Camryn’s Story

Camryn Rogers Finds a Place to Call Home

Camryn Rogers is the top female hammer thrower in Canada. This title was cemented when she took home gold at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. It was the first medal in women’s hammer throw for Canada and one of the few gold medals for women’s track and field for Canada — ever.

But her journey to the Olympic podium was far from easy.

Camryn was a pre-teen living in Surrey with her mom, Shari, realized she could no longer afford their mortgage, despite working more than full time as a hairdresser. She would have to sell their apartment.

For a year, Camryn and Shari, who was raising her daughter alone, experienced a reality for far too many British Columbians: housing insecurity. They couch surfed, stayed with friends, and even slept in their car.

Shari tried to stay positive, for the both of them. But uncertainty permeated their lives. “It was a lot to go through as a teenager,” Camryn recalls. “I’m still impressed with all my mom did at that time. She was trying her very best.”

A primary place Camryn was able to channel her feelings of uncertainty was sport. “I remember when I threw [a hammer] for the first time. I was 12, and I‘d never done a sport before,” she recalls.“I felt so empowered. It was one of the first times in my life that I really felt that sense of powerfulness.”

“During that year of housing insecurity, I was able to use throwing as that outlet. It made me feel powerful at a time when we didn’t have control over certain things.”

Despite the difficulties, Shari encouraged her daughter. “She’d say we had to keep going because something good is coming,” Camryn recalls.

That good thing came in the form of a home: a townhouse in Dockside Village, a More Than A Roof community for families in Steveson. The location was perfect. Shari already worked in Steveson and Camryn went to school nearby.

Camryn remembers that even when touring the unit that would become theirs, “it felt so warm and comfortable and inviting.” They moved in soon after.

“For so long, we didn’t have security or a safe environment. When we found out [we had a place at Dockside], it felt like we’d found somewhere to rebuild our lives together. It was everything for us.”

She recalls the relief of having a place to decompress after a difficult training session or long school day. The security of knowing she had a place to come home to.

Over her teenage years, the community at Dockside Village became more like a family. When she came home from her first international competition in 2017, the entire community was outside, holding signs and cheering as she drove in.

“It’s huge to have a roof over your head, but it’s the people that truly make a place home,” she says. “Here we had so much support and love. That really enriched our experience.”

Shari and Camryn lived at Dockside for 10 years, over which Camryn became one of Canada’s elite athletes, training first in Richmond and then at University of California Berkeley. In that time, Shari remarried, and recently the family was able to purchase a new home. For Camryn, her mom buying a house after all they’d been through is the end of an incredible journey they were able to take thanks to MTR.

“It’s hard to imagine what life would have been like if we hadn’t had More Than a Roof,” Camryn says. “It’s been one of the major foundational aspects of what we’ve been able to develop in our lives.”

More Than A Roof gave us a second chance, it gave us a fighting chance…And when you realize you’ve been given that chance, you can’t just let it go.”

Camryn certainly hasn’t. And when she returned to visit Dockside as an Olympic gold medalist, the community celebrated her as one of their own. “It still feels like home here,” she says.

“Everyone [at MTR] is fighting for a brighter future,” Camryn notes. “It’s made possible by secure housing. It’s made possible by having somewhere to come home to every night and call your own.”

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