HAS BEEN A PRISON’
He immediately thought of his landlord, worried about missing the rent. Then he noticed: his new IDs were also taken.
A month later, the first truly cold night of the year, he slipped on a patch of ice on his way home. Blood poured down his face.
His first instinct was to go to the hospital, but then he remembered he didn’ t have a medicare card anymore. He went home instead.
Explaining this a few days later, a bump the size of a golf ball loomed over his left eye. It wasn’t healing well, and he was growing frustrated.
It’s in moments like these the crippling doubts Weaymouth tries to suppress start to resurface — maybe he’s better off homeless. Maybe it’s been too long to truly start over.
The first time he almost missed the rent, soon after moving in, he started packing a bag with his belongingsand was going to just leave it all behind. The same idea crossed his mind after being mugged.
The thought keeps tugging at him. He doesn’t know why. He likens his situation to how a man freed from prison struggles to readjust to society.
“In a way,” he says, “my homelessness has been a prison.”
As a child, Weaymouth would climb the two maple trees in his suburban Ontario backyard so often he was nicknamed Curious George. His sister, Melanie, two years older, was less adventurous, but their bond was strong — so close they understood each other without even speaking.
His father worked in a brewery. His mother was a dishwasher. He took piano lessons and played house league soccer. And he learned to read at a young age, his father making him go over newspaper articles word by word.
At 13, that all came crashing down. He vividly remembers the day his father called them into his bedroom to talk.
Abruptly, he says, they were told they were adopted. He sat there stunned.
“I was naive to think that he was my real father even though he was white and I had brown skin. But it really hurt me,” he says.
The questions ran through his mind almost instantly: Well, who is my father? Who is my mother?
All questions his adopted parents couldn’t answer. He turned to his sister instead, but a wedge was already forming between them.
“That’s when I started to have a lot of anger and hurt and confusion as to what my life was about,” he says.
“It crushed my whole world.” The next year, at 14, he packed a bag and ran away.
He had been told he wouldn’t be welcomed back, but with a head full of doubts and a nagging need for the truth, he didn’t care. Hehad deeper questions now — about his roots and his place in society.
As an adult, he hitchhiked and took buses across the country, homeless for short and long spells in different cities. Seeking answers, he visited reserves and engaged with people from different tribes and bands.
Mostly, he read books. Any First Nations books he could get his hands on. Even when homeless, he spent the majority of his days in libraries.
“In my travels and experience in life, not only have I been confused, but I’ve never felt that comfortable, both with who I am and what I love about life,” he explains in the sprawling, soft-spoken way he tends to speak.
“I was raised as a non-First Nations person though I am First Nations. So I’ve never felt completely comfortable with either culture. And I haven’t felt accepted by either culture.
“On the one side, I’m not privileged enough to be in that arena and on the other side, I’m not traditional enough to be in that arena. So to me, it’s an inner conflict.”
He’s never truly silenced the turmoil that marred his formative years.
In 2004, about 10 years after leaving home, he was arrested for stealing two 12-packs of beer from a brewery in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
In court, his defence attorney explained the circumstances that led to his arrest. Weaymouth had been in town for only a few hours before the crime, the Sault Star newspaper reported. He had hitchhiked there, meeting his co-accused right before the robbery.
Weaymouth, 23 at the time, pleaded guilty, taking full responsibility and offering no excuses. He was sentenced to 75 days in jail.
He then stood and addressed the judge.
“I didn’t know what his intentions were,” he said of his co-accused, “but I admit that I’m easily influenced by others.
“I came here to find my family. I’m an adopted individual.”
In recent years, Weaymouth says, he’s finally pinned down what he feels is his purpose: to teach what he’ s learned about First Nations Peoples through his own beleaguered search for his identity.
For now, until he can maintain a more stable lifestyle, the best he can do, he says, is to reach out to people from his spot and engage them in conversations.
He is there one fall day, talking to a stranger about how the city of Montreal added an Iroquois symbol to its flag, when he stands up with a twinge of excitement.
“Do you know about the stone?” he asks.
He walks up to the McGill University campus, where he points out a large boulder with an engraved plaque not far from the main gates.
The plaque marks the discovery of what is believed to be the remains of the original Hochelaga settlement. He can’t count how many people he’s brought to see it from his spot.
“You see, the Iroquois, they set up semi-permanent villages, with log houses and palisades. My tribe, the Ojibwe, we were nomadic. We would go with the game and seasons. But the Iroquois would setup large villages and stay somewhere for a long time.”
We aymou this comfortable in his role as impromptu tour guide.
Leaving the stone, he crosses the street and heads to the McCord Museum. Inside, he snakes through the bookshop, pausing to read Ojibwe children’s books and explain the nuances between different First Nations art on display.
Past the shop, hugging a staircase, stands a 34-foot-tall totem pole from British Columbia.
He cranks his neck to see the top. “Typically, every different animal signifies the clan that you’re from,” he says, before listing the different crests on the pole: a grizzly bear, an eagle, a frog and a raven, among others.
“Even in my tribe, the Ojibwe, we come from different clans,” he says, before pausing mid-sentence.
All of a sudden, the enthusiasm of only a few moments ago is gone. Something seems to be bothering him. He starts mumbling.
After years of searching, Weaymouth never did find his biological family. He still doesn’t know his real name. On good days today, he says he holds out hope. On bad days, he says he’s done trying.
He looks up and down the pole again. More seconds pass.
“I never knew my clan,” he says. He leaves the museum without saying another word and heads back to his spot.
Weaymouth dreams of expanding his sidewalk discussions about First Nations culture into something more fulfilling. He knows he needs a formal education of some sort to make that happen.
Last year, he devised a plan along with a friend, Ehsan Afkhami.
Weaymouth would apply to study First Peoples Studies at Concordia University, they decided. He could then leverage the degree to find a way to share his passion, either through research or some form of teaching.
Afkhami helped Weaymouth prepare for the application, but when the deadline came, Weaymouth went off the grid. Afkhami couldn’t find him for days. When he did, Weaymouth didn’t want to talk about it.
This self-contradiction, at times frustrating for those around him, continues today. Some days,school is all We ay mouth wants to talk about. Other days, he can’t be bothered with it.
The next deadline to apply for the program is March 1. Weaymouth says he’s committed to meeting it this time.
Last summer, in hopes of sharing it online, Afkhami recorded a conversation he had with Weaymouth about his life and his goals.
Afterward, he invited Weaymouth over to edit the audio. When he arrived, though, he was drunk and uninterested.
Afkhami told him to forget about it, but a few days later, Weaymouth showed up sober and ready to work. He was shaking from not drinking but focused on the task.
“That showed me how much he cares,” Afkhami says. “Terry’s condition, in general, is not very stable. But I think it can be. It can go in that direction.”
At one point during the half-hour recording, unprompted, We ay mouth tells the story of Far on Hall.
Hall was a homeless First Nations man who lived on the banks of Winnipeg’s Red River.
Deemed the “homeless hero” by the media in 2009, Hall twice jumped into the river to rescue people who had fallen in. He received awards and medals.
“A woman who read the story decided to take him in. She let him live with her,” Weaymouth says in the recording. “She did what the group is doing with me right now.”
But eventually, We ay mouth says, Hall left the home and returned to the river banks. In 2014, his body was retrieved from the water. He was 49.
Asked recently why he relates to Hall’s story so much, Weaymouth hesitates. “When he finally got off the streets, because people helped him out like people have helped me out, I guess he just wasn’t comfortable,” he says. “I didn’t know him, but I think he couldn’t get used to it. He couldn’t get used to having a stable life.”
Weaymouth grows silent after saying that, avoiding eye contact and fiddling with a book in his hands.
“You know,” he says, sometimes he still gets the urge to pack a bag and move around the country, searching for answers he feels he hasn’t found.
If it means ending up homeless again, he wouldn’t mind. But almost in the same breath, he mentions Valdes, his apartment, and everything he has now.
He knows he needs to silence those doubts for good to finally break the cycle of homelessness that’s subdued him for so long.
“At one point,” he then says, trying to remember a quote he read in a book recently, “you realize you don’t need to move around so much in order to find yourself.”
To really find yourself, he says, “sometimes I think you need to look inside.”
It’s New Year’s Day, and Weaymouth is feeling uncomfortable again. He can’t explain why.
All through the holidays, Valdes and friends did their best to include him and spend time with him, and he appreciated it. It helped him feel like he belonged.
But today, alone in his apartment, he can’t shake the feeling of isolation.
He goes out for a walk, but everything is closed. The streets are empty. The whole city seems asleep.
Then he remembers last New Year’s Eve, when he was homeless, sitting on a curb alone and raising a toast to himself as the clock hit midnight.
So much had changed in a year, he realizes.
For the first time in a long time, he feels that he is on the cusp of something. He has people in his life now. He wonders where he will be at this time next year.
And so he walks, drifting between his old life and his new one, considering whether to go spend the day at his spot or head back to his apartment.
In the end, on this day, he chooses to go home.