Conrad Sweatman

RYAN AD is Jamaican-Grenadian, lives in Winnipeg and receives iPhone notifications in French. One of these notifications recently gave the photographer (who goes by his artist name) good news: a prestigious Parisian art gallery was interested in featuring two of his photographs in one of its exhibitions. One was captured in Manitoba, the other in Jamaica. “I felt a constant sense of community in Jamaica. You’ll walk down the road and people will talk to you,” he says.

Margot Ross says there’s a 70-something year old woman using Siloam Mission’s services who used to volunteer there. “She was taken in by an internet financial scam and was too embarrassed to tell anyone, and eventually was evicted,” she says. Ross is the interim director of development at Siloam, which offers shelter, meals and wellness supports to people experiencing homelessness and poverty. She has plenty of similar stories of bad luck and sudden reversals of fortune.