Loading ...I was born and raised in a small town in southeastern Ontario. For the first six years of my
life you would have described me as a typical kid in an ordinary family in a town much like
hundreds of others throughout Canada.
Age Six
Around the time I started school our life changed. My Dad started to act funny. First he got
really moody, then strange and then wild. It was not funny; it was scary. Sometimes he would
be OK but suddenly without warning he would do wild things like shout and yell and throw
things at Mom and me over nothing at all. Then he got to pushing and shoving and
sometimes hitting. You never knew when he would explode or what would set him off. I
had no idea what was going on except Mom said she thought Dad was sick. I didn’t want
Dad to be sick. I just wanted him back the way he was. I worried about him and us all the
time.
Mom was worried too and ashamed to show her face as Dad’s weird behaviour became
obvious to people in the neighbourhood. She didn’t know what to do; she didn’t know
anybody to call on for help or even advice. Dad got worse and worse. Finally one day he got
so violent that Mom called the police. They came to the house and took him away. We hated
to think what the neighbours thought about that! Mom was really too embarrassed to talk to
any of them for quite a while. She told me never to tell anybody that there was anything
wrong with Dad, like he was sick or anything — just that he had gone away.
After a couple of days the police told Mom that Dad really was sick — sick in the head.
They told her they had taken him to a hospital in the city, 30 miles away, where there were
people to look after him and doctors who could help him.
I always wondered if it was my fault. Did I do something wrong that set Dad off and made
him sick?
For the next few years Mom and I kept to ourselves most of the time. Dad was in and out of
hospital — more in than out — and couldn’t hold a job. When he was home, he would act
fairly normal for a while but then he would fly off again and Mom would have to get him
back to the hospital. Not really knowing what was wrong with him, trying to keep quiet
about it all, and not being able to help him get better really made Mom and me confused and
frustrated. We were always short of money too. During the times when he felt more like his
old self I’m sure Dad blamed himself for not bringing in an income to help support the
family; thinking about that probably made him sicker.
Mom was really tired — working full time, looking after me (and Dad when he was home)
and taking the bus up to the city as often as she could on weekends when he was in hospital.
