Greetings and good afternoon.

I’m excited to be here. I’ve always loved school. I’m happy to contribute to this discussion and hope that you find me and my story useful, informative and inspiring of change.

I’m going to be sharing some of my personal experiences of poverty in an attempt to connect the dots of social policy and impact on individuals and their lives.

In that spirit I’d like to begin with asking you a question: What brings you to this work? If I could have a few volunteers just offer off the top of their head, “Why am I here today? Why did I choose this field of study? What do I hope for?”

I am here for many of the same reasons.

My name is Cheryl Smith. I’m a member of the Toronto Speakers Bureau, Voices from the Street, and the founder of an on-line community magazine called Peacock Poverty.

I’m also a writer, poet and artist; perhaps not the finest, – I ain’t no Gauguin- but I find quality and substance in my life through these endeavours and passions.

Had my life been different, I may well have found myself among you in these classrooms. In fact, I am among you now, albiet by a different route than I imagined…. I find that to be an exciting sign of the times; a time of collaboration, (as opposed to competition or authoritarianism) collaboration on the part of all stakeholders, or as many as we can get to the table.

We’re in quite a pickle in this city, province, and country; some might say a “social mess” with “wicked” problems. Russell L. Ackoff wrote about complex problems, such as poverty, as messes: “Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of a set of interrelated problems, a system of problems…. I choose to call such a system a mess.”

And Rittel and Webber  (197³⁾ “The search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail because of the nature of these problems…Policy problems cannot be definitively described.”

There is no single right or wrong answer AND the solutions have to be creative. No one size fits all. Even while we consider ourselves progressive, we’ve yet to define our poverty reduction parameters. In fact, we can’t even agree on what poverty is in Canada, who “deserves” what and why, and whether or not we’re going to recognize and abide by- be guided by- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

With the absence of even a National Housing strategy, one has to wonder where the priorities are and where they might be placed to produce desirable results for all of us. We’re in this together.

In my research I happened upon this action plan for Vancouver:

“A plan to house Vancouver’s homeless is taking shape on the drawing board of a local architect. It calls for the rapid erection of temporary villages assembled from the same type of modular units that mining companies provide for remote workers. “Stop Gap Shelters” is what architect Gregory Henriquez calls it.”

“All of us in this community have long been advocates for permanent housing,” he said. “But we’ve gotten to the point where the numbers of homeless are so staggering that I’m left wondering if we will ever catch up doing it that way. I don’t think we can. I think there has to be a stop-gap measure. And that’s what this is.” Now that is frightening.

No solution for the homeless other than stop-gap encampments? This crisis is not new. Have we allowed it to become so acute that it cannot be solved with Housing Strategies, national, provincial or local? And who will “manage” these encampments, to what end and how? Will there be more wealth distributed to the middleclass then, in this war against poverty?

How many generations are we prepared to sacrifice and at what cost?

We do little real public education; there are no PSA’s (public service announcements) on the stigma of poverty and we have no reasonable dialogue with the public. Rather, we are scapegoated, maligned or merely, nearly tolerated like those pesky street people sleeping on grates that we step over on the way to our jobs and classes.

Sometimes, the ridicule is overt. I recently saw a cartoonist’ book called Rabble, in stores now in downtown Toronto. Don’t know if anybody has heard of this offensive piece of work but it brutally caricatures the mentally ill in our downtown core, and even provides a map of where they can be found.

The mentally ill in our downtown core are there as a result of social policy, and the so-called freedom of speech and expression gives a platform to and makes perfectly legal, attacks such as these.

(A number of us have invited the author for a casual sit down, an opportunity for some diversity training and education and to learn what exactly his point is. He has yet to respond.)

Not only that, but our most vulnerable are dying on the streets, and/or are being beaten (sometimes to death) and robbed. We’ve seen the news.

If a country as rich and resourceful as Canada cannot find solutions for its own poverty, that doesn’t bode well for the extreme examples found in our global community.

We know that poverty has many faces, circumstances and effects here at home. It ranges from the qualified immigrant dentist, of colour and gay, to the transgendered, the First Nations people, to refugees, the working poor, the disabled, disenchanted, mentally ill and the generations of poor that social or public policy has produced.

In my case, I am the third of four generations born into poverty and raised by the state. My mother, her mother before her, myself and my children were all “raised by the state” or were under stae care at some point in their lives- “ The Children’s Aid”, which actually started as the Humane Society: to prevent cruelty towards animals and children. They were one and the same until not so long ago.

Sometimes I think we’d be better off if we’d stayed there, people care about animals; but then again, with what’s going on at the humane society these days… Still, I think a metaphor works here. There have been deaths in the Children’s Aid and there are many ways to “die”. It can be a slow and painful road to “recovery”-whatever that means…

We seem to measure everything by the worst possible scenario? If it’s not the worst it doesn’t count. Anything else can and should be tolerated. Canada’s poverty is measured relative to extreme conditions in so-called third world countries and because we’re not falling like flies, (some would say we are), we should be grateful. Next to the extreme, people say, “Hey, you got it pretty good here. Quit complaining.”

That’s like healing the heart we pray with and neglecting the knees we pray on.

Each generation, in my case, has had the added challenge of mental health complications; in fact, it was the point of entry for the state in my life as a child. Chicken or the egg then, I have to ask. Which came first?

Just think about that for a minute- the state controls you/is in charge of your life, in an intimate and basic needs way, until that legal arrangement ends with one fell swoop and you are left without family and to your own devices. Social agency becomes the family and government, Big daddy.

See the young child. Think about the horror and trauma that landed her there. I was four yrs. Old.  Can you imagine anything more vulnerable? You get taken to the main offices, get checked out by a strange and frightening doctor (mostly men then) on a cold and clinical table; everybody’s a stranger and larger than life. You don’t understand what happened or why you’re here or where your mommy went. Social workers buzz about you and make decisions that will affect you the rest of your life.

I have been neglected, beaten and molested as a result of some of those decisions. More importantly, I “learned” who I was, what I was worth, and what my life meant to the larger community through these experiences.

On the other hand, we’ve got Dr Phil on television all over  the globe espousing that, ah,  “kids are resilient, everything will be okay”…

when the evidence clearly demonstrates that they’re not and it will not be okay if wounds are left to fester. Children need to be treated with care and love, community and connection, and nurturing, because if they’re not, they’ll end up being the adults that have to visit Dr Phil, after a lengthy career in self-destruction and the endless repetition of abuse and trauma, at the very least. (at worst, Penetang/jail) If young wounds aren’t cured young, they don’t just melt away.

I have pondered long and hard the connection that poverty and mental health “disturbances” share. The only thing I know for sure is that such a connection does exist.

Begs the question though, if the state were doing such a bang-up and “better” job, where are all these generations coming from. Wouldn’t the poverty and abuse have been eradicated by now, after 4 generations of state care?

We keep doing the same thing and getting the same results. Some call that insanity. We need a huge paradigm shift and I believe that is now underway. Shape shifting: therein lies my hope.

Mine is not a unique story. Remember that as I take you back to my beginnings.

My mother was/is a brilliant woman, talented in many ways, a model, and worked two jobs trying to raise 6 kids. Our home was filled with books, music, art and craft. TV was limited and we were taught to think for ourselves and to use our imaginations.

My mother was also quite ill and prone to psychotic breaks. She was violent and brutal physically and psychologically. She did not like to be touched. I was the primary care taker of my siblings and even of my mother when she got ill.

I had to pull her off my sister once. _____ was turning blue and my mother’s hands were around her throat. We were all in line for a beating. Ironing cord whipping. The beatings cont. after I had rescued my sister. I love my mother. Her own brutal beginnings were worse than mine.  She needed help she didn’t get.

She even confessed this brutal beating to the CAS; it’s in my records. She did her best and I’m grateful for what she managed to give me in all that chaos.

I was left in the hospital for almost a month at birth while my mother decided whether or not to bring me home. I guess she had her doubts too. I held that experience emotionally for most of my life. It was a deep black pit without words.

But one has to fight back.

Forget your memories. Try it and see if you can. When you thrive, memories can carry and guide and comfort you; when you don’t, they can surely bury you.

Sirens, ambulance, police, stretcher, white jacket, needle, mommy’s gone.

The empty house, me, the last one left, all my brothers and sisters   shipped out, gone already. One here, two there…for another year, two…or 3.

Over and over again

Receiving centers, institutions, group homes, foster homes…out of 8 placements only one with a sister.

I have grieved the loss of my siblings, and did at every single separation. I still do. In fact I have forever lost my baby brother to suicide. Part of his CAS history included ritual molestation and abuse. He’s not the only one.

Still, I accept and embrace my life. One must to find peace.

They put me on anti-psychotics at 12. Nobody ever explained to me why I was given the medication. All I knew was that I had these funny feelings like I was floating up in the sky and then people would scurry and bring me medication. I can’t remember if I went to sleep then, or what happened. I can’t remember that.

I had 8 placements in The CAS between 4 and 15, when my crown wardship was dissolved and with it, all CAS direct services and supports. I was scarred, broken, already an addict, with no clue as to what was possible for me in this life and how to go about creating it.

I ran from home again, from the abuse and dysfunction, and hit the streets of Vancouver at 15. I was among the walking wounded and smashed into every wall conceivable, re-victimized, traumatized and brutalized. Addiction, domestic violence, and sexual assaults ensued.

Public housing ghettos, social workers, minimum wage service jobs and welfare lines became a way of life.

I was given no information or direction regarding any diagnosis or any problem for that matter, never mind treatment. When it came time to fight for my own children, I spent two years in court, though I could think of no way to care for them alone and on my own.

The CAS psychologist saw me once and deemed that, “though I loved my children, I would never be able to care for them” due to her diagnosis of clinical depression. I was offered no support in bringing my family together and keeping it in tact. Instead, another generation was lost, or so I felt at the time.

The emptiness and shame rested heavy on my heart for most of my life and to this day can still bring tears of loss and sorrow.

I remember being on the stand and being questioned by a lawyer. A mere lapse in my memory allowed her to shame me and destroy any credibility I might’ve had. I remember sitting in the hallway of the courts at 311 Jarvis afterwards. I sat stunned and silent watching a cockroach walk up the wall. I was frozen, in shock and so in need of care.

In my own broken family, my children, 2 boys in their mid-thirties, have healthy middle-class families and work very hard at dangerous but well-paying jobs. (ie high taxes) Both of my boys are the primary shopper and chef in their families. I like that!

And both of my boys wouldn’t like me calling them boys. They have beautiful families and they have each other. How did they manage this?

It was the best in us reaching out and coming down through the generations until finally, through our own determination and will, they broke through. I bid them well. Both of my children have had brutal beginnings and both of them were cut loose at 16 by the “CAS”. They were not in one piece at the time. What they healed and accomplished they did despite their beginnings and without the aid of the state.

Are the poor then “inferior specimens” of human kind? Are they lazy, stupid, and incompetent? Or are issues of systemic inequity, imbalances, stigma and racism the players of poverty in a country as rich as Canada? And so the debate continues as does the fragmentation.…

(Alot of the people I work with or have interviewed for Peacock have much the same tale to tell.  First Nations bloodlines lost, no families extended or immediate, mental illness, CAS, trauma and abuse. These are common themes among us that emerge.)

Four living generations of families that have no contact with each other, no real breathing connection. How did that happen at the hands of a Society and a government that promised to protect us, to keep us in tact as per their highest goal? If there is no family at the end of it all, there is no community, or at the least, community will be fragmented, warring and dependent on big daddy without the example of our elders and our children to care for, without the structure and natural flow of life.

This cycle of generations of life interrupted creates added dependency on the system. What family support (blood or not) could provide, especially extended, is lost to us all as a community.

(There were even foster parents, 2 that I remember, that would’ve made a beautiful addition to the “family” I had to create. Again, social policy; …when both parties desire it, why does the CAS discourage these relationships from blossoming over a life time?

I believe it’s a precious loss and costly both socially and economically.

I can tell you that personally, before reaching this place in my life, I have felt endless depths of loneliness and filled them with tears. The aching soul that is yours to carry for so long while you heal is overwhelming. Every holiday reminds you…you have no family, you do not belong.

A shelter/agency doesn’t cut it. We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to nip it in the bud.

I was also introduced to love along the way. I call it the Light. It always felt the same when I came upon it. Snippets of hope and guidance by those special people everyone (hopefully) has in their life.

A teacher, group home worker, a foster parent. I’ve always looked towards the light  I found in bits on my journey. Don’t ever think your kindness and humanity for another doesn’t have an impact. It can offer such sweet comfort in the memory bank. I am eternally grateful to those people. Don’t be afraid to care and to share it, though they teach you to keep those boundaries clear.

At 35, I landed in hospital and was diagnosed, medicated and treated. Those twenty years out there were destructive and costly not only to myself but in the end, to us all. Potential to contribute lay dormant, screaming for actualization. This alone can feel like death. Most people want to contribute, want to belong and give back.

(Post-diagnosis has not been much easier, just more manageable. Diagnosis and meds are no panacea, treatment is governed by policy and varies; diagnosis can be many and varied over time and with dr’s., and sometimes were more damaging  than not. For better or worse, they provided a context for my life. I have been labelled many things and there was a time I believed them all)

Some of my early memories are great. We lived in what they call “Upper” Cabbage town on Sumache at Spruce St. We rented a house.

Glorious. Spacious and green. Safe and connected to community. The Riverdale zoo was just up the street. I can still smell the days; the hot sun, the camels eating their grass and hay,  my brothers and sisters, me the babysitter, around and in the wading pool. Spreading the blanket on the ground under a large tree. We’ve got lunch. Peanut butter sandwiches and kool-aid.

And then those beautiful hills of Riverdale in winter. Steep and covered in a warm blanket of thick snow. The tobogganing!  Look at the area now, how beautiful it is, and expensive. In accessible to us now. That was my neighbourhood.  The houses were beaten down and broken but it didn’t matter. The world has changed since then and so have our stomping grounds, over and over again.

Gentrification has made of us gypsies, as we move from unaffordable to affordable neighbourhoods endlessly throughout the city. In the end, where will we be?

Later, we moved to “lower” Cabbage town, Moss and Regent Parks.

Moving south to the projects brought me down even as a kid.

Everything was concrete, just like they are now. And whatever “land” we did have then for community gardens and such are being lost to re-development and re-vitalization.  People are feeling quite powerless and frustrated about this process. They do not see it as a move towards “inclusiveness” but rather as a reduction of their space, freedom and enjoyment of life. They don’t believe the stigma will be reduced, but rather sharpened. Fences will go up to keep us out.

There is something about connection to the earth when you are a child, that if you experience it, it can carry you through so much. You can feel disconnected to people sometimes and you can find solace in feeling your connection to Mother Earth, if you’re lucky enough to find an accessible and significant piece of it. It can carry you through.

It has me. In fact, She is the Mother in my new family.

It is time to bring some spirit to this science, to think in more holistic terms and frames of reference.

The social culture of poverty includes broken adults from a broken system among its ranks and we land in shelters, jails, drop-ins, food banks, ghettos, housing projects, rooming houses, hospitals, and agency after agency.

These have been my home, my family. I know them well.

We don’t really have a welfare state where certain rights would be entrenched. What we have is a social safety net, providing not even the bare essentials (food shelter and clothing) to those who are considered mostly non-deserving. That net is now one big hole and we’re all falling through it fast.

I live in private market housing. I choose to live outside rooming houses, ghettos, social and supportive housing because that is where I have spent most of my life and life is short. It has been ten years.

I treat “diagnosis”- the many I have had- spiritually, physically, emotionally and with a minimum amount of medication. I thrive in my present community. I am free.

At present, I’m spending 75% of ODSP benefits on rent.

There is no affordable and adequate housing, there is only either/or.

Average rent for adequate housing is between 8 and 900 per month. (for a 1 bedr in Toronto. Welfare distributes just over $500 per mth. to its recipients.)

There is a 12 yr. waiting list for public housing, if you so choose it.

These environments, as I have found with my lengthy experience, can be demoralizing and rob one of all hope and autonomy. Sometimes you can hardly breathe it gets so constricted with governance and bureaucracy. It breeds aggression (frustration, anger) and dependence. I have seen it. I have felt it.

Still, these are the best of times for me. My work is meaningful and I am passionate about it. I am moving at light speed. I have purpose and meaning in my life. I serve the public good through the social enterprise that is Peacock Poverty.

Coming from where I did, being in the condition I was in, it is truly a miracle that I’m alive I am healing and thriving beyond my dreams. It is breathtaking.

It has taken me this long to finally claim my voice and begin to heal in a way I’d never known before. It’s working out beautifully, this tapestry that is my life. I am truly, truly blessed.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It saved my life. I still battled the demon of addiction and was in the throes of a lengthy relapse. I would’ve died if not for the interruption of cancer.

Many factors were in place that readied me for this healing. I received the best medical care by the finest doctors in world renowned hospitals.

I was firmly entrenched in a healthy community. They could and did support me. The Voices experience and training had given me a new context with which to view the facts of my life. Pat Capponi still remains one of my mentors. Micheal Creek is an impeccable soldier, leader and agent for change. They continued to welcome me back to the fold over and over again despite my struggles and challenges.

But there was more. Something else happened. I was introduced to services and supports through my cancer diagnosis that are generally out of reach for most poor people, that are outside of the realm of “normal” experience. This opened up a whole new world to me.

Wellspring is a holistic cancer treatment centre and resource free to all cancer patients and their caregivers. Yoga, energy healing, support, groups, art therapy, community, and more. It was here that I found my current self-identified Spiritual mentor. (Psychotherapist is the title on her card) She is also a nurse, writer, international lecturer and co-founder of Wellspring.

I was allowed to see her for three sessions at Wellspring. This resulted in her inviting me into her private practice for whatever I could afford. It has been a long time since I could afford anything for her. Mary Vachon continues to work with me regardless…

This has meant the difference in my life. No more bandages. Real healing. Real progress. Real results. Felt deep within and obvious from without. I wish it for everyone.

And so I find myself coming full circle. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do, what I was meant to do all along anyway just by a different route. I’m a grassroots journalist and publisher, bringing the stories of the poor, the skills, talents and resilience of this community together for all to see, to re write the resume of the poor, to fight stigma, to inspire hope and change from within and without.

And to give us a place to have our say our way, without agency scripting or agenda. Our voices, our truths, our service to those less fortunate.  We did it. Our community. People in drop-ins and foodbanks, housed, sheltered and on the street. And we keep on doing it. Passing it forward in gratitude.

There are many voices out there. They all matter. All lives have meaning. I trust you to listen to as many as you can.

This classroom and others like it hold one of the keys to our future. The hope is that you don’t settle for the status quo, that you “go first” (SOMEONE HAS TO) and that you un-turn every stone in an effort to create a more just and gentle environment for our disadvantaged and displaced.

Remember this as you travel: “To act and not be acted upon is the essence of joy” (Arlain)

and in that spirit, “nothing about us without us.”

Thank-you for listening.

I bid you well on your journey. May the highest good unfold for all.

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