This person is very well-known and locally famous and I should probably be careful how I write about her. I used to see her around downtown and always felt a little suspicious of her without really knowing why. For a while I even suspected her to be a covert Satanist. I had never so much as said how do you do to her and already I was ready to make the sign of the cross whenever I encountered her. I was quite surprised to learn that she was a professed Christian completely dedicated to alleviating the misery of our local homeless population and a keen advocate for affordable housing.
P Perfect introduced us during the reception that followed her ordination. She suggested to the Housing Saint that we could work together and HS roundly disregarded the idea. We were again introduced, under what circumstances I have forgotten but still no impressions were made, positive or negative.
I was only just recovering from my own ordeal of homelessness and was also coming to terms with my PTSD condition. It was the year 2000 and I was living in a tiny room surrounded by windows on top of a tall leaning brown house in East Vancouver. On the bus HS and I began to chat. She asked me my age and then more questions about my housing situation. She told me to make an appointment to meet her in her office.
We seemed to hit it off famously. She produced me a number of waiting lists for affordable housing and my name was added to five or more. I tried to stay in touch with her but somehow lost momentum. Nearly a year passed before it occurred to me to renew our contact. My housing situation was becoming unsafe and hazardous. The Pakistani slumlord was becoming a problem, especially given his indifference about the problems being created in the shared house I lived in by a young crack head with weird and unsettling sexual habits. It didn't matter to him that I had to live next door to him, nor that he had already physically threatened another resident.
HS brought out the housing lists and added my name to new ones. We also agreed to meet about once a week for coffee to discuss my housing situation and options. She was also very keen on getting me on antidepressants and applying for a government disability pension. I only figured out later on that she was working in cahoots with P Perfect and the rector of the Anglican church I was attending in order to silence me. I was making inconvenient comments in the church about the looming danger of mass homelessness that would soon be facing our city as well as suggesting that we not allow the debate about same sex marriage to eclipse a larger and much graver need. The man-hating woman who led this church decided that I was a nuisance and she was employing HS's efforts to silence me or get rid of me, whichever was easier. I have mentioned in a previous post that P Perfect also admitted to her complicity and that this ended our friendship.
Somehow I allowed HS to convince me that I was sicker than I really was. I began to manifest symptoms of anxiety and depression that I had not previously exhibited. I consulted my physician who at first seemed keen about putting me on antidepressants. When we had a follow-up visit he decided against it though he did put me in touch with a psychiatrist, already written about in my Magnificent Pantheon.
I phoned HS to tell her the good news. She was not impressed. She wanted me to get on antidepressants and a disability pension come hell or high water. She did not want to see me get strong or well or I would continue to be a threat and a nuisance to the Anglican established order. She barked from her end of the line that I have depression and that I have to go on disability. I replied that many of the things she wrote about my condition on the application form were not only exaggerations but patent lies and untruths. She screamed at me to never try to threaten her again and slammed down the phone.
I had already found housing by the way: a recently built facility in the Downtown Eastside more or less run by Snooty Church. Four months later I moved to the building where I currently live. For years HS would not give me the time of day and even spread slander about me.
We have since more or less reconciled. She is retired now and sometimes I come across her while she is walking her little dog. We are friendly with each other and often stop to chat a bit. She seems enormously pleased with the huge advances I have made both in my life and recovery. We are not exactly friends but we have both sheathed our swords and this certainly is better than nothing.
HS did unwittingly help me move forward in my vocational direction. I did some work for her helping with the annual homelessness count and we met at the church on their shelter night. I was so moved and impressed by the way things were being done there for some of our local homeless that I came on board as a volunteer. The experience I accrued there certainly helped prepare me for the year I spent working at Lookout Emergency Aid Society, and later, where I currently work after eleven years in mental health peer support work.
During one of our coffee visits HS gave me a rather interesting back-handed compliment. When I told her about my method of dealing with the crappy hand that life seemed to be continually handing me and always finding some way to either rise above it or at least thrive within my limitations, she remarked that I am very much like a male Colette. I bought some of her books and after reading a few pages I only began to appreciate how true this was.
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