Always with us

Muddy Water: Stories from the Street
by Al Tysick

Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers [Resource Publications], 2024
$25 (USD)  /  9798385215010

Reviewed by Richard Butler

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“The poor,” Jesus observed, “will always be with us.” Thank heavens, then, for the likes of Reverend Al Tysick.

Reverend Al is familiar to most of us living in Victoria as a constant figure among the street people of our city. These are his family. Al has spent a lifetime on Canada’s streets and in this new book, Muddy Water, presents us with their stories “ranging from despair to humour to hope.”

Like so many of them, Reverend Al has not had an easy life himself. He lost faith in his mother’s Roman Catholicism and grew up to hate his alcoholic, abusive father. He overcame dyslexia to obtain university degrees. He was ordained in the United Church of Canada. In the course of his ministry he was called to be Executive Director of the Open Door, serving Victoria’s homeless. “I came to minister to the poor,” he says, “and the poor ministered to me. I came to give my life to them and they gave their lives to me.”

Turning “65 years young,” Al felt a further call to minister. He resigned from his paid position and helped to animate a new street-oriented organization—the Dandelion Society.

Yet throughout the course of things there has been apparent personal uncertainty for Reverend Al, an ambiguity hinted at in the title of this book. He thanks his street family “for having the courage to push me into the muddy water of faith.” Whatever could he mean by that?

Muddy Water comprises 72 short chapters (two to three pages each) describing personalities, incidents, and outcomes on the streets of my home city of Victoria. It is a book of days. One can well imagine Al, getting warm at a corner table in Tim Horton’s, recording in a scruffy notebook something that happened earlier that morning.

The stories are almost always about the mornings, of finding members of his family sleeping in doorways on this street or that. Al always mentions which street and intersection, making the descriptions all the more immediate and real to anyone who knows the city, anyone who may have averted his eyes or passed by on the other side.

The descriptions are vivid, seared into Al’s memory and brought to life again in the warmth and comfort of his own home. (There is more than a hint of guilt in that. See chapter 39—“The Push.”)

Each chapter is illustrated with drawings by Elfrida Schragen—sketches whose intentional lack of artistic sophistication match the text perfectly.

Some chapters tell a pretty good story.

In “Tell Him to Put his Shirt On,” we meet Toughy, a First Nations woman. She had gotten into a fist fight with a young man around her age, whom she accused of stealing her welfare cheque. The situation was intensifying as Al arrived:

Finally the young man pulled his shirt off and threw it to the ground. Now bare-chested, he yelled out, “Come on, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”

At that point, Toughy pulled her halter top down to her waist and, bare chested as well, yelled “We’ll see who’s going to kick the shit out of who!”

Just then the police pulled into the parking lot. They knew them both well.

“Toughy,” yelled an officer from his patrol car, “Put your top on.”

She defiantly put both hands on her hips, pushed out her bare chest, and replied, “Then tell him to put his shirt on.”

The officer yelled at the young man, “For God’s sake put your shirt on.”

But just as he reached down to grab his shirt, Toughy gave him one of the best uppercuts I’ve ever seen. He landed unconscious on the ground. Looking over him, she said, “So who will kick the shit out of who?” She put her halter top up and walked off, listening to the applause of some of the women standing by.

Many stories tell of the personalities of Al’s family members, their interesting and compelling qualities set against Al’s matter-of-fact description of their particular illness or addiction. Many tell of the circumstances of their death and burial. This is a grim book, but not as grim as life on the street.

This is not an easy book to read. Almost all its chapters tell essentially the same story. Each follows the same pattern: a description of the setting; finding the person; a description of his or her situation; a moment of conversation; a Biblical quotation as Al tries to make sense of it for us, and/or a prayer; and almost always, a seemingly inevitable lack of positive resolution. There is little joy to be found. Prayers and exhortations falling on deaf ears. Merely hints of a possibility. Muddy water indeed.

Do not buy this book looking for a good read—although for the most part it is very well-written. A literary critic might say that the chapters all have the same shape and the book as a whole lacks any sense of narrative arc. Reading it is like watching someone pushing a large rock up a mountainside. Yet those are not faults. They are the whole point.

The poor will always be with us. Reverend Al’s book challenges each of us on how we are going to respond. Do we, in Sonia Furstenau’s memorable phrase, continue to “drive our Lamborghinis through the tent city on Pandora Avenue?” We can do better.

In various chapters of Muddy Water, Reverend Al says he has been out panhandling—meaning raising money by way of charitable donations for the work he is doing. Al has now retired from the street and legitimately longs for his moment of Nunc Dimittis. He writes:

As I sit in my cozy  chair in my comfortable home, I wonder why it is not time for others to change the world. Then the hard question comes back: what am I doing to change the world?

Jesus asked Simon Peter three times “Do you love me.” Each time Simon Peter replied “Yes Lord you know that I love you.” Jesus replied “Feed my sheep.”

So now I ask, what more can I do; How can I help? Perhaps the pen is mightier than the sword. Yes I’m retired and in my 70s. I can no longer carry the heavy load. I’ve given my life to the poor, the addicted, the mentally ill, and the lonely. Maybe now, from my armchair, I can still work to bring about change by humbly telling their stories.

So buy this book as an offering in support of Reverend Al and everything he has striven for. Pass it on to another reader, and through him or her to another and yet another. That is how I received my own copy and why I undertook this review.

Surely, that is the very least we can do.

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Richard Butler lives on the traditional territory of the lekwungen-speaking Peoples, a retired lawyer and sometime law professor, and more recently a writer on various Indigenous subjects. He is the author of Taking Reconciliation Personally, I Dare Say… Conversations with Indigeneity, and the new title What Is This? Who Am I?: Culturally Informed Appreciation of Coastal Peoples’ Artworks, published through A & R Publishing. [Editor’s Note: Richard Butler recently wrote the essay An Exercise in Futility and has reviewed books by John Borrows & Kent McNeil (eds.), Karen Duffek, Bill McLennan, Jordan Wilson (eds.), C.P. Champion and Tom Flanagan (eds.), and Aaron A.M. Ross for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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