About SQW

Who is this guy?

My name is Stanley Q Woodvine. My blog is a reflection of everything and anything that interests me. That includes things like. me, computers, anime, the tools I use as a binner—such as bicycles and bicycle trailers, my experience as a homeless person, interesting things that I find in the garbage (you have no idea), and life in general.

In the past I have worked as an illustrator, graphic designer, and a writer. I have no idea what I’ll be doing in the future. At present I am living rough in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada—meaning that I am homeless, and have been for the past 18 years.

I support myself variously, taking both part- and full-time jobs when feasible (but not since 2010) and working on computer systems from time-to-time, as opportunities and my skills allow. Between 2013 and April 2020 I enjoyed a steady arrangement, where the Georgia Straight, a local community newspaper, paid me $200-a-month for the dubious privilege of being able to cherry pick my blog content as it saw fit.

Mostly though, I earn my money from binning—that is to say, from collecting and returning beverage containers for their deposit value.

People in the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, can always find me, with my bike and distinctive fluorescent orange-backed bike trailer, looking for bottles in the back alleys, or sitting in a coffee shop or a restaurant, typing away on my dumpster-dived laptop.

What’s with the whole Homeless thing?

Looking back on it, I would now say that I became homeless largely through my own stupidity. Sadly, it can’t be blamed on alcoholism or drug addiction.

I tell people that I simply lost the “thing” that had driven me to be an illustrator since I was a child. I had used that drive to push me beyond a childhood environment that was abusive, and dangerous; it pushed me to leave the Prairies at age 17 and seek my future in Vancouver. Within two weeks I was working for a community newspaper, the Westender, as their first-ever illustrator. I learned graphic design on the job, and went on to other newspapers, most notably The Georgia Straight. I also freelanced a lot—mostly illustration and design, but also some surprisingly lucrative technical writing. Basically I was able to pursue my passions and incidentally support myself for some twenty-four years.

By 2004 all my passion for illustration and graphic design was gone.And I mean utterly drained out of me. I came to a point where I didn’t want to—almost couldn’t bring myself to—draw. All the joys became terrible chores. I fudged, and outright missed deadlines. My work became laboured and mediocre. I effectively drove my freelance business into the ground.

Having virtually worked my entire adult life in the meritocracy of commercial creative communication, I found myself unskilled, unsuited for anything else. I was certainly unprepared baffled for the completely opposing ethics that seem to underlie traditional nine-to-five sorts of work.

As my personal and professional life unraveled in 2004, current and former clients tried to come to my aid but it is a thread running through my life that I’m hard to help. I have to say, with hopefully no rancour, that my friends weren’t much help. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to pay my rent so I evicted myself in October of 2004.

Cue the violins?

Eight years 13 years later, I’m still homeless. Why is that? One friend says that I’m taking the easy way. And there has to be some truth to this. It certainly seems easier to me to stay homeless than to take the government’s route off the streets, leading , as it generally does, through drug/bug/crime-infested social housing.

Between 2004 and 2010 I tried hard to find my own way off the street in five simple steps: 1) get a job; 2) work hard; 3) save my money; 4) get a place; 5) rebuild my life.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get past step three. Money wasn’t the issue. I was a homeless person, with all that implies about addiction and mental illness. And I had no rental references for six years. Not surprisingly, no landlord would rent to me.

I haven’t bothered to look for a full-time job since the beginning of 2010. Experience has taught me that having a full-time job and being homeless do not mix well, given the absence of round-the-clock showers and laundry. If you are going to be homeless, then binning allows you to control your schedule, so that you can go get a shower, or do your laundry, when showers and laundry are available to be gotten.

One hurdle to getting off the street that I cannot seem to overcome is my lack of proper identification.

Losing my I.D. after I became homeless was simply a matter of falling asleep in a park, so someone could walk off with my backpack. There is nothing simple about replacing it.

I’m now 57 years old. I have no living relatives and (fun fact) I’m half Chinese. My parents divorced when I was two-years-old, which is to say that I do not know how to spell my mother’s name. So I cannot even begin to satisfy the requirements of the forms that need to be filled out to get a birth certificate.

I had my one-and-only meeting with a welfare worker in October of 2004, in order to see if the system could offer the same assistance that it had back in 1980 when I first came to Vancouver, B.C., from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

In 1980, the B.C. welfare system was called Human Resources and it worked hard to get me my first-ever full set of I.D.

In 2004, when I asked a B.C. welfare worker if the government could again help me get my I.D., I was told quite bluntly, “No.” Getting my I.D. back was my job. And, if f I managed it and if I got my taxes back in order, I would be entitled to $73-a-month in “street assistance” (that’s 2004 dollars, so we’re talking real money).

I walked out of that welfare office and straight into a back alley to begin collecting returnable beverage containers. If the problem of my I.D. was beyond my scope to deal with, then I could certainly make money to feed myself.

I have never set foot in a welfare office since.

Thirteen years later I’m still homeless—because it’s honestly easier than the alternatives. And because I am neither an alcoholic nor a drug addict ( I can say that because I quit smoking in 2012), being homeless is, for me, hardly the torment that it could be if I was a slave to street drugs.

I can earn the same money binning as I would make with a minimum wage job. And I do not believe that it is possible go hungry in this wonderfully wasteful city.

And apparently I have enough leisure time to maintain a blog—one that I hope will both entertain and inform.

This blogger accepts Bitcoin donations

My Bitcoin address:
15xUvL4tQmoppmYXRRm2B7y6xq667g4oDx

Bitcoin is a computer-based cryptocurrency which exists independently of countries and traditional banking. As such, I can use Bitcoin, in place of credit cards, to purchase some useful products online—important upgrades to my WordPress.com blog, for example. I can even use Bitcoin to pay for a few things in the real world!

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