"I will begin with Duff, that young alcoholic I was looking after in the eighties. Duff was staying with me in my apartment on Burnaby Street in the West End. He had become involved with AA and asked if he could stay with me, so I supported him for a while in his recovery. He stayed with me almost three months, then we moved, to different places. We weren't trying to escape from each other. If truth be told, we lived so well together, that it often was no different from living alone, except there was someone there for me to talk to. And we would have the most incredible conversations at night before going to sleep. It was for both of us a very warm and nurturing arrangement, which was a real consolation, given the hell he had put me through over a year earlier when he was drinking like a camel.
"Duff´s sister had some friends, who had some friends, who had bought an acre of property in Richmond with a dilapidated farmhouse. They were seeking a tenant for said house. It was a teardown disguised as a fixer-upper. And the rent was super cheap. The catch? I would be the one to take care of all the renos and repairs.
"At first, I said no. I had absolutely zero carpentry skills, and I couldn't see where I would find time and money, much less energy, for taking on such a project. I took on the project. But first, let me give you a little more background. I met Duff's sister, a little bit before I came to know Duff. there was a theatre, the Firehall Theatre, in the neighbourhood where I was working then in the Downtown Eastside. They had a little cafe with a beautiful deck in the back, so I would go there for lunch, bringing with me my paperwork, since I was working then with a good number of clients, all of them living with some real challenges. There was also a dance troop rehearsing there, and often we were sharing space. One day, while I was writing out a client report, one of the dancers approached me, to say hi, and chat. Her name was Judith. A month later, I met her brother, Duff.
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