On October 16, the St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church encampment was cleared out with a wheel loader and dump truck. The encampment, which housed around 10 people at the time of removal, has been in the church yard since the spring of 2022.
Reverend Maggie Helwig, a Trinity College alum, has advocated with the church for the encampment to stay, although the church’s front yard is city property.
The night before the encampment’s removal, the city awarded Rev. Helwig the 2025 Toronto Book Award for her book, Encampment: Resistance, Grace and an Unhoused Community. Passages from the book were read out over a speaker as the wheel loader tore down various tarps and tents at 3:20 pm.
By 6:00 pm, four or five dump trucks’ worth of items from the encampment had been cleared.
The clearing
On October 14, Toronto Fire Services (TFS) issued an inspection order stating that the encampment’s accumulated combustible debris would likely injure or kill someone if a fire started.
Helwig told TorontoToday that on October 15, a notice from the Ontario Fire Marshal was posted on the church door about the plan to clear out the yard.
The city offered all the residents a shelter referral, and various Toronto social services, including the Streets to Homes Street Outreach & Support Program, searched for individuals who needed any support.
Debra, an outreach worker at The Neighbourhood Group, told The Varsity that the encampment was a “social neighbourhood,” which had around “10–12 people here at any given time sleeping, but it kept 25 people rotating a place to stay safely.”
“You look around, you see the important stuff that they could have kept. You get a little frazzled when they say, “Move.” It’s emotional.”
One community member watching the clearing told The Varsity that residents “slowly cleared their stuff until one o’clock. If they went to a shelter, you are only allowed two bags of stuff, no matter the size of the shelter or the size of storage there. So they — it’s a terrible deal — only get to keep two garbage bags of stuff.”
“Normally they pretend it’s not going into the garbage… but I think because these people are like, yes, we are leaving this behind, they’re not even pretending.”
The church put up a sign that read, “The city will be here to clear everything [sic]. If you have anything you want to keep safe, the church has offered to store a garbage bag for each person. If it’s important/valuable to you [sic], please take this time to sort through things + prepare for the morning.”
Different security staff said they were not allowed to pass anything over from within the fenced area, including returning a rake to the church staff. Later, when a distraught individual wrapped in blankets and the reverend approached the fence and requested a gift card on the ground, one of the private security guards obliged.
At around 6:20 pm, cement blocks were lowered onto the cleared and swept plot where the encampment used to be.
Referring to the concrete blocks, Debora said, “It’ll probably be years before we get grass again.”
As of October 18, the fenced-off area has a new notice: “No person shall, on a street, sidewalk, or boulevard: camp, dwell, or lodge; obstruct encumber, damage, or foul; install or place any unauthorized encroachment, object, article, or thing; set a fire or create a dangerous condition.”
Taped onto the fence, a cardboard sign pointed to the notice with the words, “Jesus does not endorse this message.”
