The Peacock Papers:

Chamberlain is a Champion

(pt.1)

“I release the past with ease and trust the process of life” (e.hay)

C: Ms. Linda. Where do we begin?

L: Well, I was born in St John’s New Brunswick.
Coming from New Brunswick, we lived on a farm.
At the age of five, my mother and I went out to get my father for dinner. He’d been working in the barn. We found him with an axe through his head. It was a freak accident.
Of course he died, on Christmas Day.
From that point on I took a mother role with my sisters and mother, became an adult and was not allowed to separate from the adults to play.

My mother was very depressed and might’ve had bi-polar (“disorder”) because I could see the mood changes over the years. It was terrible. She was mean to me.

She took me out of school at grade two to look after my two younger sisters so she could go to work. I would have to feed my sisters but I didn’t know how to use a stove. I would make them sugar sandwiches or peanut butter and banana everyday. There was a little store downstairs that gave us credit.

(Funny story, I was in the paper a few years back. And my family contacted me. They’d seen me in the paper and wanted to come and visit, after all those years. So they did. And when they got here, I asked them if they wanted peanut butter and banana sandwiches! (insert huge and long belly laughs here!)

My mother kept me close to her. I’d have to sit with her and my aunt while they played bingo and the other kids were out playing. When we went to the carnival, I didn’t get to go on the rides with my sisters. I had to stay with the adults, my mother, my aunt.
I wanted to go out. I wanted to play with the other kids.

I use to have these facial tics. My mother use to yell a lot, and it wasn’t very nice, and I got these facial tics from her treatment of me.
She was a strict disciplinarian and very religious. She gave a third of all her money to the church. We always lived in poverty.

At the age of thirteen she decided to send me live with my grandmother in Toronto.

So my grandmother lived at Broadview and Queen, on Harvey Ave. Can you believe that? Here I am almost 50 years later (in secure adequate housing for 15 yrs now) right back where I started. Broadview and Queen. Full circle! I’m back where I started from!

So my grandmother, can you imagine, I’m 13 yrs old, says “well you have to go to work and pay room and board. There’s no free rides here!” I thought, you godda be kidding…

I couldn’t read or write. I was illiterate and kept it a secret. I learned that from my mother. I walked to Bathurst and Queen. There use to be a Bata Shoe store there.
Now when I was younger, I got hit in the face by a horse, a stallion, and it left a big scar on my face, and I always had thick glasses on, I think that’s why I got hired. I told them I was 18 and they believed me.

When I started the job the person who ran it always dealt with the money and cash register and always found me the shoes. I had no idea how to find the shoes. I couldn’t read or write. I think he knew.

So I was doing real good. I got my first pay cheque. I asked him to cash it. I had no identification, I was too young and I didn’t have a bank account or anything like that so…he cashed it.
Then I went back to my grandmothers’ and I had a small suitcase that I had packed with my few belongings under the bed.
I walked in and she said, “Where’s your paycheque?”. I kept on going upstairs. I went and got my suitcase and then I said to her, “Grandma, if I have to pay room and board, I’m going to pay it some place else”, and I started walking out the door.
So she ran after me with a broom and hit me over the head. As I got away from her and started walking east, what a breath of fresh air it was!

C: She wanted you to give her your whole cheque?

L: Ya, and then she’d give me car tickets and a sandwich.  As I was walking down the street away from her I said , “If my father knew, he’d be very upset with you if he knew how you’re treating me…” I just had to say that ‘cause, how terrible…

(In my dad’s family there were 13 children, two girls and the rest boys. And my grandmother, well she’d actually pick up the rifle and shoot it in the air to get the boys up to go out and cut logs.
Then she’d take all their paycheques.
Now when my dad married my mom, well that’s one pay that would be gone and then the other boys didn’t want to do it either. That’s why she hated him.)

So here I was. I walked down to Bathurst and walked up and down side streets and I found a room. It was a room in a house in the Annex back in the day. So, that was real good, found a room, put my stuff in my room and went to work.

C: How did you manage all this without being able to read or write?

L: Exactly. Well, I was such a good talker and I knew how to…my mother always told us not to tell anybody our business, so I knew this. I learned to do that.

(When I was younger I had an uncle and he was a child molester and was always after people. When he came to the house we’d have to hide. I could never understand why my mother let him in. Who does that? I mean, he’d pull at my sister and me and we had to hide from him.
I killed him in my mind. He was dead. It made me feel better.)

When I was “diagnosed”, I guess I was eighteen or nineteen, they (Clark Institute) gave me sodium pentothal, (truth serum) if you can believe that?

C: That seems a strange treatment.

L: Yes, and they od’d (overdosed) me on the stuff. They were telling me to count from one to a hundred and then back down again. I couldn’t even make it to ten. All I remember is someone saying “get that thing out of her arm”.

In this state I said to them, I told them my sister and I killed my uncle and we buried him in the basement. They actually phoned my sister to find out if he was still living. Of course the old bat lived till his eighties, ya know! (belly laughs here!)

I’ll tell you another story. When I was in my twenties, I wanted a baby so bad, I convinced myself I was pregnant. At the eighth month mark I had milk and a big belly. When the doctor told me there was no baby, I said “What! What d’ya mean there’s no baby? What d’ya means there’s no baby?” (insert big belly laughs here!)

Can you imagine how powerful our minds are if we knew how to work them? I thought, well that can’t happen. My mind can’t do that. But the doctor said yes it can. It can actually happen. Very few people can do it, but it can be done. Now what  if you had cancer and you could reverse it? Isn’t that something? Wow!))

So between thirteen and eighteen I did odd jobs. Went to hotels and asked if there were rooms I could clean, that type of thing. They would give me money but I had no idea what it meant, what I was being paid. I just took the money.

When the delusions began they were paranoid. (FBI was following me, I hid in closets…) If a guy was coming my way I’d walk across the street. My mother scared the hell out of me. Men are no good. If they touch you you’re going to get pregnant.
And I wouldn’t talk to people because I was afraid they were going to find out I was illiterate. I didn’t know what that word was then but I know what it is now.

I was ashamed. I had nobody. I use to walk around. Nobody would look at me. I had no friends because I couldn’t get involved in anything you know, because I was scared of being taken advantage of.

I remember one time I was on Young St one time and this pimp came up to me and he said, “well, come in here”, and I went in,
And then he said, well we’re going to look after to you and you’re going to stay with us.
So I said I had to go to the washroom. I got the hell out of there and got outside.

C: I’m impressed with your instincts and the young birth of your advocacy.

L:I could feel things. I had to, to survive.

(C: hyper vigilance is associated to PTSD and childhood trauma/drama. It develops other senses and ways of discerning danger; it can be exhausting at sometimes and a bonus at others)

L: So I kept calling the police in my delusions and they finally brought me to the Clarke (now CAMH) after three or four visits to my room (home). So when we got there, I didn’t want to talk so that’s why they gave me the sodium pentothal.

C: What year was that in?

L: Sometime in the ‘60’s. 67 or so. When I look back I just can’t believe it. I wouldn’t open up, wouldn’t speak so they did that? I just can’t understand why they would do that.

Because the fact is, because they od’d me it made me worse.
So they kept me there for about 6 months. I mean, if we knew what we know now, things could’ve been a lot different…I could’ve sued them for goodness sakes…but you don’t know these things sometimes.

I remember a nurse. There was a plastic plant in my room and I thought there was a man in there. So I called the nurse and I asked her to get him out. That’s how bad I was. So she came in and opened up the plant and I saw the man fly out so I felt better.

C: Nice

L: Ya, I was trying to sneak out of the hospital, sliding along the walls thinking they wouldn’t see me…(insert big belly laughs here)

Now, when it was time to go, not one of them asked me, did I have a place to go. They gave me a token, a prescription, and out the door I went.

con’t

“Today I say yes to opportunity, prosperity and all that is good”

e.hay

In part 2, Feb 1st, we continue to discuss Linda Chamberlain’s myriad of triumphs
against challenges, and the beginning of her “official” advocacy/activism, including her fight to bring Tony Ruprecht MPP Davenport West before the Human Rights Tribunal( (for his slanderous (against Survivors and the Poor) community circulation of a letter generated by his office)). We’ll also learn about her current work and  ”projects”.

Gratitude to Ms. Reva Gerstein at this time.

Cheryl Smith

jan 9th/10

photos: Kelly Mackin

artwork: “Cleo” c.smith

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