” I heard voices again last night.”

“Me, too.  About midnight?”

“Yeah.  I was asleep but I woke up enough to hear ’em and then listened for a bit and then rolled over and back to sleep.  Weird, eh?”

“Very.  I mean, there are no boaters, no kayakers, no campers nor even any neighbours. It’s winter and we are still hearing voices.  It’s like they are just down the shore.  The part that keeps me awake is that I just can’t seem to make out a single word.  It’s conversation for sure and it has to be English because it doesn’t have any weird tones or whatever. And yet, I cannot make out one single word.”

“Ghosts.  Gotta be.”

Sal and I have been here for more than a decade and approximately three or four times a year we hear these voices.  Usually at night.  Sometimes late, sometimes at dawn.  The voices sound like a nice, fun, but-not-wild campfire party happening about 3 or 400 yards away. Loud voices but not yelling.  Constant.  Sounds like six or seven, maybe eight people.

At first we were pretty sure it was ghosts and, of course, we made them out to be First Nations ghosts.  But the general sound, the tempo, the tone, the similarity to a summer BBQ just seemed to rule out FN’s languages.  And every ‘hearing’ sounded the same.  It was as if the same group was gathering at the same place each time and, even more strangely, having exactly the same party.

One summer night we heard it so distinctly and so much earlier in the evening, we went in the boat, turned the corner of the point and headed to the place kayakers sometimes gather to pitch camp.  Sure enough, there was a fire and a bunch of kayakers sitting around talking and having fun.

At first we thought the mystery was solved.  But it was NOT.  Most of the time we hear the voices, it is very late, after midnight.  Sometimes early morning.  Both those facts could still be consistent with a kayaking party but not when the aren’t any kayaking parties out there.  No groups kayak in the winter. Occasionally, some lone adventurer heading to or from Alaska or some place way north will paddle by in December but it is very rare.  And the lone kayaker is the definition of quiet.  Even two such adventurers wouldn’t make the sound of a party.

This is a gaggle of voices persisting for up to an hour in much the same location and showing up at all times of the year.  They party in the mid evening, wee hours and dawn. They leave no trace.  They sound the same every time. The communicate in an English-like speech pattern but with not a single word distinct enough to make out.   It’s the same group.

I tend to believe in ghosts.  I have experienced a couple.  Sal has, too.  But Sal won’t commit  to believing (which means she doesn’t believe but she admits that she did see one….?  Think about that….that, in a nutshell is how our minds differ.  I hear dead people and live with nutty ones!).  But this is a mystery that just keeps on giving and, despite our lack of discomfort and tendency to accept the voices now as just part of the world in which we live, they still surprise us when then show up. We still listen to the voices trying to pick out some words.  We still wonder who they are and what they are saying.  And we still don’t know.

Wanting to change, yearning, feeling, dreaming.  These are all necessary stages in thinking that everyone undergoes when they embark on a journey or adventure or a learning and personal growth quest.  It does not start with the first step, it starts with the first thought.  It takes several steps from there to get to the first well formed idea.  The first real-action step is a long way off.  You have to mentally remove yourself from where you are, imagine where you can go and then start taking the necessary steps to make it happen. Motivational speakers call it visualization but they can say that because the people they are talking to have already moved through several stages simply to get themselves into the audience.

Visualizing is several miles down the road from the initial feeling.

I started my change virtually the day we returned from the grand family vacation.  I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time but, I followed that odd personal urge, that itch, that je ne sais quoi feeling and the path started to become somewhat more clear.  NOT actually clear, more like straining to see through a dirty window.  It took me close to five more years before I took the real first step that was conscious, intentional and in the direction of my vision.

And I still had no clue.

To be fair, I was still half dreaming, half planning, half learning, half doing even when we started.  I am inclined that way.  I like the dream stage.  I was committed to change but it was not until the house in the cul-de-sac sold and we had no home that I was really totally committed – to getting a new home at the very least.  I was totally committed to NOT camping, that was for sure.  I hate camping.  And even though I knew the new home was off the grid, I had no idea what that really meant I was committing to even as I was building it.

Sal was even more naive than me.  She did not spend much time in the dream phase, she was too busy keeping the family, our house and the home together while I wondered off in search of something I couldn’t describe.  She got on the train well after it had started to leave the station.  Sally somehow imagined that going to live off the grid was just some kind of modern, hip phrase, like yuppy or baby boomer or dinks.  Or maybe some kind of mid-life phase that could eventually be integrated into ordinary life.  She knew it was NOT that but it was some kind of cottagey, fun, country-thingy that we could play at for awhile to see if we liked it.  She imagined a new all-jean wardrobe.  She bought ‘kicky boots’ for the photo ops.  She thought that the lifestyles section of the newspaper might do a feature on it.  She did not look back to see that most of the main bridges to our old life were slowly burning.  She didn’t have a clue.

I honestly do not think Sal had really committed until we were half way through building-to-lock-up and I was noticeably fading fast.  It was not until she looked at the boat shed as her very likely winter home that Sal got fully onside.  Sal glimpsed her future as a west coast hillbilly and was not amused.  I am glad she clicked into gear.  She became the primary driving force for the last and hardest stage of our transition to really living off the grid.  The house would not have made it to lock-up that first summer-ending-in-October without her indomitable spirit.

Sal is not a dreamer.  She lives in the real world.  She does what needs to be done and doesn’t like to see a job unfinished.  She could see that I was running on fumes half way through and kicked it and me up a notch. When the going got tough, Sal got going.  And when Sal got going, the job was well on the way to getting done.

And most of that story is in Our Life Off the Grid – an urban couple goes feral.

But, eventually the initially thrilling adventure part ends.  Eventually you get to where you wanted to get.  Eventually, you think, you will be done.  And, once you are firmly entrenched off the grid, you realize that is not so – this story never ends.  We finished stage one.  Almost.  We still have a few things to do but that is unlikely to ever change.  A large part of living off the grid is working a never ending chore list intended ironically to build things to make the chore list easier.  Like I said, a never ending story.

But we have been here almost twelve years by now (and will be by the time second book gets printed).  We have graduated from freshman.  We are sophomores now.  We are no longer planning and constructing, we are no longer dreaming and hoping.  We are actually living the dream.  We are here even if here, like the universe, is ever expanding.  We are doing what we planned to do even if we didn’t have a plan or a clue.  For a minute or two around the seven year mark, it felt as if we had arrived but we have not.

We just got past the first barrier is all.

Getting to the front door of the university is not getting the degree.  And getting a bachelors is not becoming a doctor.  In fact, we are really starting our lifestyle learning phase now. And like all unconventional lifestyles, all learning and growing endeavours, that statement can be made every year.  We learned to build.  We learned to do what we needed to do to be able to live.  It was great.   Woohoo.  The first seven or eight years was a book.  It was change writ large – for us, anyway.  It was a real, bona fide, risk-taking adventure.  But we have really just arrived.  A different kind of adventure now awaits.

Phase ll – the learning years have been formally imposed and, looking back, they probbly began maybe a year or two after we moved in.  I am not really sure when the climb up the steep cliff began to flatten out.  But there is no doubt, the journey continues but the steepest part seems over. There is still so much to do, so much to build in the way of add-ons and supplements, systems and conveniences, routines and work.  And so we are still hiking up hill.  But the path has leveled out some.  Longer stretches are straighter and easier. The footing is better.  We didn’t see the actual transition from trying to live off the grid to actually living off the grid but we are.  There is a huge difference.  And we have no idea how far we still have to travel.  But it is clear there is more to come.

We are still much alone in the wilderness, after all.

She was one of the kids in the group home cum therapeutic community I worked at when I was 21.  I liked her.  There was nothing very special to like or dislike but, for some reason, I liked her.  She was quiet. She was meek.  She behaved most of the time when she was there.  She was almost 15, homely in a too-hairy-swarthy Mediterranean kind of way, not too bright, a user and an abuser who likely came from the same kind of environment.  And she was a hooker.

She suffered from low self esteem, the file said.

It was bedlam at the centre every day and somedays it got even crazier.  Literally.  We all used to call it Alma House, Crazy House.  We had about twelve kids at any one time in residence and they were all bad actors.  The odd one was evil or soon to be but most of them were just messed up. They had been classed the worst of the worst, the most delinquent of the delinquents and no other facility would have them.  We took them in at the centre, a huge old Shaughnessy-style home located at 2nd and Alma and the staff tried out their version of Gestalt therapy.  It was a gong show.

Looking back, I think the problem was ignorance and naivete on the part of Children’s Aid. This was still the beginning of the drug era and no one save X-Kalay had much of a handle on what kind of multi-headed monster of a problem that was about to become.  We didn’t.

The therapeutic idea was to manifest some kind of family, albeit hugely artificial, while the so-called family was kept totally unstable by revolving rosters of staff, changing faces amongst the kids and the madness of what we took to be counselling sessions. There was clearly too much acid being dropped and dope being smoked and that statement applied to some of the staff as well. It was around 1970 or so and I’d estimate that there were ten staff and, looking back, I think maybe half were sane.

Lilly and I used to talk.  Usually when I was on kitchen duty.  Sometimes when I was herding the kids into their bedrooms getting them to sleep.  Mostly it would be just her an me.  I was busy.  She was the quiet type.  We kept it short.

“So, Lilly, I heard that you gave all the kids record albums.  That was nice.  But, I have to ask where you got the money.”

“Downtown.”

You aren’t turning tricks again, are you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Geez, kid.  That’s not healthy.  Worse than that, it can be dangerous.”

“No, it’s not.  I just go to a private gambling club in Chinatown.  Do some of the old guys.  They have small dicks.  I’m only there for an hour or so.”

“Shoot.  That sounds pretty bad to me.  What do you charge?”

“$4.00.  Sometimes five.  I leave when I get $75 or 80 bucks.  Then I go shopping.  I’m home before dark.”

“Lilly!  That’s crazy.  It is wrong on so many levels I can’t begin to explain.  And I should be struck dead for saying this; you are a very bad businesswoman.”

She thought that was pretty funny.  I was horrified.  Still am, actually.

Ten years later, I was running the clinic in Skidrow.  A wrecked and strung out mess of a woman was dragging her emaciated, unhealthy self through to the doctor’s office.  She looked late forties.  Hair was thin and falling out.  She had that no-teeth, yellow-grey look. She looked like death.  It was Lilly.  We talked.  She was much the same person but less so. I took her for lunch after the examination.  I didn’t ask what was wrong.  It was obvious.  Heroin.  Disease.  Malnutrition.   She was pretty much done.  She died within the next few weeks.

I did not know too many like I knew Lilly and I really did not know her all that well.  We had a bit of a connection is all.  But there are at least a few dozen who would belong in that same tragic file.  Maybe three dozen.  And they all surprised me with the end of their story.

One small girl was arrested with two huge black guys robbing a bank in Seattle. Shotguns and bullets and the whole Dog Day Afternoon thing.  She was 16 or 17, maybe 100 pounds.  Strawberry blond hair.  Cute as a bug’s ear.  And the list just goes on and on.

You can see how that kind of life burns out the players and it doesn’t take long to burn out the rescuers, either.

When I ran the clinic I was pretty wet behind the ears.  I knew enough to know good work by the staff when I saw it and I knew how to account for the money provided by the government, but I was a bit naive about crime and all that people were capable of. That changed pretty quickly.

We had twelve street nurses.  They were not registered nurses in the professionally accredited sense.  They were ex-addicts, idealists, and Eastside types who were comfortable in the area and assorted characters who wanted to do good work and were willing to work for peanuts.  Some were good.  Some were great and some were saints.  But I saw them all, initially, as idealists doing good work.  I was wrong.

My first bad worker was a guy called John.  Pleasant.  Smart.  Engaging.  A bit older than most of the others but still young in his early thirties.  He was a bit burnt out but that hollow, haunted look was not uncommon among our mostly fallen-but-redeemed non-professional staff.  The clinic had a policy of trying to hire locally for obvious reasons, but also to give people a second chance.

I heard a rumour that John was dealing heroin while doing his rounds.

That posed a challenge.  How do you fire someone for committing a crime so severe  that criminal charges would have to be laid and a proper investigation would have to be conducted and all sorts of interruptions to patient care would ensue?  How could you NOT fire someone who did that sort of thing?  How could you prove it without duplicating the processes that were required by the entire justice system.  How could you put any more patients at risk?  And addicts faced greater risks from their suppliers than from most other people so, if true, John was worse than the average dealer, he was a dealer who was in a position of authority over his clients.

“John, come down to my office, would you.  We need to talk.”

He came down, smiled, cracked a few jokes, made nice.  I liked John.

“John, I am thinking of firing you.  If I do, I have to do it right now.  This minute.  You can’t even go back upstairs to the nurses department.  I will walk you off the premises.”

He went nuts.  Called me names.  I calmed him.  He sat down.

“John, I have no right to fire you.  I know that.  I have only heard a weak rumour.  That is all.  It is NOT fair. So, if you want to, all you have to do is say that you want a suspension instead and you want to appeal to the board.  I will not only understand, I hope you choose that route and I will fill out the forms for you.  But, you see, if you do choose that way to respond, I have no choice but to chase down the rumour.  And, in the process of doing my own investigation, I will have to ask others to get involved because the rumour is serious. I will have to involve the police. That kind of thing.  Nothing behind your back, though.  I will introduce you to everyone involved in the investigation.  If there is nothing to hide, you will be back in a flash and I’ll apologize.  I’m sorry.  But I have no choice.  What would you prefer I do?”

John thought it over, (taking way too long to do that), looked at me as asked me if he should resign instead.  I agreed that he should, but I still walked him out of the clinic.

The other nurse gone bad was a tough, young, single mother with a bad attitude and a nasty mouth.  But that pretty much made her normal in that group.  It was almost a requirement to be that way sometimes down there.  She was, however, smart and sneaky as well.  One day she came to work and asked if she could take her holidays in a week or so.  I said yes and simply asked that she notify the department coordinator.  And off she went.

She spent ten days in Hawaii.

She’d been back a few weeks when I got a call from a social worker who had a caseload in the Downtown Eastside.

“Hey, Dave, did you know Joe Smith died last month?  He was one of the guys under your team’s care?”

“No.  I didn’t know.  But, then again, a lot of patients die down here and I don’t personally keep track of them.  Why?  Something amiss?”

“Don’t know.  I just know that Janie was administering his accounts and, when he died, I had to do the paperwork and there was not a penny in the bank.  Doesn’t mean much but administered patients have bank accounts and I have never had a situation that had a person at zero unless they died virtually at the end of the month.  Joe died on the 7th.”

I thanked the worker, checked the dates and realized that things looked odd.  I called the bank and asked them about Joe’s account, told them why and, as this was a time when things weren’t so rigid, they told me.  I got the answer I needed.  In the monthly statement they issued the month before Joe died, there had been $1,400.00.  For a guy on welfare, so sick that he was restricted to his room and mostly his bed, that was a huge sum.  The records showed that his balance in the years prior was usually low.  But in the last year (for as long as he had been in our care) he had somehow managed to save $120 a month.  At the time, his living allowance was just a bit under $500. It seemed impossible for him to save anything.  Unless he was not being fed properly or not receiving other needed items or services.

I inquired with Janie.  She was angry from the start.  Then she said, “He was gonna die anyway.  I just took what he wanted to give me.”

I fired her.

And then the story got really ugly.

She grieved the termination.  The Board of Directors agreed with me.  Janie contended that I was singling her out because she was an ex-addict, a single mother and I didn’t like her. The last part was, by then, true.  But then she got some support from the other nurses.  I was stunned.

“How could any of you support her for doing what she obviously did?”

The answer made my blood run cold, “Hey, none of us are perfect!  We’ve all taken some money from some old guy’s account.  Now and then.  Not that much but there’s no harm if he’s dying, is there?  And when he’s dead, the money just goes back to welfare.  And that’s stupid!”

I said, “That has to stop.  I will be checking.  If there is even a nickel missing from now on, you will be fired.  I am inclined to fire you (the department head who had given me the answer) right now for simply having knowledge of this, let alone participating.  I won’t because too many people need the care you give, but I swear this will not be overlooked ever again.”

The sad part was that it was mostly a bluff on my part.  There was a reason there were twelve street nurses.  They had almost two hundred patients.  It was a revolving roster.  Some patients were short term and were not vulnerable. Some were NOT administered by us (meaning they controlled their own money) and others were pretty smart old geezers. But there would always be at least a dozen who could be taken for small sums and no one would ever know.

It was ugly down there.  And not all the ugly came from the client side.

He was about my age.  He was about my height.  And he sported the same bar-of-soap shape I did.  Plus it looked like someone had cut his hair by first placing a bowl on his head and removing what remained showing.  He was applying to be a doctor in our Downtown Eastside clinic.

I looked at him, asked a few questions and reviewed his credentials.  He answered well, spoke well enough, was a recent graduate of a reputable Canadian university and had done his residency in Toronto.  He had a pleasant demeanor.  On the face of it, he would be perfect.  Except for the face of it.  He was Chinese.

“Than you for applying,” I said.  “But I don’t think this is the right fit for you.  So, no.  No thanks.”

Stunned at such a quick rejection, he repeated himself, “No, I be doctor.  I apply for job.  I am ready to work.  Hire me.”

“No.”

Again, “No, I be doctor.  I have papers.  I work here.  Why not?”

“Well, to be blunt, you are Chinese.  This is skid row.  We have hundreds of crazy, addicted and violent people coming in here every day but none of them are Chinese.  I am sure your culture has problems but they are different from the ones here.  You would be out of place, out of your element.  You would not be happy.”

“Yes.  I am Chinese.  But, no problem.”

I went on to describe the racism, the madness, the hatred, the dysfunction and the danger that he would face every day.  “They’ll call you gook and chink.  They’ll call you slant-eyed.  They will be rude, resistant and horrible.  They do that to all of us because they are angry but you provide a racial component for them to target extra cruelly.  You’ll hate it.”

“No problem.”

It was hard to say no to a person who had just faced a barrage of the very prejudice that was to come if I hired him, but he seemed determined and that was the primary attribute I was looking for in an employee.  Until he applied, no doctor had lasted more than two years and many didn’t last three months.  I didn’t see that record being challenged by Dr. Daniel Wang.

“OK.  You are hired.  But, here’s the deal.  You give it a fair shot.  When it becomes clear to you that this is too hard, too mean, too ugly, let me know and I will find you a nice job at St. Paul’s hospital and you can work there and buy a nice Mercedes-Benz like all the other doctors.  Deal?”

“No problem.”

Daniel was given the hardest job of all the doctors.  He was on the streets every day.  No office. No examination room.  His job was to carry the classic doctor’s black bag and ferret out the sick and diseased that were so far gone that they no longer came to the clinic.  He had to go to the rat-infested, addict strewn, filthy rooming houses that filled the Downtown East Side — most of the time alone.  He was back-up for the street nurses but had his own caseload as well. Daniel was an average, mid twenties, dyed-in-the-silk Chinese, even down to the initially-heavy Chinglish he spoke. He was a relatively new Canadian having been here only long enough to get his education and find his way to our clinic.  He didn’t have any experience.  He didn’t have any street skills either and he was completely naive about the job he faced.  He basically didn’t have a clue.

I gave him three months.

Daniel out-lasted me.  Daniel stayed in skid row for eight years.  Daniel was, by far, the best doctor we ever had at the clinic by longevity standards alone.  I think he was the best doctor the area ever had and I am pretty sure that he would have been good anywhere.

Of course, as the years went by, we became friends and one day he wanted to go to lunch at a fancy uptown restaurant in one of the top five hotels in the city.

“Dan, we can’t go there.  You always wear dress clothes but I am in jeans and a t-shirt.”

“No problem.”

We went in my beaten up old sports car and he instructed me to park in a reserved space by the entry. That seemed odd.  We entered the hotel, walked to the restaurant and saw a long line with the maitre de controlling the red rope barring entry to the dining area.  Dan walked to the front.  I followed.  At the head of the line-up, waiting his turn was the then mayor of the city, Jack Volrich.  The maitre de dropped the rope, we walked through and took a place at a reserved table.  The rope was put back in place.  Jack cooled his heels in the line-up.

“Geez, Dan.  How did we walk past the line up?  How did we we get seated ahead of the mayor?  What the hell is going on?”

“No problem.  I own it.”

“You own the restaurant?  How is that possible?  We pay peanuts.”

“I own the hotel.”

Seems Dan’s family was rich.  Rich enough to own the hotel and a lot of other stuff.  Dan was not overly impressed by all that but, as number one son, he was still very much involved in the family empire.  He preferred doctoring.  On that particular day he had to attend to a quick business meeting and he thought we could catch lunch at the same time. I guessed later that it was his way of sharing his personal life with me.  After a while I asked him why he would work as a doctor in skid row when he could afford to buy his own hospital or, at the very least, have his own clinic.

“I came to Canada eight years ago.  I was fully accepted by everyone I met.  No prejudice. No discrimination.  I got my education here.  My sons were born here.  You even hired me. I am Canadian now and I appreciate this country very much.  When I became a doctor, I decided I had to give something back.  So, I decided to work in the worst place with the worst patients and do the best I could.  It is my way of saying thank you to Canada.  And I will continue to do that for as long as I can.  But, I would appreciate it if you would not tell anyone.  My family is rich and we have to worry about security.”

Over the years, we have remained friends.  Really good friends.  He went back to Hong Kong in the early nineties to manage the family empire but I have been over to visit.  He has been back to visit.  We are friends and shall remain so regardless of the distance.  It’s not everyone who would do what he did, do it so well and do it so unselfishly.  Daniel has lived most of his almost seventy years in Hong Kong.  Only about ten or so were spent in Canada.  But I see him as one of the best Canadians I have ever known.

He was the worst of the worst.  Wrecked.  Disgusting.  Mental.  Aggressive and so far beyond filthy as to redefine the word.  Robert had thick matted hair that stuck like a large brown bag on his head falling down to mid back, and covering his face.  He had no shoes, only several pairs of rotting socks.  They stunk.  He stunk.  The air around him stunk.  He had several layers of clothing all of which was in tatters, the crotch rotted out through the layers because he relieved himself without removing them.  His skin was pock-marked with dirt and it felt like bugs and fleas were coming off him if you even came near.  He was hunched over and he dragged his feet when he walked.  He was so bad that the lowest of the low detoured around him.  Robert was the craziest, most filthy, most repulsive person I had ever seen.

Robert was also angry, insane and volatile.  If you spoke to him he began spitting and waving his arms and making aggressive gestures.  The fear one felt stemmed mostly from being so near the filth and the disease.  And the spray of germs and slime that projected from him was worse than a weapon.  He was like a walking plague.  He was a human sewer rat.

No one went near Robert.

Our policy at the clinic was to ‘accept’ the weirdos and to offer assistance.  Part of the definition of ‘weirdo’ was repulsive, dirty and way too often, addicted and crazy.  Robert was all of that and so much more.  But our staff did what they could without getting too close.  In fact, Robert came to the clinic about once a week and went to the small food store we ran.  The staff would open a free can of sardines, give it to him with a plastic spoon and he would scurry off to a corner and protect his meal from anyone approaching within ten feet.  Usually he ate undisturbed.  No one ever approached on purpose.

One day, I asked the street nurses about him. “Robert?  Are you kidding.  None of us will go near him.  I’d quit before I had to attend to him.”

“Seems kinda chicken not to try.  You guys are the toughest, most street savvy skid row workers going.  If you can’t do it, who can?”

“Robert’s so crazy that you need to commit him.  That requires two doctor’s signatures. From different offices.  And both doctors have to examine him and agree on the decision to commit.  Then the paddy wagon comes when only all the paperwork is done.  They take the real crazies to Crease Clinic.  No doctor is going to see Robert because  no one can get Robert to do anything or go anywhere.  Getting two of them to see him is impossible. Never gonna happen.”

I went to all our doctors and explained the situation.  No go.  I went to the other street clinic miles away and explained the situation to them.  No go.  So I went back to my group and asked them to examine him on the fly if they could.  In the hallway, in the washroom, on the street, whatever.  They agreed to do that if the opportunity arose.  I got the other clinic doctors to agree, too.  Any kind of exam anywhere would do. Then, after months of futile waiting for an opportunistic encounter, I asked one of my doctors to sign a committal form in advance so that I would NOT have to chase paper if any of the others had the chance encounter but he/she did not.  They would not do that.  But, eventually one did on the promise that at least one of the other doctors in our clinic saw him and, of course, the other clinic doctor also saw him.

Then I asked the other clinic to do the same and with the same promise.  I now had two signed committal forms and I was determined to wrestle Robert into seeing at least one of my group doctors when I could.  The second impossible bridge would have to be crossed after that.

To make a long story short, it never happened.  Robert was too erratic.  When he did show, the staff were busy with other patients.  And the second clinic doctor was going to be even harder to satisfy.  After a few months, I gave up doing it the right way.  I gave up my promise.  When I next saw Robert I called the paddy wagon and I gave them the two signed committal forms and they took him away.

In effect, I broke every rule in the book.  I not only put myself in danger of being charged with a long list of crimes, but I jeopardized the doctor’s and their professional standing.  In hospital administration terms, I was the worst felon possible.  And, I felt that way.

For about a week.

Skid Row is busy.  We had over 800 people a day come through the clinic on a busy day and all days were pretty much busy.  That kind of ocean of sickness tends to erase any one day.  After a week, I forgot about Robert.

Until about a year later when a tall distinguished guy wearing a three piece tailored suit and carrying a briefcase asked to meet with me.  He had such a professional bearing and elegance, the receptionist made the only exception I have ever seen to her rule of never coming out from behind the Plexiglas.  She escorted him to my office.

“Are you David Cox?”

“Yes.  How can I help you?”

Getting some papers out of his briefcase, he continued, “Do you recall Robert Smith, a patient at this clinic?”

“Yes.  Yes I do.” And I started to think about my pending arrest at that very instant.

“Are you aware that you violated the legal procedures for committal?  I have already spoken with the doctors involved and they claim that the entire committal was executed by you in violation of their specific instructions and that they are claiming no responsibility in the matter whatsoever.  Is that true?”

“Yes.  I broke the agreement.  I felt I needed to.  It was an accident.  They did nothing wrong except to trust that I would keep my word and I did not.”  I almost extended my wrists together for him to handcuff.  I hung my head.

“Are you aware of what happened to Robert Smith?”

“Not a clue.  He went to the hospital.  That’s all I know.  It was a long time ago.”

He stood there looking down at me.  He was over six feet, average build, about fifty, with lawyer-style greying temples and he was wearing a very stern expression.  I could feel my life coming apart.

He extended his hand and smiled. “Don’t worry about a thing.  I am Robert.  Your actions saved my life.  I came to thank you.  If you hadn’t done what you did, I would surely be dead by now.”

Seems Robert had been on meds for a form of schizophrenia.  He has no idea what caused him to come off the meds but, at the time, he was living in Kelowna and had a family.  Wife and kids.  He was an accountant of some kind.  He had subsequently lost seven years of his life to the madness that was his condition and he estimated that almost all of it was spent in the Downtown Eastside.  His memory of the time was hazy but he remembered the building, the sardines and Oppenheimer Park.

After he had been at the hospital for a month or so, they had him stabilized. New meds. He contacted his wife.  She was overjoyed and went immeditely to retrieve him and the last year was spent putting his life together.  He looked great and we spent a half hour grinning and sharing what we knew about the old Robert.

Once he was together enough, he had investigated how he had been saved.  He unraveled the mystery on his own.  No formal inquiry, just conversations.  The secret was safe.

Robert left.  I told the doctors what I had learned.  Robert had not told him that he was, in fact, the man that had briefly asked them a question or two recently.  They, too, thought that it was a lawyer making inquiries.  They were as relieved as I was.  We all spent much of the time together saying things like. “I never should have agreed to do that”.  “After all is said and done, it was still a violation of ethics and blah, blah, blah.”  “I am sorry.  I really am.” (I really was when I was saying that but a week or so later when the dust had cleared and I had time to think about it, I was not.  I was pleased about it.) 

Situational ethics.  Not uncommon for anyone working in skid row but rarely as dramatic as Robert.

I needed a pharmacist for the clinic and they were hard to find.  Pharmacists, generally, can make a good living in the capitalist economy but institutional pharmacists do not.  And institutions in skid row had even less appeal for them, even fresh young graduates needing experience.  I hired a guy called Ahkbar. He was a young Ugandan refugee with the right credentials who was an arrogant, puke of a human being but I had little choice.  It was either the Ugandan snot or the pharmacy could not function.

Over the next year Ahkbar managed to alienate just about everyone in the clinic and even the down and out patients of the area.  He was rude, insulting, dismissive and beyond prejudicial.  He openly disdained all of us, patients and staff alike, for being sub-par human beings while he was, in his own mind, just a notch below a god.  That he was handsome in an Omar Sharif kind of way just made it worse.  I detested the puke.

During his time with us, Ahkbar boasted that his stint as a pharmacist was just temporary and that, as soon as his family’s money was recovered from Uganda, he was going back to school to become a doctor, a position more worthy of his gifts.  When he left a year or so later, it was an amicable parting- we were both happy to see the last of each other.

A few years later, I was in physio therapy trying to make my knee work again after major surgery.  I was in St Pauls.  One day Ahkbar walked by and, seeing me, came over and inquired after my health and made pleasant.  It was a bit of a shock but at first I wrote it off to a guy getting what he wanted and was then, as he predicted, a doctor and, presumably enjoying the status he felt he so richly deserved.

But Ahkbar made a point of finding out my physio schedule and, further, visited me repeatedly. I enjoyed his visits.  He was caring and interesting and remarkably likable. Finally, I asked how it was that he seemed to have so changed.  Was it me?  Or had he actually changed?

“I think the change you see is me, David.  I am different.  And I am glad to be different.  In fact, I owe you and the clinic an apology.  I was not a good employee.  Please forgive me.”

That was quickly dispensed with because I wanted to know what happened.

“Before I entered medical school my parents thought it a good idea that I visit my homeland and my relatives.  And so they sent me to India.  I honestly do not know if I am actually Indian or Pakistani because the village I went to was in the north and virtually on the border of the two countries.  It makes no difference.  We had to hike for three days and two nights to get to the village.  I had to dress in rags and wear rope sandals n case we were caught.  We had to hide from Indian and Pakistani police and their army patrols because neither believed we were worthy of even living, let alone being there.  It was terrifying.

“But when I got to the village it was life changing.  It was surreal.  It felt like science fiction at first.  I could hardly believe what I was seeing.  Everyone in the village of just over a hundred people looked exactly like my brothers, cousins, parents and family.  Everyone.  I saw people who were virtually twins of not only my parents and my brothers and sisters but I also saw a couple of guys who looked exactly like me.  Of course, there were very minor differences but, at first, I was sure that I had walked into a living nightmare.  These people were poor, ignorant, uneducated and primitive in the extreme.  But, at the same time, they were me.  They were my family.  There were, literally, my family.  We were the same! 

” I must have cried every night I was there.  My entire sense of who I was was just based on good luck.  I could just as easily be one of them.  I was one of them. But they were kind, generous, accepting and they wanted nothing from me but to accept their love and to receive some in return. I felt so close to them, I loved them, I wanted to be with them and I wanted to be like them but I was ashamed of myself the entire time.  I was so humbled and embarrassed, I swore that I would go back to Canada, become a doctor and go back to help them.  And so I did.

“But they also showed me that it was not really about them.  It was not about our family connection.  I was a doctor and I had to help others, too.  I am part of  Médecins Sans Frontières, (Doctors Without Borders) now.  I go back to that village but I also go to many other villages.  Even other countries. It changed me.  You were right all along.  I was wrong.”

” I don’t know about my being right, Ahkbar.  I am no longer there.  Couldn’t take it anymore.  But I am very glad to hear that story.  It’s a great one.  Thanks for telling me.”

“No worries.  It’s my turn, anyway.  Nice seeing you, too.” 

He was aboriginal, addicted, blind, angry, scared and always wielded a large hunting knife swung around in front of him almost all the time he moved instead of using a white cane like other sight challenged people.  He was also somewhat imposing and very scary-looking.  You could hear him coming and you could see the people running away.  The guy was nuts.

For the first few months, of course, we all just gave him the room he seemed to require and he came to the clinic, ate some soup and left.  In a way, being visited by a screaming, high, blind and angry Indian armed to kill became a common occurrence. It was my job to make sure that he didn’t hurt anyone but, in the process of following him from a relatively safe distance, he came to know I was there.  At first he would turn and slash his way towards me but he was easy to evade and I would attempt to explain that I was just there to help and keep people safe.  I told him to go about his business, ignore me and he would not have a problem.

And, for the most part, that was the way it played out for weeks.  The hardest part was that he was always under the influence of something and so sometimes I felt like we could communicate, other times I was sure he had no idea who the voice talking to him was. Each visit required a new risk assessment and an altered approach to getting him in and out of the clinic safely.

The real tragedy was that his blindness was the result of an opaque layer of skin growing over his eyes.  According to the doctors, that condition can be improved completely with relatively simple day surgery.  I began trying to explain that to him.  Keeping a safe distance most of the time, of course.

One day, he was eating his soup and his knife was beside him.  I sat down and started talking.  He did not pick up the knife.  He barely acknowledged anyone but his leaving the knife alone spoke volumes.  I found out his name and worked the day surgery angle and, to make a long story short, and it took a long, long time, he agreed to go to St. Paul’s Hospital to try to get a sense of what I was talking about.

I had told the staff there of his condition and his mental state.  I asked them to do this procedure without an appointment because my guy was too erratic in every way.  I would bring him when I could and, for the sake of all the patients they had that day, it was in everyone’s best interests if they got him in and out as fast as possible.  No waiting.  No chit chat.  We come, they operate, we leave all in the least possible time.  It only took one visit with him to cement the deal.  St Paul’s was on side.

I must have had him in my car and almost to the hospital door a dozen times before he would bolt and run screaming and swinging his knife into the downtown streets. He was terrified.  At least twice, maybe four times, I actually got him in to the reception area and they were expediting him as they promised when he freaked out and took flight.  Each time was dramatic, frightening for the staff and, to be honest, a bit edgy even for me.  I was getting to the point of giving up.

Of course, Skid Row sorts everyone eventually and he was found dead by his own knife a few weeks after our last effort.  Someone had simply used the weapon most handy and dispatched him.  He was a miserable, angry man that even a mother would stop loving.  I had pretty much run out of my sense of duty.  I had maybe one more effort left in me, but maybe not. I’ll never know.

The reality was he was addicted, nuts, violent and a very unsympathetic character.  He had nothing going for him.  His destiny was written in his eyes.  But, that was the thing. The eyes were so bad that they must have been impairing his vision for years if not decades.  His knife wielding act together with the yelling and screaming was actually an effective way to get places.  If I could get his eyes fixed, there was every chance that he might have led a better life.

He didn’t.  I didn’t.  And he died.  No one was to blame. By the time we encountered him in Skid Row, he had been crazy and addicted way too long. Maybe when the eye disease began, an early intervention might have changed everything.  But he lived with it, he adapted to it and he adopted incredibly mad, destructive life skills to try to cope with it. Didn’t work

The doctors suggested that just a few hours would have changed everything.

A reader suggested that my work history might provide some reading fodder.  Tell me what you think.  It might contain stuff like the following:

It was in the late 70’s.  November.  Cold as hell.  I was running the skid row medical clinic and one of the board members came to my office, her incredible bosom revealing itself a half second before the rest of her came into view.  She was something, she was. Actually, she was more than just one thing, there were three of her.

Alice had been a prostitute, alcoholic and drug addict for years.  Then she graduated to picking pockets and small time hustles to keep her and her five children alive and the family together.  Wasn’t easy.  They were all from different fathers and the men in her life were numerous, omnipresent and ill-fitting, like the tight clothing that incarcerated what should have been illegal breasts.

I say they should have been made illegal because they once almost killed me but I’ll come back to that.  First a bit about who she really was.

“Hey, Dave.  We got any money in the budget to hire someone?”

Alice had graduated after the pick-pocket and hustle phase to being a bona fide social worker and board member of the clinic.  Her natural intelligence and attention-getting appearance made her effective on the drug addled streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and her ability to defend herself when necessary – which was often and always successful – made her a great social worker.  She was tough, smart, effective and, like the proverbial prostitute with a big heart, she was now an ex-prostitute with a big heart.

“Sorry. No money.  Broke as usual.  Just putting together another grant request.  Why?”

Alice stepped aside and pushed a tall, old man with an erect bearing towards my desk.  Mohan Dhahliwal snapped his heels together, gave me a perfect military salute and greeted me with a sharp, “Suh!”

Seems Mohan had lived his entire life in India until a year or so ago when his son brought him to Canada.  But Mohan was so ‘old school military’ and Indian having spent his whole life serving God and country in the Indian army, that the son and daughter in law were ashamed to be seen in public with him.  They were embarrassed.  They kept Mohan locked in their basement and only brought him out for meals.  He felt humiliated and, on a whim one day, had run away.

Mohan resided in Nanaimo when he escaped.  He was wearing only pajamas and slippers in freezing rain when he made his way to the ferry at Departure bay.  Somehow, he got aboard the boat and somehow he managed to get into the centre of Vancouver and ended up in a flop house where Alice kept tabs on people.  She didn’t feel the flophouse environment was the right match for this guy and so she enticed him to follow her to the clinic where she intended to find him employment and then, with her own money, she was going to front him his rent in a better place.

Of course, on the way to see me, she stopped by another social service and dressed him somewhat more appropriately.  Standing before me was an ex-military, 75 year old Sikh who stood well over six feet tall and had the air of a colonel.  His language skills were minimal but his ‘ready-for-duty’ attitude was obvious.  He was eager to please his new commander – whoever it was.  Alice wanted it to be me.

So, I agreed to hire Mohan as a part-time janitor and Alice found him a place down the street.  He was never late.  He was always hard working.  He was so honest that he brought me pennies and other litter he found while doing his rounds.  Mohan, at 75 and almost unilingual with virtually no relevant education, was the best employee we ever had if you measure that reference by loyalty, hard work and dedication to his job.  We became friends.

Having said that, Mohan always saluted me.  Every morning.  And he never left without ‘checking out’ formally.  “Five o’clock, Suh!  Good night, Mr. David!”  We were friends but I was his commander and that was the way it was.

Now to the boobs that kill.  I doubt that even Arthur Conan Doyle could make this stuff up.

Early 80’s.  I had been gone from the clinic for a few years.  I was driving west on Broadway in my Datsun 311, a somewhat distinctive sports car.  Traffic was moving well and we had just passed through the intersection at Granville. Mid block and, for no reason apparent, the car ahead of me slammed on the brakes.  I barely stopped before hitting it.  Out of the driver’s seat spun Alice, monumental breasts already gaining unstoppable momentum.  She was wearing a yellow halter top that was like a headband on two watermelons.  I jumped out of the car as she ran straight at me with her arms open wide.  You can only imagine the sight.

I was glad to see her, too, even though her face was obliterated from my view every second step or so and, as we began too-rapid docking maneuvers, I must have made the mistake of breathing out.  I exhaled.  Little did I know, it was almost my last.  We collided in exuberant friendship and she grabbed me by the back of my head.  Squealing with delight at having seen me, disrupting traffic and having me in her arms, she slammed my face deep into her bosom.

Who wouldn’t?

But I was out of air.  I tried to breathe.  It was not possible.  My lungs were completely deflated by my ill-timed exhale a second before and all I could feel was all enveloping, soft pink flesh, so much of it that my head was almost completely covered in boob. And I was fading fast.  My knees felt weak and I was a second away from passing out.  Her breasts were being sucked into my nostrils as I fought for survival.  It was horrible.  No, really!  I was collapsing in the middle of stopped traffic in the 1500 block of Broadway because of an assault by a couple of friendly giants.  If it weren’t so terrifying at the time, it would have been embarrassing.  Or funny. As it was, it was almost deadly.

Rescue came as my knees folded and my head pulled down her halter top.  Inadequate at the best of times, it began to reveal even more of the problem and she let me go to save her modesty. I thank God to this day that, after all those years on the wrong side of the modesty tracks, she still had some to save.  It was what saved me.  That rescue act allowed the last vestige of my life spark to restart my breathing.  It was a miracle. I was alive and soon to recover my usual appreciation for a large, soft bosom.  But, for the next few minutes of that day, I kept my distance.

Working in Skid Row can be dangerous in so many ways.  A lot of danger lurks there in the shadows, the corners and the cleavage of the big smoke.

And that was just one of the stories of my naked city.

We’re currently watching a Netflix series about a London police inspector who hears the voices of dead people.  Maybe. They just might be his own voices that he thinks are the dead people in the mystery he is attempting to solve.  He’s not sure.  We’re not sure. He may just be a nutter but he seems to be a good investigator.  Or is he?

All the plots move along (without useful input from the voices) but they all seem to move along because someone goes over the CCTV footage once again for the umpteenth time and sees something no one else saw before.  CCTV footage is the new ‘crutch’ on which mystery plots revolve. But (BIG but) it requires a person to go over and over and over again all the footage.

I am sure that is true.  I am sure they do that.  I believe what the State tells me. It’s all reviewed all the time just to keep me safe. 

But, honestly, that was NOT our experience.

A couple of years ago our car was broken into at the hotel we were staying at and all the Xmas presents we had purchased were stolen.  ICBC no longer covers break-ins explained the dial-a-claim person because, “Well, there are so many of them now, aren’t there?”  Makes sense, actually.  Insure for that which DOES NOT happen but, if it does, cancel that insurance because how are you gonna make a buck doing that?  Not surprisingly, ICBC made no effort to tell us that our coverage had changed.

So, we lost about $1000-1200 dollars and, when we mentioned it to the hotel, they said, “Well, we have security but we never catch anyone.”

“What is your security?”

“CCTV.”

“Anyone actually go outside and check it out?  Patrol the lot or something?”

“No.  Just the cameras.”

“Interesting approach.  Anyone watch the cameras?”

“No.  But we record.  So we have tapes.”

“But no one looks at them?”

“Not unless someone asks.”

“Can I see them?”

” I will have to get permission from my supervisor.  Privacy concerns.”

“Of course.  And not to mention, liability issues and safety and security issues.  You might want to record our conversation and I can bring a record check in with me sometime next week.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.  Just ask.”

When we looked at the cameras, it was incredible.  There were twelve cameras at least ten of them with our car within their recording view.  For three of them , it was like Hollywood had staged our car to be the story subject.  We saw the two guys come from the street, we saw them look around, we saw them with hoodies and we saw them break in and steal our stuff.  Elapsed time….maybe ten to fifteen minutes.  The smash and grab? Maybe one minute.  If we hadn’t asked to see the tapes, no one would have ever seen them and yet, there they were in black and white.  Evidence.

Even tho we had seen the tapes the guys wore hoodies and the camera action was a bit jumpy, not film-like.  So it was NOT good evidence.  No one could tell anything from that other than they were likely young, male and thin.  I suppose we could have watched the tapes a gazillion times and eventually found enough evidence to trace their family tree and who their friends were.  But I doubt it.  That only happens on Netflix.

I think CCTV serves up the average citizen for 100% monitoring and controlling (driving, workplace, etc).  It is likely a revenue stream – bridge tolls, speeding tickets, etc.   But, for fighting crime, it is useless.  False sense of security at best.  For our successful thieves, 12 cameras trained on them meant nothing.  To be even more cynical, I believe the cameras are there just to comply with the hotel’s insurance company’s requirements for reasons other than the well-being of the patrons.

The police informed us that the thieves like hotels like ours because it was located close to the Skytrain,  People on Skytrain with shopping bags are NOT suspicious but men-in-hoodies walking down a street with packages are.  They knew our hotel had been hit repeatedly. NOT that they did anything about it, of course.  It was just part of the urban bargain now.

My point: there is less security in the city now that there is more.  Don’t ask me why exactly that is so but it is clearly true – the more police and the more CCTV, the more crime and the more of it goes unsolved.

Part of that has to be the lack of human involvement.  We delegate to cameras and computers, we swap digitized information without having to actually handle it, see it, feel it and find a place for it.  We have made a world of recordings, images and pdfs.  In effect it is a kind of vacuum.  It is a  vacuum of consciousness, awareness, caring, feeling and, naturally enough, the empathy that goes with that.  With that CCTV world, no one cares.

Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) wrote in another book, People of the Lie, that evil steps in to fill conscious voids.  A lot of bad stuff happens when people are drunk, drugged or NOT thinking and so some of that bad stuff is just plain evil filling up the vacuum.  I suggest that a lot of evil steps in when we trust to computers, too.

So…if we consciously turn our brains off, if we consciously choose to be unconscious and let the cameras and recordings do it all for us, if we purposefully go UNconscious about our lives, Peck postulates we invite harm.  I agree.