trying to build a circle of friends.
It then comes as no surprise to Florence, Dan and Rebecca that people living in poverty are depending on the people they talk to while standing in line at their Food-Banks and Soup Kitchens to simply get out and have a life.
Dan and Rebecca are actually thinking about leaving Halifax and Dan says he can actually get a job transfer through his work to move to another city. Rebecca on the other hand likes her job and she cannot get a transfer through her job. Dan and Rebecca actually feel socially isolated, as a couple, here in Halifax.
During our interview Florence bought up that she saw this post, and this interview included us discussing the solutions which I proposed in that post. We all agree that solutions can be created. The problem in Halifax is finding the right support to get ideas off the ground. Social isolation is a real problem, not only for Income Assistance Recipients, and it need to be fixed.
So yes the transient population here, does play a part in why it is hard to make friends here in Halifax.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kendall Worth is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries to make ends meet on income assistance.
Comments
Post a Comment