26 Spring/Summer 2026 Multiple Locations • Communal Accommodations • Independent Accommodations • First Nations, Inuit, Metis Healthy Environment • Alcohol Free • Drug Free • Rent geared to income • Affordable • Market Rent • Bachelor, one-bedroom, two-bedroom • Wait list 244 Church Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1Z3 | Tel: 416-975-5451 For all inquiries, please email reception@nishnawbehomes.org NISHNAWBE HOMES INC. CHILD WELFARE Dawn Maracle speaks about advocating for housing rights By Andrew St. Germain RISING COSTS TO HOUSING OUR CHILDREN B efore Dawn Maracle became someone who could help open doors for others, she was a child standing on the other side. She was 15 then, growing up in Belleville, Ont., not far from Tyendinaga, where her father was from and where much of her Mohawk family lived. Home had become complicated. Her father, who died at 52, carried struggles Dawn now describes with care: “He didn’t talk about his feelings,” she says. “He didn’t get help. He kept it all in until things exploded.” One night, after violence in the home, Maracle left. That first night, she sought shelter from a neighbour, who propos- itioned her in exchange for help. She slept on the street. At 15, she was already resourceful – as the youngest of five children, she grew up in a family that had long known how to get by with little. “We grew up fairly poor, even though we didn’t know we were poor – which was, I think, a luxury that we had back then. That’s not the same today,” she says. “I remember my mom watching us kids, plus four of her sister’s kids, every day at lunch and after school. She would split one can of chicken noodle between all of us. Just water it down, water it down, water it down.” For Maracle, those memories sharpen the contrast between then and now: a time when a family could stretch a can of Dawn with her daughter at an Argos Pink game in 2013.
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