A night searching for Ottawa’s hardest-to-reach homeless [Video]

Night has fallen over the woods by Hurdman station, and Mikyla Tacilauskas and Jade Fowler are lost.

They’re searching for the people who sleep in the clearings. They’ve been here often as part of their outreach work with the Salvation Army.

The forest is so big and dense it can take hours to search. They’ve divided it into quadrants — “bite-sized chunks” — with digital pins marking the spots where people have pitched their tents.

But this is the first time they’ve been here in the dark. It feels different. Tacilauskas calls it “a little spooky.”

“Every other time we’ve gone, it’s been during the day, so we might find people we’ve never engaged with before,” she says.

Their …