ENTRY DESCRIPTION
When we met Nathan he was sitting in front of a store on Yonge Street, a mere 30 metres across the road from the massive Eaton Centre, North America’s busiest mall with almost 50 million visitors a year—more than Disneyland and Walt Disney World combined. In stark contrast, Nathan appeared a lonely and forlorn figure. As I stood and watched him, crowds of people filed past him, seemingly oblivious to his existence.

Nathan has lived in Toronto all of his life—all 68 years of it. His mother, who is 85, also lives in Toronto, though his father died a long time ago. He has a sister who also lives in Toronto, though he has no contact with her. Nathan told us that he keeps to himself and doesn’t have a lot of friends—though whether this is by choice or not I do not know. When asked if the people he meets on the street are friendly to him, he replied with a simple, “No.”

When the photo shoot was finished and my dad took out of his pocket a brand new $10 bill to give to Nathan—We pay all of our models!—Nathan immediately began to protest, saying, “I want two fives. I don’t like it new money. I want two fives. I don’t like it new money.” Nathan, it seems, was worried that the money my dad tried to give him was counterfeit. It took my dad ten minutes to find a store that would make change for him.

AUTHOR
Leah Denbok is a 17-year-old grade 12 student at Collingwood Collegiate Institute. For the past four years the Leah has been mentored by the National Geographic photographer and Fellow Joel Sartore. When Leah was only 14-years-old, Joel said of Leah, "If she sticks with it I think she is well on her way to becoming not just a good photographer but a great photographer. And I'm not kidding." This past August Leah was invited to exhibit her photography at Christ Church Cathedral during the Supercrawl event in Hamilton. Afterwards, the internationally known street photography, Alex Zafer, posted a comment on Facebook in which he said of Leah, "This is a young woman with an obviously high EQ, mega talent, and a terrific eye for humanizing homeless people on the streets who are so often looked upon, or looked-over as subhuman." After graduating from high school Leah intends to study photojournalism at university.











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