As I prepare to take my seat in Parliament, someone is on my mind. I can see her face it’s her voice that I can’t hear any more, except in my memory.
In late 2000, a year after my father died, I had moved comfortably into his job at Citytv. I was on Queen West in the midst of shooting a story when a man rushed out of a building and knocked on the window of the truck I was sitting in.
“I have something for you. Come with me – I’ve been waiting for you.”
He pulled me out of the vehicle and into the past. He took me inside a nearby health clinic and disappeared behind a door when he came back, he was holding a large photograph of a woman with a beaming smile.
“It’s for you. It’s Cat.”
It was one of those moments in life when an act of kindness breaks your heart and heals it at the same time, when somebody gives you something and all you can feel is loss. But it wasn’t bittersweet. There wasn’t a hint of bitterness in what had just happened.
The photograph was of Mary. Her nickname was Cat. Or maybe her name was Cat and someone had re-christened her Mary. Much was unknown about this woman with the beaming smile. Despite the smile, a lot of sadness was etched in her hard, weathered face. But the smile was what you noticed first. It’s what everyone noticed first, until it was taken from us all.
I first met Cat on Queen Street. She huddled in a doorway, sometimes sleeping, often drinking sometimes she wasn’t there at all. She often disappeared for long stretches and then reappeared as if nothing had changed. You could walk by without noticing her just as easily as you could walk by a lamppost or a spilled cup of coffee. But once you noticed her, she had a way of noticing you. She’d smile an unforgettable smile, a smile I was now remembering as I looked at the photograph I was holding.
The black-and-white image had clearly rescued her smile, but it had also saved her face. Her black hair, black as black in the picture, framed her with abandon. It hinted at rage, unruly not untamed. The photo captured her face in detail you could get lost in.
I’d passed Cat several times before I ever said hello. She panhandled almost as an afterthought and had never actually asked me for money. I’m not sure what I’d have done if she had. Would a couple of quarters help her or hurt her?
Over time, her smiles and my hellos made us neighbours – not the kind you borrow a cup of sugar from, but neighbours like the old man down the street who stops sweeping the sidewalk when you walk by and you nod good morning to as a thank-you while you rush for the streetcar. No name. No language. No touch. Just a nod and a courtesy exchanged in the rhythm of city life that becomes more familiar with repetition.
That’s how it was. I didn’t hear her voice, or begin to learn her story, until my father put pen to paper one day.
My father wrote a weekly column for the paper. More often that not it was how I’d check in with him if I hadn’t seen him for a while. On this particular morning, he wrote about Cat.
He didn’t know whether to call her Cat or Mary. He’d stopped to talk to her about being homeless. She said she wasn’t really homeless. He talked to her about living on the street. She said she didn’t live on the street either.
Sometimes her boyfriend had beaten her up and the street was where she ran to feel safe. Sometimes a couple of beers led to a bottle of something else and then a brown bag with something else again and she was just sleeping it off. Sometimes she couldn’t sleep it off. Sometimes she’d just ride it out for days. Whatever it was she was running from, Cat just seemed to land back on Queen.
My father asked what she did when she wasn’t there. The answer was surprising. She was a volunteer at a homeless shelter. It seemed clear: she either wasn’t taking care of anything, or she was taking care of others, but she somehow hadn’t figured out how to take care of herself. She was aware of the painful humour of it all.
My father followed her to the shelter where she volunteered and talked to her co-workers. She was a mystery to them as well. Alcohol could explain the pattern, but not the cause. Mary didn’t talk about it, and neither did Cat. The smile masked it all.
Her life had obviously been hard, but it was as though talking about it would only make it harder. The secret was safe even if at times she wasn’t.
My father’s article had no photograph, but the picture of her life was so vivid, I knew exactly who he was writing about.
His article made the argument that this goodness, this person, needed a home, deserved our attention, warranted a response. It didn’t matter what put her on the street, but because it was our street, it was our responsibility to make sure she didn’t stay there. Didn’t die there.
But she did. Cat’s is one name on the long list of murdered or missing indigenous women.
I finally met her just weeks before she died, perhaps only a few nights before she was murdered certainly not in her last hours, but close. I, too, was doing a story on homeless people.
A politician had suggested we arrest people living on the street. It was winter, and I’d set out ask folks sleeping in the cold what they thought of the idea. I didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t in her usual doorway she was bundled up in a sleeping bag and coat, wet snow hard started to puddle around her. It was late at night. If I’d recognized her, I probably wouldn’t have asked to interview her. After all those moments of silent acknowledgement, it would have been strange to start conversing now. She was groggy, didn’t look up, asked me who I was and why I was talking to her.
“I’m Adam Vaughan….”
Her head shot up.
“Who? Vaughan? Do you know Colin Vaughan?”
“Yeah, he’s my dad”
There was a pause.
“He’s a nice man. Hey, can you tell him I’m still trying? Tell him I’m not drinking all the time. I’m not doing well. Don’t tell him that. Tell him I’m still trying like I promised. Tell him it’s good. I’ll get better. Tell him I still work at the shelter.” And then she laughed to herself. “Tell him the sandwiches are still terrible.” She laughed again.
I didn’t interview her. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It suddenly had become too personal. I had no way of knowing it, but I would never see her again.
The next time I heard about Cat, she was dead. Whatever she was running from had caught up with her. She died on the street.
The last time I told this story was at my father’s funeral. The man who gave me the photograph that night on Queen had heard the story. And for that brief moment the woman with the smile was alive again. My father was, too.
As I take a seat in Parliament, I’m thinking of my dad. I’m thinking of that photograph. I’m thinking about that smile that is still a mystery to me.I’m thinking about Cat, or Mary.
Her picture hangs in my new office in Ottawa. He was my dad, she was his friend, and now there is work to do.
Adam Vaughan is Liberal MP for Trinity-Spadina.
news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
