Carol Joan Chingee has been living in the Lower Patrica encampment, known as Moccasin Flats, for about four years.
Chingee said she chooses to live in Moccasin Flats, but describes a series of struggles in her life which led her to living in the encampment.
She’s 58-years-old and a survivor of Lejac Residential School which operated from 1922 to 1976 near Fraser Lake, west of Prince George.
Chingee said she attended the school for five years, where she was sexually abused. She then moved onto the school known as Prince George College where she also remembers being picked on by the principal.
“I went through hell and back,” said Chingee, of that time.
Years later, she was working in Fort McMurray as a first aid attendant, which she said was a good job but she was struggling with alcoholism.
“I just drank too much and had too much fun. I started turning yellow, and my eyes were bright yellow. That’s how yellow my jaundice got.”
She said she had to quit drinking because she also had been diagnosed with stage three stomach cancer.
“They told me if I quit drinking, I will make it and it would take the cancer away,” said Chingee. “I was 82 lbs when I finished everything. I lost my hair. It all fell out. I did all that radiation and everything.”
Throughout her cancer struggle, she had the support of her fiancé Craig.
“We were engaged to be married and he stayed with me right through my cancer treatments and my cirrhosis,” said Chingee. “He stayed with me. He stuck it out and he gave me everything. He knew everything about me.”
She said they had just finished building a log house in McLeod Lake, when he suddenly died in a motorcycle accident.
“We set our wedding for a year away and then I had Thanksgiving coming up and I made it home and he was on his way and then ‘boom’ his bike hit the meridian and he smashed his head,” she said. “That killed me almost because I loved him so much.”
She said she doesn’t think she’d be living in Moccasin Flats if her fiancé was still alive.
Chingee said in the same two-month time period she had lost her fiancé, her mother, two of her friends, and her young daughter to foster care.
“I couldn’t do it anymore. I just turned to drugs.”
Life in Moccasin Flats has been difficult for her and she says she hasn’t really slept since she’s come to the encampment.
“I think I slept three weeks out of the time I've been here,” said Chingee, adding that she mostly spends her time worrying about her son who is also unhoused.
“I’m trying to quit. I don’t like it anymore, there’s too much stuff on my mind. If I use, I’m weak. If I don’t, I’m stronger.”
This is the first instalment in a series of features the Prince George Citizen will be doing to chronicle the stories of unhoused individuals within the city. If you know someone who would like to share their story please contact [email protected].
