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Tom Tang, a 76-year-old former art teacher and street portraitist from China, now lives in a park in Richmond, B.C.
He doesn’t quite know how he ended up there.
“Time all blurs together when you spend a long time wandering on the streets. I don’t know what date it is,” says Tang in his native Shanghainese.
His path has taken him from teaching at a school in Shanghai, to Canada in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings. Marriage, a son and an apartment followed.
Now he lives in a tent in Brighouse Neighbourhood Park, befriending drug dealers and addicts around him.
He shares his cigarettes with them, and checks them in their sleep to make sure they are breathing.
A man in a red jacket wearing a gold necklace walks by, and Tang greets him with a wave. “Hey Tom,” the man responds.
Tang identifies him as one of the dealers who roam the park, with whom he has “great relations.”
“Sometimes the drug dealers ask me if I want to try. I say no, because I don’t have any money,” laughs Tang. “When people are using (drugs) next to me, I would say, ‘Sorry, I didn’t see anything’ and move away.”
Tang’s tone is light, but outreach worker Hugh Freiberg with Richmond’s Refuge Church knows Tang and says there’s a survival mechanism at play. “He tries to get along with everybody so that nobody will rob him or steal his stuff.”
Freiberg says he has compassion for all homeless people, but seniors like Tang — with no substance use or mental health issues — stand out.
“These are people who worked all their lives,“ says Freiberg. “They did nothing wrong, and they ended up on the street, and they’re getting minimal support from the provincial government.”
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‘I AM NOT WELCOMED BY ANYONE’
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, and Tang, who has diabetes, is sitting on his walker in the shade, sipping coffee from McDonald’s.
After almost 40 years in Canada, his belongings occupy two small plastic bags. He’s been homeless a year and a half.
“I couldn’t believe I’ve been able to survive so many days being homeless. It’s been so long I can barely remember what it feels like sleeping on a mattress,” says Tang, who’s missing numerous teeth and has a wounded brow.
B.C. seniors advocate Dan Levitt says seniors like Tang, unfamiliar with English or Canadian systems, face “double jeopardy or triple jeopardy.”
“My heart goes out to Tom and others struggling to access the care and support they need,” said Levitt.
Levitt says Tang’s case highlights an urgent need to expand long-term care, and seniors’ affordable housing options.
Tang says he has had no success securing a long-term care bed, being told the wait was more than two years. Levitt’s office reported last July that between 2016 and 2025, B.C.’s long-term care wait-list tripled, from 2,381 to 7,212.
Freiberg says Richmond’s main shelter houses 60 people, a third of them seniors, and three-quarters refugees or immigrants. They can only stay 30 days. Then they’re back on the streets.
“We try to keep these people alive and try to minimize their suffering, but the longer that they’re out there, the more stress is caused to their mental and psychological health,” says Freiberg.
He first met Tang outside a convenience store.
“He would come to the 7-Eleven, I would meet up with him and give him a meal every day, and whatever supplies he needed. He was sleeping on a chair in the lobby, and they let him stay there for a while, but eventually asked him to move on,” says Freiberg.
Tang used to teach in Shanghai’s post-secondary public school system. But he dreamt of life abroad, and a long-held desire to immigrate to Canada became reality in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
“But the immigration journey has been rough,” says Tang.
He married and had a son, and began working as a portraitist in Vancouver’s Stanley Park and Queen Elizabeth Park, charging $20. Occasionally he travelled to Calgary and Toronto to “try his luck.”
“Being a portrait artist doesn’t require much English skill,” chuckles Tang. “I remembered that I once set up my art stand outside of Eaton Centre (in Toronto), and the income was decent. I had great eyesight, and I could still drive many years ago.”
But things went downhill after his 2008 divorce. Tang’s ex-wife sold their two-bedroom Richmond apartment and returned to China.
He lived with his son on Richmond’s Granville Avenue, but when his son moved to the United States, Tang had nowhere to go.
“I am not welcomed by anyone,” says Tang, whose monthly pension is a little more than $1,000.
Tang says his son lives in New York, pursuing an arts career. Tang’s happy to talk, but begs this reporter not to contact his son about his “miserable situation.”
“I only want to call him after I get a place to live,” says Tang.
He tried couch surfing, but eventually his friends’ doors closed. “When you are rich, everyone wants to be your friend, but when you are poor and walking around with a bag of clothes, people all run away,” says Tang.
An elderly man with a scarred nose interrupts, looking for his friend “Amber.”
He asks if we want to share a bowl of marijuana, but Tang turns him down with a smile and he shakes our hands before moving on.
Tang gives a tour of his small black tent, next to a Progressive Housing Society facility at the park. It’s quite new, a handout from the city, after his last tent was stolen.
“Life is all about experience. Being homeless is also part of the experience,” he says.
“If I can finally move into a permanent place, the first thing I will do is sleep for three days and three nights straight,” Tang adds, laughing.
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