Burlington author Denise Davy met Margaret while reporting for The Hamilton Spectator on a cold January night in 1993
Graham Rockingham unwinds the story of Davy’s new book remembering Margaret
Every day we pass them by, the homeless, the dispossessed. They may be begging on a street corner, pushing a stained paper cup toward our car windshield or huddling in a ragged tent near a city park.
We try to ignore them, turn our heads. But sometimes, perhaps with a twinge of guilt, we wonder how they got there, or, more importantly, who they are. We could, of course, just ask them, but most of us don’t.
Denise Davy asked. That’s how she met Margaret Jacobson. Davy met Margaret while on assignment for The Hamilton Spectator during a cold January night in 1993.
Davy, an award-winning reporter who covered the social issues beat for The Spectator, was spending the evening in the Wesley Centre’s drop-in shelter to give readers a glimpse of what life was like for the city’s homeless.
Margaret, a regular visitor to the centre, sat on a bench chain smoking with only a short coat to protect her from the cold. At first, Davy was a bit intimidated by Margaret, who had a swagger about her and a reputation for throwing coffee cups at people she didn’t like. Some people called her “Princess Margaret.”
Davy thought Margaret was probably in her 70s. She would later find out she was 49.
Davy approached, asking about her life and the circumstances that brought her to a homeless shelter. Margaret opened up.
“Her story was so compelling,” Davy says in an interview from her Burlington home. “In almost 30 years as a journalist, she has to be one of my most memorable interviews. Her story never left me.”
That tragic story is told in Davy’s new book, “Her Name was Margaret — Life and Death on the Streets,” released this week by Hamilton-based publisher Wolsak & Wynn. It’s a heartwrenching tale, as well as a scathing indictment of how we treat the mentally ill.
Margaret died two years after their first meeting. Her body wasted with untreated cancer, she collapsed while seeking shelter in a downtown Hamilton sub shop and never recovered.
But Davy continued piecing together the facts of Margaret’s life, sorting through more than 860 pages of medical files, interviewing friends, shelter staff, hospital volunteers and police. She tracked down family members scattered around the world. She even made contact with Margaret’s son, who had been taken away from her at birth by the Children’s Aid Society and put up for adoption.
“Her family could not have been more generous with me,” Davy says. “They said to me ‘Margaret is a mystery to us. You’re the one who is telling us her story.’ ”
Davy would eventually learn that Margaret was raised in the British West Indies, the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. She had a sweet nature, played piano and accordion. Her family moved to Ontario while Margaret was in her teens.
At the age of 17, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to the Homewood Health Centre in Guelph. It was the first of many admissions over the next the next 24 years. In 1969, Margaret’s parents moved to Mississippi to pursue church work, leaving their daughter in the care of the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital.
Countless times, Margaret would be admitted, given electroshock therapy and drug treatments until she showed signs of recovery, and then released to a boarding house with little or no supervision. The many lodging houses in which she lived were often squalid and sometimes dangerous. Her psychosis would inevitably return, followed by readmission to hospital. At times, hospital staff would chastise Margaret for being unable to take care of herself.
It was a cycle that continued until Margaret’s final discharge in 1985. Unable to cope with boarding house life, Margaret spent her final 10 years homeless, living a horrible existence on the streets.
“The way Margaret was treated speaks to our complete lack of awareness of how we should treat people with a mental illness,” Davy says. “Imagine if we chastised somebody with cancer and took them to the curb rather than offering them compassion and treatment options.”
Like many of our homeless, Margaret was a victim of deinstitutionalization, a program that began in the 1960s with the goal of pushing the mentally ill out of psychiatric hospitals and into the community. It seemed like a noble goal. Community life had to be better than hospitalization.
The program could only work, however, with sufficient community support. The support has never been enough. The needs of the chronically mental ill are enormous.
According to Davy’s research, there were 15,257 psychiatric beds in the province of Ontario. By 2017, although the population had doubled, the total number of mental health beds in Ontario was 4,479. Unfortunately, Davy writes, the money saved from those bed closures is still not being funnelled into community supports.
“This homelessness problem is entirely man made,” Davy says. “What we see today is a product of deinstitutionalization. It’s a brutal betrayal to people who have a mental illness. We have homelessness because of a lack of political will.”
Margaret is still remembered in the city’s shelters. On the 20th anniversary of her death, there was even a memorial service at Margaret’s grave site. Davy also keeps Margaret’s memory alive through the “Purses for Margaret” program, which collects slightly used purses and fills them with essential toiletries for homeless women. In just six months, Davy was able to put together some 2,000 purses.
“I want people to recognize that these are people, someone’s son or daughter, and they’re not there by choice,” Davy says.
Wolsak & Wynn will officially launch “My Name is Margaret” with a virtual question and answer session, featuring author Denise Davy on March 4 at 7 p.m. To register for the event, visit the Wolsak & Wynn website wolsakandwynn.ca.