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Mary Leishman and Sandi Wilder give treatment at a foot spa at the "Out of the Cold" program for the homeless people in the basement of Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto, Sunday March 4, 2015.Mark Blinch/The Globe and Mail

It is minutes to opening time at the Yorkminster foot spa near Yonge and St. Clair, a prosperous neighbourhood in midtown Toronto. Manager Kim Aikenhead bustles around in a striped apron and polka-dot scarf making sure that everything is prepared: towels, foot powder, bathing basins, bottles of soothing oils.

At supper hour every Wednesday evening in winter, her guests start to arrive. Stephen is a talkative immigrant from Kenya with a chesty cough that won't go away. Ernie is a white-haired former tattoo artist with a Marilyn Monroe T-shirt under his dirty sweater. Frank is missing teeth and carries a 25-kilogram pack on his back all day.

They come to Ms. Aikenhead's spa in a church-basement homeless shelter to get some care for their weary feet. More than that, they come for a few minutes of something these urban wanderers lack: simple human touch.

Many homeless people walk all day, from shelter to coffee shop to street corner. Their feet, often poorly shod in shredded sneakers or wet boots, take a beating. Ms. Aikenhead and her team of a half-dozen volunteers see all sorts of things when guests peel off their socks: blisters, calluses, nail fungus, cuts, ingrown toenails, frostbite, even burns from the heating grates where the homeless lie for warmth. Diabetes, common among the homeless, can lead to nerve damage in the feet, causing pain, numbness and ulcers. Constant cold and wet can lead to trench foot: the affliction (often called immersion foot today) that beset First World War soldiers.

The spa, at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, is in its 11th season. The woman who started it, Janet Kim, a long-time member of the congregation, drew on the Christian tradition of foot washing, inspired by the story of Jesus bathing the feet of his disciples. At least two other Toronto churches offer the service.

As awareness grows about how foot problems hobble the homeless, the practice is spreading. Church, student and charitable groups from Vancouver to Louisville, Ky., and Fort Worth, Texas, have organized themselves to wash feet or hand out socks.

At Yorkminster Park, anyone who comes to the church shelter to sleep in the gym or have a hot meal in the cold weather can sign up for a treatment. Last week, there were 27 on the list. The foot washers set up chairs for them in a space along the basement wall, separated by a partition from the hubbub of the dining area.

After the guests have settled, the washers, sitting opposite, soak their feet in a solution of warm water, soap and Betadine, an antiseptic.

Next, if the guests want it, they rub their feet and often their calves with a mix of grape-seed oil and Olbas Oil, made from medicinal herbs.

Finally, they dry their feet thoroughly and offer a pair of new socks.

But for many guests, the treatment is secondary.

"I enjoy the pampering. I enjoy the camaraderie," says Mike Wolf, a wiry 49-year-old with booze on his breath and a death's-head tattoo on his arm. "I enjoy it because it feels nice and because we've got so many volunteers who are willing to take time out of their day to make someone who is down and out, and out on the streets, feel a little bit better than what we did three hours ago."

When asked how long he has lived on the street, he hangs his head and goes quiet, seeming to fight with his emotions. Having the foot treatment, he says, "will take you out of your own world for a few minutes."

Mickey, an alcoholic and former heroin addict with a whisky voice and a strong handshake, has a simple answer when asked why he comes to the spa: "Serenity. Serenity."

These are rough-looking guys who are used to having people step around them on the street. And yet here are these gentle women from the other side – the safe, comfortable world of the housed – massaging their feet while asking how their day has been.

"It's the fact that there is a human being touching them," says Peter Holmes, the church minister. "They're not untouchable, but they probably feel like it sometimes."

Ms. Aikenhead, a 60-year-old homemaker whose five grown children all have volunteered in the Yorkminster Park program, says that barriers break down at the spa.

"It's humbling for the guests to take off their shoes and let us see their awful-looking feet, and I sort of find it humbling that they let me do it."

The guests, many of them mentally ill or addicted and often wary of what they consider busybody social workers, open up as they sit facing the women. Spend a few evenings listening to them, and you come to see the homeless in a fresh light – not as members of an alien tribe but as individuals with families and histories and stories to tell. Some of the guests have been coming to the spa for years, often seeking out the same foot washer.

The washers listen as they work, holding the guest's foot on a towel on their knees.

Richard Dunbar is a weathered 57-year-old with a grey goatee who wears only black: black tuque, black leather jacket, black running shoes. When offered a choice of socks after his treatment, he chooses … black.

He says he has seven children from different relationships but ended up on the street because "I drink" and "addictions get fed." Most church shelters open just one night a week, so he moves from one to another to sleep. How much territory does he cover in his travels? "Holy smokes, how many miles you got on your car? I don't think about it. I just go from point A to point B and keep going."

Ernie, the former tattoo artist, who like many of the spa guests does not give his last name, says he was kicked out of his apartment in September after a dispute with the landlord. He grew up in Vancouver, but "I can't go back there because there's no one to go back to."

Heather, with a long overcoat and a blond mane that is turning white, isn't homeless, just poor, and spends many hours of the street. So she came to the shelter for a meal and decided to try the spa as a 64th-birthday gift to herself.

"So, thank you very much," she tells the washers, "and happy birthday to me."

Marcus Gee is The Globe and Mail's Toronto columnist.

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