Notes from the Long Sunday Beginning May 24, 2009

Entry 4 – May 27, 2009: I made it back from 60 hours of retreat at an Anglican nunnery for 9:30 am prayer w/ L. and N.  J. is making progress after [recent events]; currently he is working for L. and W. on their third floor reconstruction project at home.  J. temporarily brightened the room, stopping by on the way into school.  Soon, however, I looked up from phone conversation with T.S. to see three of the enormous undercovers entering our drop-in yet again.  Bad blood instantly coursed through my veins.  They obliged as I escorted them outside, but when I again refused to help in their search for F. and informed them that they were not welcome back inside, especially without a warrant, they blanched.  Ignoring my insistence on the right of sanctuary, they pushed past me and hung around inside for five to ten minutes with no luck.  I requested and received their badge numbers (Randy Schertzen 48873, Peter Desjardin 7109, Andrew Lawson* 5048); the guy with the mouth* in the group refused anything other than a terse “Chief Bill Blair” in response to my query for the name of their supervisor.  A call quickly discovered that they are ROPE squaders, two provincial officers and one Toronto.

Other than having to help remove T. for openly and repeatedly mocking the day’s food offering to our cook’s face, things were relatively quiet. Cheques out today.  M. had a hard time, it seems, after reading the start of my article on D. and C.  Before drop-in, he relayed past stories of police abuse at Cherry Beach to K. as if they’d happened last night.  He stumbled in at the end of drop-in, saying he’d lost someone else and was readying a trip up to Yonge and Finch (near the nunnery) to kill someone with a gun he claimed as stashed nearby.  He was intent enough that I may have taken him quite seriously if we didn’t know him so well and if he were not the very picture of frighteningly frail, persisting somehow in such a state ever since I’ve been around and, I’m told, long before.

A week hence M. must piss clean of marijuana, and the clonazepam CAMH will not allow, in order to have a chance at the three week program at which he’s aiming.  He’s thrilled with D. [now in his house], was accepted this past week to T. for business management, and may have a job offer for 40+ hours a week with a mutual funds firm downtown.  T., A., and I all advised against the offer.

Entry 5 – May 28, 2009: Bob Harvey, sergeant in Toronto’s bail and parole unit (5730), informed me that he’d hang up the phone on me if I mentioned going to the media again.  I found a way to underscore that the threat was real without him doing so.  The ROPE hunks didn’t show up tonight. Bob ended the call with a half-hearted threat regarding “harbouring” again, but not before he’d conceded that our explicit instructions otherwise removed implied consent for entry.  I showed up an hour after tonight’s drop-in meal ended and was informed that it had been a lively one.  T., whom I’d jammed my thumb against a fortnight ago while confiscating a butter knife he was brandishing in a fight, showed up with a Leatherman and proceeded to produce it with menace.  G., the E.D.-Pastor, very much supports me in my cause, but doesn’t fully agree, at least with a weapon involved.  He called 911.  Five-one division rushed officers to the scene in just under ninety minutes.  The situation had been handled by then, of course. T. was long gone. 

Late night street outreach began with M. asking me to declare to my wife, out with me for the evening, that I’m gay and proud and that I’d bend for a friend.   The next hour and a half proved uneventful.  When we’d decided to head for home, I spotted the dude who looks a good deal like our managing director, only with a big bushy instead of a goatee.  He’s also older and thicker.  He’s on disability already but can’t find suitable housing.  In and out of shelters, but never heard of Streets to Homes to date.  I set up an appointment for him tomorrow, leaving a message with J. to meet us at [the church] between 1:30-3:30. 

As we strolled north on Yonge, we ran into sweetly tough R., a woman in her fifties at least, perhaps pushing seventy.  In March my four year old gave her a penny on a street walk unprompted.  She’d nearly melted then and remembered his name tonight.  Much rain of late and also in the forecast, but the city’s housing referral centre could not find her a bed as we waited because she uses a walker and the elevators are out right now at the accessible shelter with open beds in the downtown core.  As we talked with her, I. showed up looking somewhat better and ready to story tell.  He most enjoyed recalling a B&E when vehiclur DVD’s first came out.  It had allowed a whole pile of our friends, holed up in construction site near the Manulife building, to be entertained for several days. Then J.J., flying with a big black shiner, crossed Yonge to join us.  A. closed her jacket tight and told us when he’d continued on that he’d recently squeezed her with both hands while in a similar condition.  She didn’t confront him in that state as she felt he would have really come uncorked; she’s quite capable at handling such situations with a sufficient degree of counter-aggression, evasion, and kind refusal as needed.  We pushed our way into Wellesley station around 12:30 am, deciding against a beer while J. mused aloud over any possibility of taking R. home.

Entry 6 – May 29, 2009: G., the E.D., called late in the a.m. wondering if I had the email address for the sergeant I’d spoken with yesterday.  He sent him a well worded note, strongly and charitably reinforcing our objections to officers coming into the building, but also spelling out his policy as the organization’s policy.  That is, the policy of being willing to go find people in the building if officers are looking and encouraging them to come out when they are ready. Not sure I can do this.  We will see if push ever comes to shove.  I was not willing or able to do this in the recent situations involving F., nor was I willing to pass officers on to someone else who would.  I have done something similar in a previous situation involving C. and D.

I took S. [my four year old boy] with me into games and arts drop-in, knowing that B. was coming to hang out for the first time in that drop-in, and hoping to connect N. with Streets to Homes and to enjoy a few hands of bridge.  S. or J. from S2H never returned my call or answered, but things went according to plan otherwise.  N. and I had a good talk about his background, growing up in Yugolslavia as a Croatian.  He’s quite kind and well mannered and is apparently already on disability.  S. lasted around an hour before growing quite antsy.  Even a trip to a nearby park didn’t quell his love of chaos. J. showed up just as we were leaving and we all rode home together.

As we waited for J.’s school bus, C.’s Aunt R. showed up.  She had agreed to do some research for me on church sanctuary in Canadian law and had apparently done it immediately last night, but I had not seen it yet as her email went to the junk folder.  Besides information surrounding the famous case ofMohamed Cherfi at St. Pierre United Church in Quebec City in 2004, the most interesting bit came from a House of Commons committee report on Safeguarding Asylum which noted that the right of sanctuary had been revoked in England in 1623 (I’d like to research that a bit at some point) but recommending that churches’ right to give sanctuary be respected while reserving official recognition of such a position to a case by case basis with the expectation of reasonable limits.