‘I’m not ready to be alone’
Ex-politician opens up to the Star about husband Christopher Peloso’s battle with depression
George Smitherman is not ready to say goodbye.
“Are you leaving?” he asks a friend at his Junction home the night before his husband’s funeral. “I’m not ready to be alone. I’m not ready for this to end.”
Smitherman and his family and friends are busy preparing for the next day.
“You want to see what I’m going to say?” he asks, showing just a handful of bullet points for a eulogy. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk. So it could be eight words, or it could go for eight minutes.”
The next day, Friday, Smitherman finds the words, reaching back to his time as a politician. He speaks for 25 minutes, as hundreds pack the Wellesley Community Centre to bid farewell to Christopher Peloso, who killed himself last Sunday. He was 40.
Smitherman’s voice falters early, but he finishes strong: “We have to find peace in knowing our Little Yellow Bird is free.”
He hadn’t written that line by Thursday night. He didn’t really know what to say, his grief overwhelming, but he wanted to address his husband’s suicide and depression directly.
“A man has taken his life because the pain in his brain was unrelenting,” Smitherman tells a crowd filled with politicians — including his old boss, Dalton McGuinty; his close friend, former mayor Barbara Hall; and MP Olivia Chow.
Peloso’s family also speaks openly about his mental health struggles.
“You always wonder if you could have done more.” GEORGE SMITHERMAN ON THE SUICIDE OF HIS HUSBAND, CHRISTOPHER PELOSO, ABOVE
“Chris suffered from depression and committed suicide and there is no shame in that,” says his father, Reno Peloso, tears welling up.
Both Peloso’s father and his husband are riddled with guilt. “You always wonder if you could have done more,” says Smitherman, former Ontario deputy premier and Toronto mayoral candidate.
Bereavement for a suicide is entirely different than bereavement for any other kind of death, experts told the Star. This is mostly due to guilt and self-blame.
Suicide is the ninth-leading cause of death in the country, according to Statistics Canada. Every year, about 4,000 people kill themselves. Statistically, men 40 to 44 years old are among the most likely to commit suicide.
Peloso lived with severe depression for years, but it became especially bad in recent times. He had struggled with his sexuality as a teenager and had difficulty living his life with a public figure.
The pain became so overwhelming that he took off for a few days in September, wandering around before a police dog found him, “dirty and confused,” near train tracks close to the family’s west-end home. The search captivated the public, who joined police in looking for him. They triangulated his cellphone signal before a dog, Ranger, sniffed him out.
It was devastating to live through those seemingly endless days in the spotlight, which culminated with a short press conference outside Toronto Western Hospital.
“You know, going through this as a public figure was so difficult,” Smitherman says. He wanted to focus on Peloso and avoid the media’s glare.
Then Peloso disappeared again, this time around 11 a.m. on a Sunday. Smitherman flashed back to the previous disappearance. By midnight he had organized a search party, reaching out online and asking the public to scour the neighbourhood the following morning.
But before the search could start, a coroner came to the couple’s home and told Smitherman his husband was dead.
He is not ready to talk about the details of his husband’s disappearance or his suicide. But he will one day.
“We have an important story to tell about depression and mental health,” he says as he looks at one of eight posters plastered with photos of Peloso that family and friends are making. Nearly all the pictures show the 40-year-old with his family — the couple’s two adopted children, Michael, 5, and Kayla, 3, and Peloso’s daughter from a previous relationship, Morgan Morrow, 21.
Other photographs show the couple’s 2007 wedding in Elliot Lake — a traditional aboriginal ceremony. Smitherman found the spot nestled along the water while snowmobiling during an earlier trip.
“Christopher didn’t want me snowmobiling because I rode too fast, so I gave it up,” Smitherman says. “It’s just what you do for marriage.”
After Peloso’s first disappearance, the couple escaped to Costa Rica in October to relax and learn to enjoy life again. They treated themselves to
‘We have to find peace in knowing our Little Yellow Bird is free’
GEORGE SMITHERMAN DURING HIS HUSBAND’S FUNERAL
many of Peloso’s loves, from swimming in the ocean with sea turtles to riding horses along the beach. They moved to a new home in the Junction — in many ways a fresh start for a beleaguered family.
“After September, I told him to make himself the top priority,” Smitherman says in his kitchen. “Go to the gym every day, get two massages a week and learn to treat yourself better — but he didn’t. I couldn’t get through, though I tried, I really tried.”
Peloso’s brain was riddled with pain. As was his back: an injury that could debilitate him for days and a pain that didn’t help his mood.
Peloso was a career chocolate man. He worked for Laura Secord for years and then moved on to a senior managerial role at Lindt before settling down to raise the couple’s two young children at home.
He thought about returning to work. But the couple also spoke about moving and had recently decided to relocate to Costa Rica. The pace of life there suited Peloso, and it was time for Smitherman to give up his political aspirations. As long as he lived in Toronto, he’d always be pulled into its political bubble. It was a bubble Smitherman had trouble avoiding, with a political career that included serving as Ontario’s minister of health under McGuinty and, most recently, coming second to Rob Ford in the 2010 mayoral election. He thought about running for the federal seat that Bob Rae vacated this summer. Peloso pushed “Furious George” to run in the byelection, but for a variety of reasons, many of them related to family, Smitherman didn’t. Instead they spoke of Costa Rica, raising their young children there while keeping a place in Toronto for summer sojourns. It’s something Smitherman still might do. “Right now, I sell paper between India and China, and they don’t care where the email comes from,” Smitherman says of the flexibility of his job at G & G Global Solutions. But right now, Smitherman is busy with the business of death. “Chris has to be there by 10:15 tomorrow,” Smitherman says to Peloso’s sister, Rena, who wipes tears from her eyes as she prepares to leave the house. “He’ll be there by 10,” she says. “Actually, he’ll be there by 10:05 because that’s who he is.” They laugh and hug as they talk about Peloso, whose ashes now rest in a wooden urn. At another point, Peloso’s daughter shows Smitherman one of the posters. He doesn’t like a particular photo of Kayla. “Don’t use that photo,” Smither- man says. “It’s a picture before we got her. Just tape another one over it.”
It’s the little things that keep him busy, his mind occupied.
Despite the challenges Peloso faced, Smitherman never thought he’d be writing his husband’s eulogy. He is not ready for this. He doesn’t even have a suit to wear.
Last year, Smitherman decided that when he turned 50, in 2014, he wanted to be in the best shape of his life. He lost 30 pounds and threw out a bunch of his “fat suits.”
“‘I hope we don’t have to go to a funeral soon,’ ” Smitherman remembers telling Peloso just after Christmas. “And now I’m going to his funeral and I don’t have a suit that fits.”
So he called in his tailor, who came to his house for a fitting Tuesday. On Friday he wears his new black suit to say goodbye. lcasey@thestar.ca