Star series about struggling families led to whole new life
A post-secondary prep scholarship that came on the heels of a 1986 story — and a lot of hard work — lifted a single mom out of poverty
This week, as we count down to the Star’s 125th anniversary, we revisit stories that have inspired readers and changed lives.
Deborah Williamson was stuck. She had two kids, a rundown apartment, a job that barely covered the bills and no way to change her situation.
Williamson, 27, dreamed of getting a university degree, maybe becoming a teacher, but she could hardly afford to feed her children. How was she supposed to pay tuition? It was 1986. Williamson had dropped out of high school a decade earlier during her first pregnancy and was now raising a 9-year-old and 10-year-old on her own in Regent Park. Working as a secretary at a large media-buying agency, Williamson was surrounded by middle-class colleagues, people whose lives wouldn’t crumble if they missed a paycheque. “Are they any smarter than me?” she remembers thinking.
“What is it? What’s the difference between the haves and the havenots?”
The main difference, as far as she could tell, was education. Williamson didn’t have it and she couldn’t afford to get it.
In March that year, she was profiled in a Star series on low-income families struggling to pay for food. Two weeks later, Williamson received a letter offering her a scholarship to a post-secondary preparatory program at the University of Toronto.
Officials at U of T’s Woodsworth College had read the story and were moved by Williamson’s plight and determination. “You are to be congratulated for your hard work and optimistic outlook on what must be a difficult situation,” the letter said.
That September, Williamson went back to school.
“It changed my life,” says Williamson, now 59. “Not only my life, but my kids’ lives.”
Williamson grew up in a workingclass family in the Beach neighbourhood — “before it became trendy,” she says. Her mother was employed at a greeting card factory. Her father worked in a grocery store warehouse.
In the years after the U of T preparatory program, Williamson started working toward a university degree as a part-time student, tripled her salary, lifted her family out of poverty and fulfilled her dream of becoming a teacher.
Williamson graduated from York University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1999. She has built a career as a corporate workplace educator. She owns a home. She has travelled to Japan and South Africa. She worked for seven years as an instructor at diamond mines in the North- west Territories and northern Ontario. Last year, she received a master’s degree in education from Athabasca University.
Her achievements brought about a welcome boost in confidence, a shedding of the powerlessness Williamson had felt her whole life.
“When you have no money, you feel like everything around you controls what you do,” she says.
The 1980s were marked by sacrifice and hardship. Williamson caulked the baseboards in her low-rent apartments to keep the cockroaches away, and the kids made a game out of how many they could kill. She worked all day and studied at night.
“Subsidized daycare was a lifesaver for me,” she says. “It allowed me to work.” She spent weekends preparing meals for the week and sewing clothes for her son and daughter. Friday-night pizza at the laundromat was the family’s only treat. She took the kids skating, tobogganing, out for picnics — anything that was free.
“The necessities were always there but she never let us know that there was a huge struggle behind that,” says her daughter, Jennifer Williamson.
In tough times, Williamson would rent a booth at a flea market and sell her own clothing for extra cash. In desperate times, she’d sell the furniture.
“That was the reality,” she says. “You knew it was different from other people but you didn’t dwell on it. There wasn’t time to because you just had to push yourself so hard.”
None of the change came easy, and the scholarship only got things started. Williamson herself was the driving force behind the shift in her life trajectory.
It took her14 years to get her undergraduate degree. She paid her own way through the first seven years at U of T, and then transferred to York after getting a job at the university that came with tuition reimbursement. She did it all while working full time.
Williamson’s children now have kids and jobs of their own. Jennifer, 41, is an outreach worker with Brantford Native Housing. Chris, 40, is a building superintendent in Scarborough. Adult life has given them a greater appreciation for everything their mother has done for them.
“She put us on the right path and she did a great job in raising us,” Chris says. “There are a lot of other people out there who don’t get that love and compassion.”
Chris admires his mother’s determination and work ethic, but worries that she doesn’t get enough time to herself. Williamson commutes four hours a day for her job, leaving her Oshawa home by 5 a.m. and returning after 7 p.m. “She’s a workaholic,” Chris says.
Williamson has been financially stable for decades now, but the fear of spiralling back into poverty remains with her.
“It is so close to the surface still,” she says. “And in fact I think that’s the reason I work so hard, because I never, ever want to go back there.”
For all that she has achieved, Williamson’s proudest moment isn’t an academic or career accomplishment. One day seven years ago, Jennifer, who was studying at Mohawk College at the time, told Williamson that an instructor had asked the class to participate in a project for International Women’s Day that involved posing for a photo holding a card with the name of the woman who most inspired them.
“Jennifer showed me the picture and her card said ‘My mom,’ ” Williamson says. She can’t tell the story without crying.
Jennifer says her mother’s determination has rubbed off on her, and she’s grateful for it.
“She’s my hero. For being a young woman raising two children by herself and continuing to have that drive, that ambition to not be stuck in that cycle. She broke the cycle. For us.” Read more on the Star’s 125th anniversary in Saturday’s special Insight section and at thestar.com/anniversary.