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Lesley Gibson knows it will still feel like Christmas when she chats online with her grandchildren in Poland in the coming days.

“But,” she says, fighting tears, “it’s going to be really hard when we disconnect.”

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Though it’s always been the Vancouver grandmother’s favourite holiday, this year, she’s “taking a rain check on Christmas.”

That’s because Gibson’s 62nd Christmas will be, through no fault of her own, the first time she has no home for the holidays.

She’s been staying at the homes of different friends since April, when a 50-foot brick wall beside a new apartment building under construction collapsed and crushed the nearby home where Gibson rented a room. But, with the companies responsible for the construction site fighting her compensation claim in court and the city’s attempts to help so far unsuccessful, she doesn’t know where she’ll turn next.

After a Postmedia reporter learned of Gibson’s situation and contacted her, she agreed to an interview, inviting us into the short-term apartment where she’s stayed for a few weeks, with the financial support of friends and family to cover the difference between the rent and what she gets through her $560 monthly B.C. disability assistance and her Canada Pension Plan of $570, her only sources of income.