The Anglican priest and author Maggie Helwig has been awarded the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, taking home the $40,000 prize for her book Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community. The announcement, reported in a story first published on April 30, 2026, recognizes a work that blends memoir, moral reflection and on-the-ground reporting about the realities of people living outdoors in Toronto. Helwig’s account centers on an encampment that formed in the churchyard of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields in Kensington Market, a place where clergy, neighbours and unhoused residents negotiated daily life under public scrutiny.
More than a simple chronicle of events, the book insists on close attention to human stories behind policy debates. Reviewers and judges praised the book as a clear-eyed examination of the homelessness crisis, urging readers not to avert their gaze but to engage with the deeper structures that produce displacement. Helwig’s narrative is informed by her pastoral role and personal hardships, producing an account that situates the encampment within wider social forces while keeping individuals and relationships at the centre of the story.
The book’s approach and key themes
Encampment is part memoir, part social analysis, written from inside a community that most of society ignores. Helwig observes how an outdoor community can function as a network of mutual support, protection and conflict, and she challenges common assumptions about who becomes unhoused and why. The book interrogates myths — that homelessness is purely an individual failing, that outdoor sites are inherently criminal or dangerous, or that people “choose” to live outside — and reframes these issues as outcomes of policy choices, lack of supports and systemic neglect.
Personal testimony as evidence
Helwig’s account is candid about her own life: caregiving responsibilities, family illness and ongoing mental health challenges are woven into the narrative. This intimacy gives her critique unusual force because it is rooted in sustained proximity to the people she writes about. The text draws on scripture, lived pastoral practice and careful observation to argue that dignity and community-building are central to responses to displacement, not merely technical policy fixes.
The struggle over the churchyard and the aftermath
The book follows the contested effort to keep the encampment on church grounds, a struggle that brought the parish into conflict with municipal authorities and service systems. Published in May 2026 by Coach House Books, the book documented months of legal, bureaucratic and moral clashes; the city ultimately cleared the encampment in October 2026, an outcome Helwig recounts with both grief and measured analysis. The judges commended the work as a stirring call to attention that deepens public understanding rather than simply stoking outrage.
Recognition and awards
Beyond the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, which carries a $40,000 award, Encampment also received the 2026 Toronto Book Award, underscoring its impact on conversations about urban life, civic responsibility and literary witness. The recognition reflects both the book’s literary strengths and its capacity to push public debate toward questions of care, policy and justice.
Why this matters: reframing response to displacement
Helwig’s narrative pushes readers to rethink common responses to homelessness, advocating empathy grounded in structural analysis. She documents how criminalization, policing, inadequate healthcare and an overreliance on emergency charity compound harm for people living outdoors. At the same time, the book celebrates small acts of solidarity and the ways communities create safety and belonging. By centering lived experience, Encampment offers a blueprint for a more humane public conversation that prioritizes lasting supports over punitive measures.
Ultimately, the book functions as both testimony and argument: it testifies to the specific lives and losses witnessed at a Toronto churchyard and argues that society must learn to sustain one another differently. For readers, policymakers and faith communities alike, Helwig’s book is a reminder that stories from the margins can reshape public understanding and policy when they are listened to with seriousness and care.
