It’s Saturday, just before dawn. As I ascend toward wakefulness, I hear a rhythmic thump-thumping from the floor beside my bed. It’s my black Labrador retriever, Shelby, politely wagging her tail. I cross my bedroom and stub my toe on a wooden hexagonal end table that I found at the side of the road a few days earlier. A month ago, that spot was occupied by a free bookshelf. Before that, a free child’s desk. When I can afford to buy paint, I’ll sand the table, paint it and sell it for $45.

I think about my garden project. My basement suite in Victoria, B.C., has a small outdoor space; the homeowners say I can do whatever I want with it. What I want is to grow beans, tomatoes and strawberries, but my collection of donated planters sits empty because I can’t afford soil. Dirt is not in my budget.

I hop in the shower. My mind is already racing: I have a few more weeks left on my contract as an emergency-management coordinator for a community organization, and I need to put the final touches on their evacuation plan. Surveillance for a private-investigation client starts at noon. If there’s time, I’ll squeeze in a quick landscaping job. Wait, is Tiffany’s potluck tonight? It is. That $75 invoice for a real estate blog post hasn’t come in. I make a mental note to send an email to the realtor. This means I can’t swing a potluck item right now.

I dry my hair with a dollar-store towel made from a scratchy poly-blend, quite possibly the least absorbent material on Earth, then quickly hop on Facebook and change my status from “going” to “not going,” with a note: “Sorry to miss you. Family emergency!” The emergency is that, this month, my gigs aren’t pulling in enough money, and my brain tells me the cheese platter will cause an irreversible financial downward spiral.

I’m 51 years old, careening into an era where dinner is at 4 p.m. and I wear a fanny pack unironically because the low centre of gravity keeps my hands free to break a fall. Currently, my monthly take-home pay averages $2,800, most of which goes to rent, insurance, gas, groceries and debt repayment.

The financial gap between myself and my friends has widened, especially in the last two years. Many of my peers are quite successful. One of them has a marble foyer as big as my 500-square-foot basement unit. They take spontaneous family trips. They buy asparagus. Some friends have “a guy” for landscaping, or to do home repairs, or to repaint their dock. Others have a fake river on their lawn. They’ve shipped in truckloads of river rocks and dropped thousands of dollars on eight-foot-tall Japanese maple trees. I had to rehearse which expression my face made when they gave me a tour of their new, professionally designed walk-in closet system.

For the most part, I keep my finances to myself. I pass as middle-classish, partly because I have middle-class things like an SUV (albeit a 2008 Mitsubishi with a constellation of “check engine” lights on the dash). My possessions are mostly thrifted but I have an eye for quality; I often stand in the store, item in hand, as I google the brand and original price. I’m a good listener and practised at the art of deflection, able to avoid probing questions like, “How are you?”

In a culture where social standing is measured by job titles, having a respectable-sounding role—like private investigator or emergency manager—can translate to social credibility, even when the pay is precarious and the hours unstable. This is why nobody knows I’ve become one of Canada’s working poor: someone who works regularly but still falls below the poverty line. We’re often saddled with unpredictable hours and little to no access to benefits like dental coverage, disability insurance or pensions.

Officially, only 10 per cent of Canadians are considered poor. But if you measure poverty not just by income but by standard of living—whether a person can afford basics, like new shoes, small birthday gifts or going out for special occasions—the number rises to roughly 25 per cent. That’s about 10 million people. I never expected one of them would be me.

My parents never had financial drama. My dad was an elementary school teacher and then a school administrator in Victoria. My mom stayed at home to raise me and my brother. We were comfortable. My parents owned our home. I did extracurriculars, like soccer and Highland dancing. We spent summers at Beach Acres Resort in Parksville, B.C., travelled across Canada, and visited Europe and Hawaii—all on a teacher’s salary, with occasional boosts from my grandparents.

If my parents worried about money, I never heard about it. They encouraged me to pursue higher education, assuming it would lead to a long-term career, followed by a house and a family. That’s the formula that worked for them, and I never questioned it.

I wanted to work in the criminal justice system as a social worker. So, in 1991, I enrolled in criminology at Camosun College in Victoria. And then, partway through the first semester, I abruptly dropped out. I detested math and told my parents I quit because I couldn’t handle the statistics course. The truth was, I was overwhelmed for another reason: I’d been sexually assaulted, followed by bullying and humiliation. My exit from college was an abrupt topple from the lowest stair on the Steps to Success.

Still, I felt obligated to steer myself into a traditional career. One of my first jobs was working at a family daycare run out of a home. I loved the job and was pretty good at it. The owner encouraged me to pursue early childhood education, but I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted.

The path I chose was to get married very young and open my own daycare on the main floor of our rental house. When I was 21, I had my son, Carson. Nothing prepared me for the great sense of purpose that being a mom gave me. I swapped out curse words for quaint phrases like “ding-dang it.” I took vitamins. I hired staff to work in my daycare so I could spend time with my son. But, eventually, my marriage fell apart and Carson and I downsized to a one-bedroom suite. Without the house, I lost my daycare location. I had to shut it down.

I was a single mom, so my focus for the next 20 years was on the short-term goal of “making money.” I advertised and took on writing projects on Craigslist, ran a children’s consignment store and taught acting........

© Macleans