Scott Simmie is a broadcast journalist with extensive experience in radio and television. Simmie has worked in the UK, China and in Russia. He is co-author of the 1989 book Tainanmen Square and is currently working on a resource book for families and individuals affected by mental health problems.
Simmie, a long-time employee of the CBC's National Television service, is the first broadcast journalist to receive an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy.
Simmie is a previous recipient of an Asia Pacific Fellowship and was named the most outstanding graduate of the University of Regina's Journalism and Communications program in 1986.
There is no mental health system. There are plenty of parts, some of them very good parts, but "there is no system." During a year of research into mental health reform, that phrase was repeated endlessly. It was uttered with frustration, anger, apathy - even desperation. It was uttered by doctors, hospital administrators, outreach workers and - most importantly - people with mental health problems: "There is no system."
The disconnected components of our non-system include jails, boarding houses, hostels and park benches. And poverty. And stigma. And isolation. There are, of course, good parts. Things that work. But there aren't enough of them - and they rarely connect.
Every time they fail to connect, we fail a human being. This series by Scott Simmie, this year's recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, will examine some of the fragments of Ontario's non-system. A system that seems content to leave people with mental health problems out of sight - and out of mind.
I feel a certain kinship with a dead man I have never known. His name was Edmond Wai-Hong Yu. And on Feb. 20, 1997, a Toronto police officer fired several bullets at him.
The police had been called because Yu struck a woman bystander at a bus shelter. The suspect was alone on a bus when the officers arrived. Witnesses say he pulled a small hammer from his coat. In response, three officers pulled their service revolvers from their holsters. Six shots were fired; three silenced his troubled mind. Yu, an immigrant from Hong Kong, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was 35. In 1995, long before I had heard of Edmond Yu, I was in the city where he was born. I too was standing on a bus.
My hands were clenched around the overhead pole with tremendous force - even though the vehicle was stationary. Five Hong Kong police officers were attempting to dislodge me. I was wearing only a hospital gown; I was in bare feet.
I will never know what Edmond Yu was thinking during his confrontation. But during my own standoff, I believed the police were evil personified. They clearly had just one goal: to kill me. Remaining on the bus, escaping, would mean my survival. The police did not understand this; they saw only a madman. When they finally did extract me, I was handcuffed with such force one wrist was cut. Those same officers dragged me, screaming, into a nearby hospital. As police and hospital staff struggled to pin me to a bed, a nurse came running with a large syringe. She jammed it into my thigh. Four orderlies forced me into a straitjacket, then tied my feet and wrists to the bed. More than three years later, there are still marks on one ankle.
This, then, is my story. And Edmond's. The story of how his death, and my own encounter with madness, led to this project.
Throughout my professional career, I've been a journalist. Mostly a broadcast journalist. I've worked, over the years, in China, London and Thailand. But the bulk of my time at the CBC has been spent as a senior writer on The National.
(I also enjoyed notoriety for a couple of years as the guy who read the headlines for The National and The Journal. "Tonight ... On the National ..." That was me.) In 1994, I was posted to Moscow as the bureau's producer.
I had no history, other than one depression, of mental health problems. But I would develop one while abroad; an illness that would take me through several countries, a number of states of mind, and push me to the brink of professional and financial ruin.
This is how it happened.
In January, 1995 - after working roughly 50 days straight - our crew went to Chechnya to cover the war. Covering any serious conflict can certainly not be described as fun.
But proximity to danger carries with it a certain exhilaration. Adrenaline is a potent drug. And when you dive - repeatedly - into mud-filled ditches to avoid Russian air attacks, you get your fill of it. We were there for a week, driving back and forth from the neighbouring republic of Dagestan to the Chechen capital, Grozny. It was grim and dangerous work, with three occasions when our lives were at risk.
We filed powerful stories back to Canada. I returned to Moscow exhausted.
Exhausted, dirty, but fine. Sometime after that war zone experience, though, and a stressful trip home which followed it, something began to change. I began, quite simply, to feel better than normal. Significantly better.
The shift was subtle, seductive, and ultimately destructive. I did not then know much about bipolar affective disorder - commonly known as manic depression - nor would I have recognized the symptoms if I did. I was too busy enjoying them: increased energy, surge in creativity, what felt like limitless potential.
During the day, in terms of my ability to work, things were fine. I could still write scripts, book satellite feeds, plan coverage - all the things a producer is supposed to do. But I was also more talkative than usual, more animated. I started chatting about business ideas, some of them slightly grandiose, with colleagues. I was starting to feel powerful.
That sense of power, that energy, did not leave me at night. So, in a form of self-medication common with this condition, I would pour a drink to relax. Scotch and active mental illness are not a great combination. Add a laptop computer equipped with modem and you have a dangerous mix.
I sent notes, of which I am not proud, to management. I would subsequently send more messages, trying to rectify the situation.
A manager, who detected something amiss from afar, suggested I leave Moscow and return to a position in Canada.
The notion seemed inconceivable. I was feeling, by this point, exceptional. He agreed to retain me in the post, subject to quarterly reviews of my performance. I was, in effect, on probation. And, despite this scrape with management, feeling great.
The crunch came in May, during the completion of the Victory in Europe celebrations. Other CBC correspondents - along with Prime Minister Jean Chretien - were en route to Moscow. There had been satellite feeds to book, briefing notes to write, accreditation to prepare, transportation to schedule.
The finale of the celebrations was to be a major parade in Moscow, followed by a summit between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton. On the eve of that parade, the other CBC correspondents arrived in the Russian capital.
After a full day's work at the bureau, I met them at a late-night hotel briefing. Their equipment, hundreds of kilograms of it, was delayed at the airport. I volunteered to return to the bureau and await its arrival.
The gear didn't reach the office until roughly 2 am. I helped the bureau's driver unload, which took about an hour.
Under normal circumstances, I should have been exhausted.
But I was now in the seductive grip of what I would later learn is hypomania, the stage of the illness that precedes full-blown mania. Seductive, because you feel so bloody excellent. Capable. Charged. In control. The parade was just hours away; I had to ensure everything at the bureau was ready. I stayed there all night, typing up more background notes for the correspondents.
Even the smallest details of that period are still with me. My editorial grasp of the story, my news skills, remained intact. My grip on myself, however, was slipping.
On the final night, after writing the final script of the summit, I snapped. I blew up at our Russian editor - not entirely without cause - and at the correspondent who had hired her. There was certainly no violence or threat of violence. But I did yell. And that's not like me.
The correspondent phoned senior managers back in Canada. I was telephoned from Toronto a day later and told I was barred from the CBC's Moscow office pending an investigation. I was also barred from having any contact with my fellow employees.
I felt betrayed. And isolated.
The results of the investigation were not shared with me. Two managers, on the phone from Toronto, shared only its conclusion: "Your position has been terminated," I was told. There was no mention of my mental health, no mention of my job performance, not even any mention of "the incident." In fact, no reason at all was offered for the decision. I was pointedly told to return to Canada, to my old job on the writing desk.
I discovered, during my next attempt to log in to the network, that my messaging privileges on the CBC computer system had been revoked.
I was in shock. I had worked very hard for the CBC over the years; my career was a huge part of my life. This was a crisis.
And crises are not good for hypomania. I was, prior to this point, sleeping about four hours a night. After being removed from the post, I slept less. I was now on the road to full-blown mania, a condition marked by the textbook symptoms of delusions of grandeur, grandiose business schemes, foolish spending.
The illness is a sneaky one. It tends, during its early stages, to put a positive spin on everything. So, after the initial disbelief at losing the Moscow position, I convinced myself it was meant to happen, part of a grand plan that would soon reveal itself in all its glory. It soon did. But it wasn't so glorious.
My partner Julia Nunes and I were still owed one trip as part of my Moscow contract. The CBC agreed that we would be allowed to take it. I chose China; where I had lived from 1986-88, where I had returned in '89 to help cover the student movement in Tiananmen Square. (I had also co-authored a book on China following those events.)
The full details of that trip are too numerous and incredible to describe. But try to imagine every one of your senses sharpened to a paranormal level; your soul fuelled by fire. Coincidences, synchronicity, compassion abound. You embrace a badly deformed beggar with empty eye sockets. He hugs you back. At the summit of the Great Wall, the one person you meet - out of thousands - is a Chinese woman whose son now lives in your home town. A furious storm marks the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, exploding an electrical substation outside your hotel window. The secrets of the world's oldest civilization reveal themselves to you. You have been touched by God. Chosen.
As part of this transformation, I adopted - temporarily - a new name. When you tell someone in China that you are from Canada, they invariably invoke the name of Dr. Norman Bethune. His Chinese name was a clever transliteration of Bethune; Bai Chou An - literally, White Seeking Peace. I started to tell people that, while I was not Bethune, I was indeed a White Seeking Peace. My Chinese acquaintances thought this was quite profound. Believe me, I did.
In this state of mind, you believe anything is possible. So I decided, since I believed the CBC career was clearly over, to fulfil my destiny as an entrepreneur. And empty my bank account.
This is not atypical of bipolar affective disorder. Many people with the illness spend their way to financial ruin in a very short space of time. One Vancouver man purchased a personal submarine while ill. I chose antique Chinese furniture.
In the space of a few short days, I spent $25,000. We also arranged to have the furniture shipped to Canada. I recall picturing myself, surrounded by admiring friends, at the launch of our new and undoubtedly successful venture.
When Julia questioned my lack of a concrete business plan, our lack of a store for that matter, I was quick with an enthusiastic response. "We'll sell it from the dock!" I proudly proclaimed. Never underestimate the power of persuasion of someone in a sub-manic state. Nor, in this case, the stupidity.
At one point I contacted my Toronto real estate agent - told him I wanted to purchase a building for the store. The agent, who's a tall bald guy, is very successful in the field. It suddenly dawned on me that he was bald because he was a Buddhist! Clearly this was an ingredient in his domination of the Toronto condo market.
As the trip grew to a close, I worsened. I began to divide the world - and those in it - into two neat categories. Good and bad. The universe was sharply delineated; an epic battle would decide its future.
Evidence of this was everywhere, my neurons firing so rapidly that everything became "a sign." The omnipresent Chinese imagery of two dragons, in eternal struggle over a flaming pearl, became my reference point for the universe. Wars, poverty, injustice - even heaven and hell - could be interpreted as those two dragons.
Shortly before boarding a jet from Beijing to Hong Kong, we discovered that our video camera, and some very precious tapes which had documented my "spiritual transformation," were missing. After filing a report of loss, we got on board. An elderly Tibetan monk was sitting two rows in front of us. He would know, I thought, where the camera was, how to get it back. He would know. I sat, in a contemplative state, waiting for some sign that I should contact him. The answer came, calmly, in a single word. "Yes." I say "word" because that's what I heard. An actual voice, resolute, compelling, filled my head. "Yes."
Except no one near me was speaking.
One might reasonably think, given I had never heard a voice in my head during the previous 34 years of my life, that I would find this frightening. Or at the very least odd. It was, instead, exhilarating. I had, I believed, achieved a state of telepathy. I walked to the monk, handed him a small carved gourd and my Amex Gold card. He accepted the items and closed his eyes. He would, I knew, use his powers to find our camera. We never did recover it. (Julia did, however, get the credit card back.)
By the time we reached Hong Kong, I had - though completely unaware of it - broken with reality. I was in my own reality. Standing on the edge of the harbour, something told me to drop my running shoes into the water.
Plop. Plop. They began to float, right-side up, toward the ocean.
They remained parallel, though the right, then the left, would advance. They were, it appeared, walking on water.
It was a remarkable sight. I bathed my feet in a puddle and turned. The word "Wise" was spray-painted on scores of huge wooden spools in a storage yard. I was wise. Four crates, which looked like coffins, were stacked near the water.
Three of them were labelled "CH" - which I interpreted as meaning the three occasions I was in danger in Chechnya. Psychiatrists would call this "ideas of reference" - the belief that these words were messages meant solely for me. It sure felt like it.
The fourth crate was labelled "SS" - my initials. This was powerful stuff. I noticed a long staff of bamboo beside me.
Exact dimensions of a fishing pole. I picked it up and began to walk, barefoot. I felt like Christ. Buddha. Both.
By the time we reached our hotel that night, Julia was becoming frightened. Fearful of my state of mind, my bizarre behaviour. (I was, at one point, standing motionless on one leg on top of a chair; a pose that may or may not have had its roots in Tai Qi.) I tried to cleanse Julia's fear, her inability to see the world through my reborn eyes, by splashing Chinese liquor on her; the equivalent, in my state of mind, of holy water. I threw three paintings, done for us in Beijing by one of China's most prominent artists, out the window as an offering to the Gods.
I danced, sang, prayed. The Gods never came. But in the morning, after a phone call from Julia, the ambulance did.
I had not slept all night, and was still highly energized when the attendants arrived. I shut myself in the bathroom, filled the tub with water and sacred objects, and was "baptizing" myself - still confident I could trigger the second coming. Whatever tenuous threads I had to reality were gone. When I met the attendants - soaking wet and half naked - I explained there was no problem, only that I could not sleep, that I was filled with Qi, or energy. "What kind of Qi?" asked the paramedic. "This kind," I said, assuming a martial arts stance then effortlessly punching a neat hole through the closet door for emphasis.
The paramedic, to his great credit, recognized an illness and worked with the psychosis instead of against it.
He did not restrain me, did not threaten force. Instead, he gently put his hands together and began to chant a Buddhist prayer for peace.
Ahhh, a fellow Buddhist. Someone good. Perhaps it is time to rest. I lay down on the bed, felt myself begin to relax, and allowed myself to be placed on a stretcher.
Soon after reaching the hospital, I was again feeling energized. Enough resting. This hospital thing was surely part of my mission, my test. I asked a doctor if I was free to leave; he granted permission to do so.
I wandered the hospital halls, dressed only in a gown, followed by police.
I kept noticing direction signs with arrows pointing toward the morgue. I interpreted them as omens: that the hospital equalled mortal danger. I was intent on avoiding a return.
Outside, I boarded a bus. The police ordered the driver not to continue on his route. I screamed to the passengers: "If any of you are Buddhists, please help me!"
I then grabbed the overhead pole and mentally welded my hands in place. I pictured myself as a tree, an oak, that could not be budged. Indeed, it took five officers some time before I was budged. I was in absolute terror as they dragged me back into the hospital.
After the injection wore off, I awoke to find myself thoroughly restrained. Not just by a straitjacket, but by long strips of cloth which bound my ankles and wrists to the bed. The Chinese tie excellent knots.
I was taken to a massive crumbling complex just outside the city and kept there on a judge's order for five days. I was the only Caucasian, and - with the exception of the few patients who spoke English - had to rely on my Mandarin.
"Why are you here?" asked one.
"I have too much Qi," I explained.
"I also have too much Qi," he replied. "I bit my sister."
Delusions are adaptable things; highly malleable to situation. The fact I was locked up against my will did not occur to me. The fact I was surrounded by people in varying degrees of psychosis did not trouble me. I believed, as the ambulance attendant had told me, I was going to "a nice place." A place where devout Buddhists like myself would gather to use our powers collectively.
I was segregated, along with five other patients, from the general population of the ward. It was night, and most of the others were in a chain-link fence smoking area outside our sole window. I could make out only dark shadows, the faint glint of eyes, as they stared in at the new arrival. Perhaps they were evil, perhaps my job was to convert them. I held a cigarette to the window as an initial peace offering. A quick movement plucked the smoke from my hand; a moment later a freshly lit cigarette was offered back to me. Progress.
The clinical staff was fascinated that they had a Western journalist in their midst. Surprised, too, since the same ward was the involuntary home to a senior CNN correspondent just the week before. He had scrawled his well-known name on the wall.
One nurse was particularly intrigued with the fact I had recently been in Moscow, Chechnya, Beijing, and now Hong Kong. Also with the fact that I could speak passable Mandarin. "Are you a spy?" he asked me repeatedly. "You must be a spy. Are you a spy?"
I have many memories of that facility, of the caged fences, the locks, the filth. But the images that endure are ones of kindness from fellow patients. The sharing of food. Of cigarettes. Of situation. One older Chinese, with an empathy and compassion I shall never forget, helped undress and shower me in a small washroom. Despite the excrement on the floor, there was a remarkable dignity to the act. Another Chinese, a big man, was fond of giving me piggy-back rides around our compound.
While I was nuts on the inside, Julia was going nuts on the outside. Trying to cope with the fact her partner was in an asylum. Trying to keep family members up to date with the situation. Trying to figure out how to get me out of there and back home. Trying to cope with almost all of this on her own, halfway around the world.
Close friends and colleagues - including Peter Mansbridge - called her to offer assistance. A good pal gave Julia his calling card number and told her to make as many overseas calls as were necessary.
Yet not a single editorial manager - people I'd worked with for years - called Julia to ask how I was or offer help.
It was a stark contrast to other situations where CBC employees have been ill while abroad. In one case, a correspondent was hit by a rubber bullet in the West Bank. A manager flew from London to ensure he received the best possible care. Another employee, with an alcohol abuse problem, had been directed to treatment.
But there's something about a mental illness that scares the hell out of people. They don't know how to react.
The Canadian consulate helped arrange my release from the hospital. We flew from Hong Kong back to Vancouver and then on to Saskatoon. I was, though now on medication, still manic. I saw another doctor there who patiently explained, on three separate occasions, that I had bipolar affective disorder and should again be hospitalized.
Eventually, I agreed. Two weeks in hospital was long enough for the drugs to start dragging the mania - and all joy - out of me. I began to discover that, in the words of Edmond Yu, "reality can sometimes be painful."
We returned to Toronto. I was heavily drugged with an anti-psychotic called Haloperidol, or Haldol. I walked like an old man - nurses call it "The Haldol Shuffle" - and felt like one. A new doctor, whom I had to wait weeks to see, put me on other drugs. They caused my vision to blur to the point where I could not read, caused my skin to break out in spots. I had been warned of neither of these side effects.
I felt like I was aging, withering. Disintegrating.
A few weeks later, a brunch was held to celebrate a friend's marriage. I attended, in such a fog of medication I felt trapped in another dimension. I recall a profound sense of shame over my illness that day, an awareness that previously close friends were avoiding eye contact. I felt a desperate, helpless need to somehow explain that this shuffling shell, this stranger with the slow speech and the dead eyes, was not me. The reality of my situation was beginning to sink in.
And, of course, the furniture arrived. An entire container load.
The spiral into depression was fast. Part of that depression is the natural cycle of the illness: what goes up must come down. But a large part of that depression was caused by the situation I found myself in. There was, of course, the pure shock of being diagnosed with a mental illness, a label I feared would curse the rest of my life. And then there were the big tangibles, lots of them. I had lost what I had coveted most during my professional career: a foreign posting. I had spent all my money. My reputation was toast.
And we had all that cursed furniture. All the furniture in China.
The road to recovery was a long one. I spent weeks in bed, unable to find any worthwhile reason to get up. Sleep was my drug, the only - though temporary - way to escape the reality that had befallen me.
When awake I brooded, almost obsessively, on death. Pictured myself rigging pulleys so I could hang myself in the condo, figured if I had two pulleys I could actually haul myself up. Browsed through The Final Exit - a suicide manual - while in a bookstore. Wished countless times that it had been a horrendous physical ailment instead. If only an arm had been crushed, a leg blown off. That I could have come to terms with. Anything but this.
Then there were the pills. Mood stabilizers. Tranquilizers. Anti-convulsants. Anti-depressants. Pills to take away side effects. An entire pharmacy in the kitchen cupboard. I hated it.
I remember telling Julia frequently that, without her support, I would be dead. (Though I often felt that would be preferable.) My family called often, enduring the relentless misery they heard in my voice. A small - then smaller - core of friends showed tremendous understanding and patience.
Over time, a long time, I began to realize I would survive. The pile of furniture wound up in a consignment store and slowly diminished. The medication, with a new psychiatrist, was altered and reduced. Food gradually regained its taste. There became reasons to shave. I remembered how to smile. Relearned that a sunset was more than a prelude to night.
Two doctors - including the most prominent bipolar affective disorder specialist in Canada - have since informed me that if the illness had been caught in Moscow, I could have been treated and back at work within two weeks.
When I finally did return to work, most colleagues said a polite "Hello" and little else.
Some didn't even say that, preferring instead to avert their eyes to some invisible distraction on the floor. (Some colleagues were great. They were, unfortunately, the exceptions.)
My doctor wrote management a letter stating that I had a clean bill of health. She recommended I be returned to a foreign posting - a position that had clearly been interrupted by illness.
"That's impossible," I was told, though the manager didn't rule out the possibility that it could occur in the future.
Dismayed by all this, I sought the advice of a couple of senior people I trusted. After explaining the situation, one offered this uplifting bit of advice: "You were lucky they didn't fire you," he said. The other said simply: "I don't know what you did, but in the space of one day your reputation, in the minds of many, went from being very high to rock bottom," he said.
I would remind the many that the odds are one in eight that you will develop a mental health problem requiring medical intervention or hospitalization during your lifetime. It's almost a certainty that a serious mental health problem will touch someone close to you.
Advocate Pat Capponi, when I began this project, cited the things people with a mental illness need. "A home, a job, a friend." The same kinds of things anyone needs to lead a meaningful life. It didn't make much sense to me at the time. Perhaps I had distanced myself from my own experience, perhaps I was too wrapped up reading about bed cuts, budgets, hospital closures.
In the past, I had tended to think having a good doctor - and she is - was the most important factor in recovery. But the medical side - though important - was just part of the equation. By far, the strongest supports necessary for my recovery were those closest to home.
Had the support of my relationship, family and friends not been there, I would have been forced to fight this illness on my own. Without the benefit of decent insurance, I would have lost my home. If the Ontario Disability Support Program were my only source of income, I would have surely been reduced to a rooming house or boarding home. An inexplicable gap, growing ever larger, would blot my resume.
With little spare money for clothes, I would be shopping at the Salvation Army. Eventually, I could have been sharing a dingy room in a boarding house with a complete stranger. My income, after paying housing, might have been $40 a week. And then how would my mental health be? How would your mental health be? The result, over time, would be clear: a continual loss of friends, of opportunities, of hope.
We have in place a system, and a mindset, that places little value on a person who's been labelled with a mental illness. Our system dumps vast numbers of people in a very dark hole, and lets them glimpse, only rarely, the shadow of a ladder. For many, it's a strategy guaranteed to keep them unwell.
A senior official within the Ontario Ministry of Health, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed great frustration with the system. "I think in our society - and I think medicine reflects it and health care reflects it - we don't really value the mentally ill as a society," the official said. "And underneath (the illness) is some brilliant guy, or some courtly woman with a sense of humour. You just want to weep. And we as a society don't value those individuals. Talk about kicking someone when they're down."
I think back, on occasion, to when I awoke in that Hong Kong hospital. The straitjacket immobilized my arms; lengths of heavy cloth further restrained my hands and feet from the slightest movement.
Still manic, I was determined to be free of those chains.
Slowly, with remarkable agility for a single bound hand, I began to manipulate the knots crushing my right wrist. One knot came undone, then another. My left hand began to pluck toward its own freedom. Soon, the knots were gone. I even managed, in a Houdini-like feat, to remove the straitjacket itself - much to the astonishment of hospital staff.
I have seen, throughout this project, many people in this country trapped in permanent straitjackets. The buckles rarely loosen, the weave of the fabric has little give. Individuals whose supports have trickled or tumbled away, whose dreams of the possible have vanished. People who once had good jobs, good homes, good futures. Sons, daughters, parents, spouses. Edmond Yu.
I have seen, over the past year, that many paths lead into this vortex. And not enough lead out.
Edmond Yu's mental illness killed his dreams.
But it was the way we treat the mentally ill that eventually killed him
EDMOND YU'S watch, if you look at the newspaper photo, reads 11:30. Christmas Day, The Scott Mission. His clothing, if you look again, comprises many layers. Jacket upon jacket, vest upon vest. He dressed in this fashion because he was homeless, because it was winter.
His knuckles are swollen from doing pushups on the hard floor of a shelter. His hands, once destined to be the hands of a doctor, are dirty.
"Reality can sometimes be painful," Edmond was fond of saying. And so too, from many perspectives, is his story.
For his family, it is a story of love and frustration. Of trying repeatedly, and often failing, to get continuous treatment for his illness. Of pleading with hospitals, judges - and Edmond - to listen to reason.
For those who tried to work with him, it is a story of housing, of inadequate resources for society's most marginalized. It is also about the very perceptions of madness.
And it is a story that begins in Hong Kong.
There, even as a youngster, Edmond Yu showed he had the drive to achieve great things. He was an excellent student, leaving home early for classes and studying in his room late every night. Yet he balanced his rigorous academic work with an impressive variety of hobbies: basketball, Ping-pong, badminton, chess and model making. He studied Kung-Fu and boxing, fighting his way to a city championship.
"When he had his mind set on something, nothing could stand in his way," says his sister, Katherine Yu. "He would really go for it. And when he had anything, he was always willing to share it with the people around him."
That gentle side saw Edmond pick up occasional gifts for other members of the family. When his father - with whom Edmond was closest - died of liver cancer in 1981, it only strengthened his determination to become a doctor, a healer.
After immigrating to Canada in 1982, Edmond spent two years at York University in pre-med classes. "He was brilliant, absolutely brilliant," says former classmate Dr. David Persaud. "He was the top science student in the entire university. Only four of us got into medical school that year."
Edmond was one of them, earning a scholarship to the University of Toronto. The young man got A+ in every course. He celebrated the accomplishment with his family, showering them with gifts. And in the fall of 1984, he began studying medicine.
In his first term, his marks were excellent. But during the second term, he started to become reclusive; he began studying from home, avoiding campus except for exams or group projects.
The initial signs that all was not well were detected an ocean away by Katherine Yu, who was living in Hong Kong. She got a phone call saying there had been a serious fight between Edmond and his elder brother. Edmond had been asked to leave the house.
There were other calls, too, from Edmond, in which he would ramble about someone stealing his wallet at university. He sounded incoherent, illogical; not himself. "I realized at that point there was something wrong with him," his sister recalls. She flew to Canada.
Things began to quickly spiral downward. The U of T said Edmond had been making obscene phone calls to some of his classmates. There was a woman, apparently someone he had a crush on, whom Edmond began to trail. "He would sit outside her house for long periods of time, and the girl was really afraid," Katherine says.
Some classmates tried, unsuccessfully, to have Edmond admitted to hospital. Katherine remembers going to his apartment to check up on him. "He said the people in his building, as well as in nearby buildings, were spies," she says. "He believed there were satellites planted in his building - even in his own apartment - watching him."
Likely unaware he was suffering from an illness, Edmond rejected Katherine's attempts to get him to seek help.
The Yu family, after discussing the case with officials at the U of T, considered obtaining a justice of the peace order for a psychiatric examination. For that order to be granted, the family would have to prove Edmond satisfied one of three requirements: that he had threatened or attempted bodily harm to himself; had behaved violently toward another person; or was showing a lack of competence to care for himself.
In addition, the law states the person must be suffering from a disorder that will likely result in his/her "imminent and serious physical impairment."
At that stage of his illness, Edmond likely would not have satisfied those legal parameters. Nor was he willing to accept treatment.
The Yu family faced a dilemma that has touched countless families: either prove the person satisfies the letter of the law, or watch the person's health continue to deteriorate.
Katherine went to Edmond yet again, demanding he accept help, see a doctor, take medication. He refused. "I knew there was something wrong with him. He asked me to leave, but I insisted and kept on talking. And then he slapped me in the face."
It was painful for Katherine to use the incident against her brother, but she felt his best interests were at stake. The police apprehended Edmond at the U of T during registration week, 1985.
He was taken to the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, where he was diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia. He was persuaded that, if he accepted treatment, he might still be able to return to medical school. He consented.
Katherine recalls picking him up during one of his day passes from hospital. "He wanted to go to U of T, and the first place he went was into the medical school, the lecture halls. Even after all these years, it still really moves me. He just walked around the lecture hall, touched the chairs, touched the tables, everything. I knew it really hurt."
At least initially, Edmond tried to stick with the treatment, which consisted of neuroleptic drugs to quell the delusions. Unfortunately, some people experience severe side effects with psychotropic drugs. Edmond was one of them.
"When he was on medication, he seemed to be a totally different person," Katherine says. "All he could do was eat and sleep. He was completely non-communicative. His hands were so shaky he couldn't even hold a bowl of soup properly. The soup would always spill.
"He couldn't even control going to the toilet. He was such an energetic person and then, suddenly, it seemed he could not control anything."
It was clear to Edmond he would not be able to attend school while on medication. It was equally clear he would not be able to attend school without it. Faced with that reality, he flew back to Hong Kong to assess his future.
A future that still included plans to practice medicine. Edmond returned to Canada in the summer of 1986, requesting that a doctor certify him fit for medical school. But because he would not take his medication, the doctor refused.
"After he was refused, he knew his dream was over," Katherine says.
With no classes to attend, no career as a doctor, Edmond again flew back to Hong Kong. Within a month, he was picked up by police on a charge of disturbing the peace.
Edmond was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he spent much of his time studying medical texts, taking a particular interest in learning about the side effects of major psychiatric drugs. He shared his knowledge with fellow patients.
"He persuaded them not to take their medication," says Katherine. "It caused a lot of trouble in the hospital."
The hospital then decided to impose treatment on Edmond - to force medication. That lasted until February, 1987, when he and his mother returned to Canada, where his brother was dying of cancer.
Whether Edmond accepted his diagnosis is not known. But when he arrived in Canada, he immediately stopped taking the drugs. His non-compliance marked the start of a long struggle with his family over treatment.
Edmond's illness deepened, and his behaviour worsened. He was overtaken by paranoia and suspicion. He would talk non-stop. He felt he had special influence over world affairs. He feared those around him were conspiring to harm him. On occasion, he would be verbally abusive.
And he began burning things - clothes, books, photographs. He would take them out on to the driveway and put a match to them. "It's sort of like he wanted to get rid of his past," Katherine says. "He just wanted to burn it, tear it down, to have nothing of that past. He never told me that's what it meant, but it gave me that impression."
Edmond also started to meditate in front of their Scarborough home, sometimes for hours. On two occasions, he threw a knife at a dartboard he set up outside the garage door. Neighbours called police both times. Other times, they just stared from their windows.
Despite his diagnosis, Edmond sought work - as a salon hair-washer, a security guard, a mover. Sometimes the jobs lasted a few days, sometimes just one.
"One thing I really admired in him is, in spite of all the broken dreams and heartache, he never gave up striving, even though these were jobs he would never have considered in the past," Katherine says. That admiration, however, was tinged with frustration. Having Edmond at home was difficult. The situation worsened over 18 months. He would have to choose: Take the medications and stay, or remain ill and leave.
In the summer of 1988, he left.
Edmond began to drift, from housing to hostels - where he says he was beaten and robbed - to the street. He made the occasional visit home, his deterioration more evident each time. His clothes were becoming ragged, he carried a single bag of dried food.
In December, 1988, the family found him living in a public washroom in Grange Park, behind the Art Gallery of Ontario. Concerned for his health, they applied for, and got, another justice of the peace order.
Edmond was assessed at the Clarke, and involuntarily admitted to hospital for more than three months. Doctors declared him incapable of making his own treatment decisions, and his mother was appointed a substitute decision-maker. She had the authority to authorize forced medication.
Edmond challenged the decision by requesting a hearing with Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board. He lost, and immediately filed an appeal. He did this on two more occasions - manoeuvres that stalled any forced treatment (though Katherine says treatment was briefly forced after he threatened a nurse.)
Over the next few years, a pattern set in: arrest, incarceration, release:
- October, 1989: Edmond pushes an elderly woman to the ground. Convicted and sentenced to time served (two weeks). Returned to family home. Refuses treatment.
- June, 1990: Family asks Edmond to leave. He resumes living on street.
- May, 1991: Edmond strikes a woman from behind. Yu family pleads for judge to refer Edmond to hospital. Instead, he is convicted of assault and released from custody in August with two years' probation. Lives on the street.
- December, 1991: Edmond again arrested for assault. Sentenced to one month in the Toronto (Don) Jail plus one year's probation.
"But after he was released, he was so sick, getting sicker and sicker," says Katherine. "He came home, he couldn't eat, he couldn't drink, he couldn't move. He was shaking involuntarily, consistently."
Medication is not, under any circumstances, forced in the jail - so it is unclear what caused the symptoms. But Edmond was in such bad shape that he let his family help him.
Katherine rushed him to the emergency department at Mt. Sinai Hospital. He stayed there for several weeks and complied with treatment.
Mt. Sinai wanted to transfer Edmond to the Clarke, but no beds were available. With no beds elsewhere, and pressure on its own resources, Mt. Sinai said Edmond would have to be discharged. But his family saw a continued stay as crucial. This was the first time since the onset of the illness that Edmond seemed willing to accept help.
The family wrote an impassioned letter to the Clarke, pleading for an admission. The hospital found a bed, and Edmond occupied it for six weeks. The family hoped he might be on a path toward some sort of stability.
Upon release from the Clarke, Edmond was linked with Hong Fook, a mental health agency dealing largely with clients of Chinese and Southeast Asian origin. A social worker there found him a place at Rainbow House, a Parkdale boarding home for ex-psychiatric patients.
A house rule stipulated that all tenants must agree to remain on their medication. Edmond refused. Katherine says she was "so desperate at that time" that she threatened to sever all ties with her brother if he did not consent. He relented and signed an agreement to remain on the drugs. He took Modicate - an injectable anti-psychotic often used to treat people with schizophrenia.
Much of Edmond's time at Rainbow House, from April, 1992, until the end of February, 1996, was spent in bed. His inactivity led to a dramatic weight gain. Katherine encouraged him to exercise, get in shape, visit the library.
Then, toward the end of his stay at Rainbow House, something within Edmond appeared to change. "There was a sense of wonder," says Katherine. "When we took him to Niagara Falls, or to Centre Island, he seemed to be like a child. He'd laugh, watch the fireworks and really enjoy life."
Edmond also started showing concern for others close to him, once again doing thoughtful favours for his mother and sisters. "That was the time when I knew I was interacting with a person, a person who has a heart," Katherine says.
What prompted the change? Edmond had stopped taking his medication. Katherine believes he was at a stage where enough drugs remained in his system to control the illness, without the debilitating side effects.
Edmond decided to move out of Rainbow House, to find some greater sense of independence. He rented a room at 1495 Queen Street W., home to many people with psychiatric backgrounds - the same building where a fire last month caused two deaths.
Outreach worker Bob Rose says it's not unusual for long-term boarding-home residents to make the kind of decision Edmond did. "They're taking their medication, they're in treatment, and life is very empty. And they get up and leave.
"And the first thing they say is: 'I'm going to stop taking the medication, I'm going to rent an apartment. I'm going to live my life.'
"It's quite common for people, in that early period, to do that quite successfully, to be energized, to feel more human, to feel like themselves."
Edmond started to frequent the Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre (PARC) - a drop-in for people who have had contact with the mental health system. He also started talking with program co-ordinator Louis Dionne, who recalls the conversations as extraordinary.
"He had this philosophical bent," says Dionne. "He was always after this point of equilibrium between the possible and the impossible, between the visible and the invisible, between life and death. So he was fascinating."
He was also eager to be around other people. "He really wanted conversation and presence and contact," Dionne says.
That fall, however, Edmond was evicted from 1495 Queen W. after a dispute with the landlord. Rose first saw him, one late November day, standing outside the rooming house with a cheque in his hand. "He was all layered up; three or four coats on, half a dozen vests,," says Rose. "The stuff was all new, all black. He was quite a distinguished looking man."
Both from the clothing and the cheque, Rose knew Edmond was about to become homeless.
Rose walked him back into 1495 for a chat with the landlord, but Edmond said he didn't want to stay there any longer, that he wasn't welcome in the building. He walked back outside.
Rose spent the next month trying to establish some sort of trust as Edmond lived the life of a nomad, wandering to the Scott Mission for meals, to Out of the Cold locations for shelter, to the library, Grange Park, Chinatown, Parkdale.
Edmond was in no rush to seek either housing or treatment, nor was Rose going to push him.
"This is a person who has had a complicated history in terms of homelessness and mental health," Rose says. "And this is a person you have to be careful with, because he will run. If you do this wrong, you're gonna be just like everybody else who ever met him."
That is not to suggest that treatment would never have been raised. But it says something about the approach workers like Rose try to employ: looking beyond the illness to the individual. And it's clear the many people who came into contact with Edmond, despite his condition, were left with strong impressions - of someone who loved laughter, loved contact. Of intelligence, depth, discipline.
Impressions more of spirit than schizophrenia. More than one person described him as extraordinary. Rose detected something "exceptional" in him.
At the Scott Mission, where Edmond frequently went for meals, he made quite an impression. "He was the friendliest person you will ever meet," says employee Rob Bonadonna. "His friendliness was overwhelming, literally overwhelming. He would follow you around our chapel, wanting to talk about religion and spirituality."
Cristine Nunes of the mission recalls: "He had a quick tongue, very funny, full of life and spunk. That stands out a lot with men who are very isolated, who keep to themselves, who don't want to talk. Here's this person that's, like, in your face."
Says Nunes' co-worker Mike Seagraves: "His smile was just beautiful. It was just so infectious. The smile of an 8-year-old kid on a man's body."
At Grange Park, the Scott Mission or other drop-ins, Edmond often chatted with Robert Little, who became a friend. Little remembers the conversations as thought-provoking.
"He would make a statement and would then emphasize it with, 'but why? Why does it have to be this way? Why is it this way?' I can always just see him saying 'but why' and there would always be this big smile on his face, almost as if challenging you to think about it from a different manner, try and view it from the particular perspective he was presenting it as."
In a life without housing, one of Edmond's temporary homes was the Sanderson branch of the Toronto Public Library. Visiting the library was part of his daily routine, his belongings - including a sewing kit - spread out on the bench beside him. His striking features and nomadic appearance led employees to nickname him "Lawrence of Arabia."
"There was a meditative way about him, that's what I remember most," says librarian Andrea Yermy. "His movements were very precise, slow almost, in a calculated way but not in a catatonic way like some of the people here move in. And he had the most wonderful laughter."
Another of Edmond's regular stops was the Tibet Shoppe on Queen Street West. When lucid, he would converse with owner Gelek Gyaltong on topics ranging from Tibetan independence to spirituality. He was fascinated by Tibetan religious artefacts and with ritual. He also turned out to be an excellent bouncer.
"One day, two fellows walked into the store being really rambunctious, yelling and screaming," Gyaltong says. "My wife was having trouble asking them to leave. He stepped in and asked them to leave. The guys left. Of course, (with his layers of coats), he looked much bigger than he actually was."
Even on the nights when he slept in Grange Park, alone, Edmond left an impression. He often held a candle between his hands, for warmth and for solace. "He had a nightly ritual before he went to sleep, and it was very meticulous and very spiritual," recalls one area resident.
"From one perspective, you could probably see the pain involved in that. But from another you could see the comfort. And I know I myself received some comfort from his rituals."
During a winter solstice party at the Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre, Edmond got on stage, dressed in all his layers, and sang "Born Free." He also sang "Yesterday," and those who knew him could not help but be moved by the lyrics: "Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me. . . .
By all accounts, Edmond played a brilliant game of chess - despite strategizing aloud throughout the match. He also meditated while standing on his head. At the Scott Mission, he carried one worker around on his back, played the piano, sang hymns. "He was not your ordinary madman," Rose says.
But the combination of winter, homelessness and illness were beginning to wear Edmond down. At the solstice party, he allowed PARC workers to take a look at his feet. "They were extremely calloused," says Rose. "They were not frostbitten, but they were homeless feet."
As the weather worsened through January, Edmond's laughter did not come as easily. But he did not complain, nor did he speak of his suffering - except to note that "reality is sometimes painful."
For PARC's Dionne, he had the aura of a Buddhist monk. "There was this sense of detachment. I've encountered few people who are that able to rise above their own level of discomfort, of physical pain, and just disregard it. It was, to him, irrelevant."
But Edmond confided to Rose that he grappled constantly with a question: "What purpose do I have in this world?" Rose says it's a sentiment common among people in Edmond's situation: "This sense that there is no purpose, that they have no purpose, that society doesn't make it easy for them to find that purpose. About all they have is illness. And poverty. And stigma."
Edmond eventually agreed he would like to find housing. Rose showed him a room at Glendale House, a dorm-like setting that had originally been part of the Out of the Cold winter shelter system. It was close to Parkdale - a neighbourhood Edmond knew well - and was once part of a program he trusted.
Edmond took a look, but tenants found his non-stop talking objectionable. They didn't want him.
They had run out of alternatives for someone with the overt behaviours associated with mental health problems. Rose even offered to rent a hotel room, just so Edmond could check out the surroundings. "But he didn't want it. Or was afraid of it."
And Edmond was worsening. In early February, unknown to Rose, he was involved in an incident with another passenger on the TTC. A report was filed, but charges were not pressed. He was also barred for a day from the Scott Mission after a scuffle instigated by a fellow client.
As it got colder, Rose and Edmond discussed the possibility of admitting him to hospital. They agreed, instead, to check Edmond into the Gerstein Centre, a safe house for people in crisis.
Rose feared a forced hospital stay would destroy the trust that had been established. The Gerstein would provide a respite from the streets, and give Rose an opportunity to make a longer-term plan. He was not aware of Edmond's previous convictions for assault, nor of the earlier incidents when he started fires.
The first night at the Gerstein, Edmond was nervous. He wouldn't remove any of his clothing, wouldn't settle. The second day, he set a piece of paper on fire in the kitchen sink.
Gerstein staff felt the act was ritualistic, but Rose was alarmed. He contacted the Hong Fook mental health agency. Edmond's former psychiatrist was unaware of any history of fire-starting.
Rose was increasingly considering taking Edmond to hospital. That evening, however, Edmond appeared calmer. He allowed Gerstein staff to take off his shoes and tend to his feet.
On the morning of Feb. 20, 1997, Edmond got up early. "He made breakfast, cooked eggs for everybody in the house, for the people who were staying here, as well as the staff," says the centre's director, Paul Quinn.
Edmond said he had appointments, and left for the day.
Late in the afternoon, he was at the bus loop at the foot of Spadina Ave. Unaccountably, he struck a woman in the face, then boarded a bus. The police were called. The driver ordered everyone off the bus and left Edmond alone with the doors locked. Three police officers boarded the bus and tried to persuade Edmond to leave with them. At one point, he did agree to leave, but then took a hammer out of his jacket.
"I watched while he waggled his right wrist with the hammer in it," says witness Isabel Rose (not related to Bob Rose), who watched from an adjacent streetcar. "Then the movement of his wrist stopped, and seconds passed, when I heard what I thought initially was a cap gun. I could see the red flash of the gun, and the body slumped."
Constable Lou Pasquino fired six shots. One hit Edmond in the throat, his head twisting as the shots continued. A second hit his ear and entered the side of his head. The third hit the back of his skull.
Edmond Wai-Hong Yu, born Oct. 2, 1961, was dead before he hit the floor.
Those who knew Edmond, particularly those who had been working with him, were devastated. "I remember kicking the wall nearly hard enough to put a hole in it," says Dionne. "I was really, really angry. I was desperate as well. It was very, very painful."
The shooting also frightened other people with mental health problems. Members of PARC were "absolutely terrified," says Rose. "I had people asking me whether it was safe to ride the TTC. People had some sense that they were exposed."
Katherine Yu, who attended a memorial at PARC, says, "I could really see the horror there. They really felt that their lives were being threatened."
Many in the mental health field questioned, and still do, why the police didn't simply back off the bus, give Edmond some room, call in a specialist.
He certainly wasn't in a position to escape.
The Special Investigations Unit, which examines all police shootings, heard from some witnesses that Edmond had advanced toward the officers, that one officer tripped on the rear stairs and was in a vulnerable position. That is inconsistent with what Isabel Rose recalls: "I was so startled he'd been shot because I saw no physical movement. I didn't see anybody fall."
Inspector Gary Ellis, who has trained police in dealing with the mentally ill, believes shootings like this are the culmination of endemic failures within the system. By the time police are called, he says, an individual is in crisis. And crises are unpredictable. In a well-functioning mental health system, he says, more intensive community supports would have intervened long before Edmond boarded that bus.
Nonetheless, he stresses that police continually work on perfecting non-lethal methods of handling similar crises.
"We now, if we have a mentally ill person and there's time, we have to call the Emergency Task Force. They train continually how to apprehend somebody without using deadly force. They have the capability of using deadly force always, but it's a failure if you use deadly force.
"Unfortunately, my experience has been with situations where things go bad, that there is no time for you to call in the specialized unit. They're spontaneous. They take seconds."
But Edmond was in the Gerstein, he had a relationship with Rose, he was not in a full-blown crisis. And he was alone and cornered on the bus.
Katherine, for one, isn't satisfied. "Within such a short distance, and with such an obvious target, six bullets were fired by an experienced police officer. And they were fired at the head."
Ellis, who would not comment specifically on the Edmond Yu case, believes police receive adequate training in dealing with such situations, including classes conducted by people with mental illnesses who have had contact - good and bad - with officers.
He also points out that police make the vast majority of apprehensions under the Mental Health Act without incident. "We make over 2,000 (a year) without any injury to anybody. It's the ones someone gets injured on that make the press.
"And they're the ones we work on. We focus a great deal of training, and we're continually retooling and trying to sensitize our officers."
In 1997, Toronto police made 2,133 apprehensions under the Act. Edmond Yu, had he not been shot, would have made it 2,134.
When Gyaltong of the Tibet Shoppe saw The Star a couple of days after Edmond was shot, he was struck by a photograph of Edmond cradling a candle, in an apparent state of meditation - the photo taken at the Scott Mission on Christmas Day. Gyaltong thought immediately of the Buddhist practice of lighting a candle as an offering following death. "It was like thousands of candles were being offered via the newspaper. I thought it was very auspicious for him."
How one views Edmond's life - and death - depends largely on perspective.
The Yu family found itself constantly frustrated by a system that responded to Edmond's occasional violence by jailing him, despite repeated requests to divert him to treatment. The family also found that the province's Mental Health Act - with its emphasis on dangerousness - allowed Edmond to remain out of hospital, despite being very ill.
"If those are the criteria to get a person into hospital, that means that not until something happens, that the person is hurting themself or someone else, can something be done," says Katherine Yu. "If you can't meet those requirements, then the family's hands are tied."
It is a law that forced Katherine to use Edmond's slap to obtain an order - only to find that once he was in hospital, there was no guarantee he would be required to take medication.
The law does allow, under the Health Care Consent Act, for forced treatment to occur, but only when the person is deemed incapable of making a rational choice. Widespread misunderstanding of this Act has caused "much suffering," says Michael Bay, the head of Ontario's Consent and Capacity Board.
"I can't tell you the number of times I've heard a doctor giving evidence before the board about how 'the patient is not aware that he is ill but we can't treat him because he's capable.' And the doctor has just stated an oxymoron.
"You can't be incapable of appreciating the fact that you're ill, and yet be capable of making treatment decisions. It doesn't make any sense."
Edmond knew that he found medication intolerable. Forced treatment was a stop-gap solution. And, according to some, a solution bound to fail.
Coercion, even if legal, can be counterproductive, says Dr. Ty Turner. In May, 1996, when he was chief of psychiatry at Doctor's Hospital, he told a special inquiry into homelessness in Toronto that "such measures will drive people further beyond the reach of assistance and into situations of greater risk."
Katherine Yu sympathizes, deeply, with the side effects Edmond had to endure. But she feels treatment was the only option to control his homelessness and occasional violence.
Those who worked with Edmond have a different perspective. Psychiatric drugs may provide an acceptable solution for society, but not always for the individual, they say.
"Yes, they do take away psychotic symptoms, sometimes completely, sometimes only partially," says Rose. "But they also take away a lot of other things, too, from that person, which is very painful. I've got tons of people I could introduce you to who are taking their medication and they are not fine. They are unhappy. They are not working, and they are living in hellholes.
"And they are being good patients."
Quinn of the Gerstein Centre believes the eventual goal would have been to get Edmond on a low dose of medication, one of the newer "atypical" neuroleptics with fewer side effects.
He was shot before that could happen.
There are other Edmond Yus in Canada. Homeless, non-compliant, distrustful. What is the best way to deal with them?
Turner stressed that the Edmond Yus on our streets need people reaching out to them who are "comfortable, skilled, engaged and able to operate in a value-free, non-judgmental way."
But Edmond had that. In addition to a caring family, there were outreach workers who cared about him, who treated him as an individual distinct from his diagnosis. Progress was being made.
But there was something missing from Edmond's life that undermined all the efforts to help him
He had nowhere to live.
What is needed is a housing model that will tolerate the behaviour of a non-compliant individual. A place that offers safety and respect; a model distinct from the shelter system.
Toward the end of his life, Edmond had nowhere he felt he could go. He feared the shelter system, said he had been robbed there. He also feared the hospital, thought he would be forcibly drugged there. Or held involuntarily against his clearly strong will.
Others, meanwhile, didn't want him.
His old landlord didn't want a tenant with odd behaviour, somebody who sometimes sang late at night. His potential roommates at Glendale House didn't want him, either. Too much talking.
Only at the Gerstein Centre was Edmond welcome.
"There are failures in the housing sector, in terms of the availability of not only good quality housing that would accept someone like Edmond, but also transitional housing, safe houses along the lines of the Gerstein Centre and other places as an alternative to hospital," says Rose.
Not enough places. And not enough people.
"There is a lack of outreach, a lack of bodies, to actually meet and work with somebody like Edmond and invest the real time and energy that it takes," Rose says. "And I would include myself in that. Edmond was not the only person that I was seeing."
But he was a person. A man with an illness who was condemned to living on streets, in parks, on benches. A man who wanted to be a doctor, who wound up dead on a bus.
"Edmond was a sick person, but his sickness shouldn't make him less than human," says Katherine. "Nor should he have been treated less than human."
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