THE
HAMMER AND LOTUS OF EDMOND YU
(Bob Rose)
February
20, 1997—The
grainy photograph on the newspaper front page showed the dark figure of a man
lying on the floor of an empty city bus. He had been shot and killed by the
police. He was a 35 year’s old and his name was Edmond Yu. If
you have ever come close to the brink of disaster and been lucky enough to step
back from it you will know what the edge of waiting, lasting darkness feels
like. It gets into your blood and changes things forever. Some say
there is very little separating that darkness from walking into the light; only
a fine, fine line, waiting to be crossed. We can’t predict what will
happen if this line appears. All we can do is use what it leaves
us.
Edmond
pulled up his jacket sleeve to show me the line of six watches along on his
left arm. He was telling me how much he liked my old Timex and why I
should sell it to him. This was not the first time he had tried to get it
from me.
He
sat there smiling, dressed in many layers of black clothing. The jackets,
vests, sweaters and heavy pants, boots, all black, made him look like a giant.
Seven was a special number for him. He was pointing at the empty space
where the last watch should go: my watch, the seventh watch. I
laughed and told him he was not going to get it from me. But In my
heart I knew he was telling me something important.
Time
was on my mind too. It worried me. The winter season had deepened
into its hardest phase, bringing unpredictable snow storms, sudden warming
spells and then freezing temperature drops. Even though Edmond was
cheerful he looked exhausted. He was putting up a brave front but his
eyes told another story. He was worried, too. I looked at his face,
darkened from exposure to the wind, sun and the cold. His head was
closely shaved. During quiet times he stared at what was in front of him,
his gaze moving out and beyond what was present in the room towards some
unknown place.
When
he spoke he leaned forward to get closer to me. I bent forward too; so close I
thought our foreheads would touch. It was an unusual thing for me to do,
but familiar. This was the way we talked: reaching for the right
words, bending low to listen, getting close to each other.
We
were discussing coming in from the street, returning once again to the dilemma
which always played itself out in our meetings. On this day I was showing him
pictures of the Gerstein Centre because a room and bed was
being held for him. I could drive him there that afternoon. He only
had to say yes.
This
young Chinese man had started on a long and difficult journey before we had
ever met. He was attending medical school at the University of Toronto
when he fell into an intense personal crisis. As his difficulties had worsened
he was forced to withdraw from school, even though he was regarded by many as
the most brilliant student in his first year medical class. He was
hospitalized by his family and forced to take treatment. The
hospitalization was a second trauma and the beginning of a longer and deeper
struggle. The promise of a future in medicine was replaced by a
diminished life of medication, boarding homes and at its worst, homelessness.
Life had gotten harder not better. Now he was here at PARC.
Edmond
picked up the pictures of the house to study them, talking to himself about
what he saw. He asked questions, paused and then answered them. I
leaned closer and touched his shoulder to gently remind him of my
presence. Sometimes it seemed like Edmond was swimming into these
inner conversations. It was visible and physical, his movement from
charming social banter to insightful comment, then on to muttered associations
and self-talk. He seemed compelled to speak this way. It was at the
heart of his effort to organize his thoughts; this public sorting and debating
of what was important and what did not matter. Only now, he had to stop
talking. He was exhausted. He had to come in from the street.
I
remembered what he had said a week earlier. We had visited a
small house. It was assisting homeless men using the Out of the Cold church
shelter spaces provided through the faith community. The house was new; a
volunteer- run experiment and a short walk away from PARC. A bed had just
become vacant and it was possible Edmond could take it. The terms
for living there were open. He could stay as long as it took to find
another place to live. I explained the arrangements I had made for him to
have supper at the house. If this went well, he could move
in.
As
soon as we arrived. I could see he wanted to stay. He ate dinner as I
talked with the lead staff. This place was different from the larger
homeless hostel shelters downtown. Like many other vulnerable people, he
had good reasons for not wanting to go to those places. They were too
crowded and too intense. But this house, so close to PARC, was
inviting.
I
heard him laughing and talking in the dining room but could mood of the the
house becoming unsettled. The other men looked wary of Edmond. Some
appeared puzzled, others hostile. The volunteer staff were
uneasy. They worried about their ability to support this unusual man who
talked to himself in such strange ways. So, they called the house
supervisor. I knew what the decision would be before I heard
it.
As
we walked away from the house it began to snow, beautiful soft white flakes
drifting down through the darkness. Nothing was said between us until we
paused in a store- front door way. The emptiness of the street was
overwhelming but it was time to separate and go on. Edmond could see I
was upset.
He
put out his hand and touched me on my shoulder as I had done with him.
Then he spoke softly. “Reality can sometimes be painful. There is
no place in the world for
me”.
I
touched the pictures of the Gerstein Centre with my hand. “I think it is time
to go here. To this place. We can
drive over. This will be much better than the last place we
visited. Let’s go see it.” Edmond wearily stood up and we left
together.
Edmond
was welcomed by the more experienced Gerstein staff. They saw him as I
did: intelligent, unusual, charming and troubled. I visited with him each
day and encouraged him to rest. The support provided by Gerstein could help
Edmond cope with this critical period in his life but it was a time-limited
crisis service. However, due to the history and circumstances of Edmond’s
vulnerability we had an agreement to extend his stay beyond the normal 72-hour
guidelines; to create more time for him to recover and more time for me to try
and find a workable and helpful place for him to go to. The urgency and
difficulty of finding this alternative in the community was a problem. He had
respite care but I was worried it was simply not enough to help shift his journey
from the street into housing. I had to find a place that was flexible,
supportive, available and agreeable to Edmond — even though I knew a place like
this really did not exist.
On
the last day of Edmond’s life I went to see him. In the morning I had a
look at the work being done to create new mental health support beds inside one
of the downtown shelters. It wasn’t ready to open yet and looked like a
hospital unit. I arrived at Gerstein just after lunch time and heard that
Edmond had a restless night. When we sat down to talk I asked him if he
would take some medication to help him sleep. I would get it for
him. He didn’t say yes but he also didn’t say no. Edmond then asked
if he could come to back to PARC with me. “No, Edmond…the drop-in
will be closed so no time now for visiting. It is better you stay here at
Gerstein and rest. I will see you tomorrow.”
When
I got back to the west-end I called his former doctor at a Chinese mental
health agency. He had lost contact with Edmond over the last year.
I explained the situation and my desire to get some medication support to use
in tandem with the safe space Gerstein was providing. He agreed to
assist with this; I told him I would get back to him after seeing Edmond
again.
As
we spoke, Edmond was alone on a bus with the police, and the guns were being
drawn.
Edmond’s
death jolted a city that was beginning to notice the growing number of homeless
people living and dying on the streets. But this was different. He
had not frozen to death or died in a fire while trying to stay warm. He
had been shot and killed by the police. Survivors with a lived experience
of police contact during a mental health crisis had painful memories
awakened. Their fear of the police ran deep. They wondered why this
man, alone on an empty bus, was shot dead instead of rescued.
The
police invited the media to gather at the shooting site. They spoke in
front of an empty bus, using it as a prop to explain why the “lethal force
option” had been used. The police response was based on a report Edmond
had allegedly assaulted a young woman passenger while waiting to board the
bus. The driver had cleared the bus and locked the doors to await police
assistance. The three responding officers entered the bus and engaged
Edmond in a long conversation. At the latter stage of their contact
Edmond pulled out what appeared to be a weapon. He held up a shiny
hammer. The officers reacted to the immediate threat they saw in that
moment. One officer shot him several times; one of the bullets striking
his head.
In
the days following there were more news conferences, public rallies and
community meetings. A candlelight vigil was held where Edmond had died.
Grief and anger rippled through the crowd. As the candles burned and
their flames rippled out into the darkening night, I closed my eyes.
I
remembered Edmond as he was. He had candles too, carried in his pocket to warm
his hands. He had a beautiful smile and an unusual spirit full of contrasting
energy. He did things that made you notice this. There were times when he
seemed to be brooding darkly and other moments when he sat very still with his
eyes closed, hands clasped in prayer. He looked like a Buddhist monk when
he prayed. It seemed to fit with his other, lighter spirit; the one that
moved him to carefully stand on his head or joyfully sing Born Free at the PARC
all-night Solstice party.
When
we met for the first time he was dressed in new, black and layered clothes and
standing outside the large, run-down rooming house next door to PARC. He
was facing the entrance door with his right arm outstretched. He was
holding out his disability pension receipt, talking to the rooming house and
himself. Within a few minutes we were sitting down to talk with the
landlord. He had been living there for 2 months and his rent was
due. He wanted to pay it but the landlord would not accept it. He
was evicting Edmond because he “made too much noise.” He said the other
tenants were complaining about Edmond talking with himself and his chanting and
use of a gong and hammer. When Edmond heard those accusations he got up
from his chair, looked at me and said, “I will not stay in a place where I am
not welcome.”
Another
rally was planned for The Grange Park, close to the Chinese neighborhood he
often visited. Edmond had sheltered in that park during an earlier homeless
journey, years before I met him.
On
the night before the rally I went upstairs to get my things. I was
invited to speak and I was thinking about going for a quiet drink. I
needed to compose my thoughts and make some notes. As I walked into my
office I found something strange waiting for me. It was a carpenter’s hammer,
lying on the top of my computer keyboard. When powerful messages
are sent they arrive like flash lightning. You feel them in your
body.
I
knew instantly that this hammer was a message from Edmond no matter how it had
come to find me. The hammer is one of our oldest tools. It is a
symbol of strength and transformation. When most people see a hammer their
first thought is not that it is a weapon. What comes into the mind is that a
hammer is a tool, used for fixing what is broken and building what is
needed. So, I took the hammer to the rally, to talk about why a homeless
man had died with a hammer in his hand.
Across
the world a young Tibetan woman was visiting with the Dalai Lama.
She
owned a small store on Queen Street stocked with Buddhist artifacts, literature
and Tibetan cultural items. Edmond had been a regular visitor in her
store, dropping by to explore his interest in Buddhism and absorb its welcoming
atmosphere. Her husband had called her to give the news of Edmond’s
death. She and the Dalai Lama lit candles and prayed for Edmond.
……………………
Awareness
may shape what we make of the world but it’s not the only force guiding
us. The year after Edmond’s death someone set a fire near a stairwell
that destroyed the old rooming house where he had lived before his eviction to
the street. Two people died, fifty others escaped. Like
Edmond, they had to face another danger after the fire was put out. They
were homeless. The old building called 1495 Queen was a disaster waiting
to happen. It provided poor quality housing with a simple management plan;
get the most profit possible from the most vulnerable people. When
the fire broke out on a September afternoon it shut down the neighborhood for
20 blocks. A cloud of smoke hung over the noise of fire trucks, police
and other emergency vehicles lined along the street.
Community
residents and PARC staff rushed into the building to help people get out to
safety, bringing tenants together in the drop-in when there was assurance PARC
was safe from catching fire. Then the work of providing emergency relief
support began, going late into the night and on and on over the days, weeks and
months following; a great effort to resettle everyone who had lost their
home.
The
scope of the fire relief response was so large PARC had to be helped out by
many community partners to carry it off successfully. The courage and
determination of the fire victims made a compelling story. It described
who they were, the barriers they faced and why they were compelled to live in
such a risky place.
The
fire was a reminder of what happens when you deny people the hope of a safe
home. And it provided the incentive needed to bump the people who
had been displaced from there to the top of City’s long housing wait list, into
subsidized housing.
It
was a sweet and bitter ending to the fire relief effort because its success
revealed a larger and meaner truth. There were thousands of people
needing affordable social housing who could not get it. With government
funding to meet this need taken away, they were being left behind on waiting
lists many years long and getting longer. It seemed like it took a
near-death experience to get past this barrier and into a home.
For
the next seven years the burned-out building lay very still. Its exterior
street façade was intact but the hole in the roof caused by the fire was open
to the heavens. Rain and snow fell into the building’s shell.
Deeper down, in the abandoned apartments, sat the charred heaps of clothing
amid overturned chairs, tables and other personal belongings of the people who
had lived there. Birds nested along the roof edge showering its
entrance with their droppings. Windows close to the street level were shattered
and replaced with plywood.
Periodically,
signs of forced entry through the rear of the building could be seen from its
alley laneway. It was known that some people, desperate for shelter, were
trying to use the place even though this was an extremely risky thing to
do. Every so often city inspectors came by to have a look around and make
sure the property was secured against trespassing. It was a dangerous
place. The passage of time and the elements were working on it. The
building was like an old tomb, awaiting re-discovery.
Against
this backdrop of decay the work inspired by Edmond’s life and death began to
appear. A group of survivor activists, front line workers and supporters
were researching how to create a survivor-led Safe House which provided
extended and peer-based supports to people in a homeless/mental health crisis.
They saw this model successfully used in other countries and the need to bring
it to Canada.
Some
of the group’s early advocacy found its way into the coroner’s inquest held to
review the circumstances of Edmond’s death. The jury recommended:
improved police training, expanded crisis response resources including the
exploration of a Safe House crisis model for use within the mental health
system. But its final recommendation was the most eloquent one of
all: Build Supportive Housing.
Across
the years Edmond’s story was being kept alive. The Safe House Project
told it over and over in conferences, community forums and press releases as it
worked to create a resource which could have prevented his death. The
survivor community gathered in the Grange Park every year to re-tell the story
of the first vigil. They brought candles, flowers, faith and love. We
said the same thing year after year: one day we would make something to show
how the world could welcome all the Edmonds trying to find their way home.
Eventually the Edmond Yu Safe House Project finished its work, defining a
new homeless crisis response model that could have helped someone like Edmond
find their way home from the street. Even though the government funding
needed to build it never came to pass, no one was surprised its public
donations kept growing. There was a deep belief that Edmond’s story was
not finished, only waiting for what would happen next.
It
came with the rousing of 1495 Queen from its long sleep. A new city
council was asked to report on derelict properties suitable for conversion into
social housing. The burned rooming house next to PARC sat ready, a
high-profile site well-suited to this direction and ready to test this
opportunity. Here was the chance to turn what had put Edmond Yu onto the
street into a place that would have taken him off it. People speculated how
this might happen. What would it take for 1495 Queen to become supportive
housing? The neighborhood was changing. Not far from PARC you could
see the steady creep of money. Small and familiar local stores were
turning into upscale shops, wine bars and high-end restaurants. But you
could also hear and see the diverse chorus of voices responding to what Edmond
had said on that snowy night, determined to make the housing which would have
encouraged him to say ….There is a place in the world for me.
Seven
years of waiting had passed but the waiting was now over. When the
opportunity to make a proposal came, PARC submitted a plan to transform the old
rooming house into the kind of housing Edmond’s memory inspired.
It
was referenced by safe house principles, to ensure the direct involvement of
survivors in its development, its future staffing and the recovery support
options it would provide to the community living there. There were still
many miles to travel. The building was a more dangerous wreck than
ever. Rebuilding it presented many challenges with years of hard work
still to come. But for Edmond’s community, the submission of this
proposal was a future already written. There was a feeling of conviction
in the air. New housing that would heal was coming. It would be
anchored by his name and story: Edmond Place The watch Edmond had
wanted, the seventh watch, was still on my wrist. The dial on that watch had
made thousands of turns since the day of his
death.
February
20, 2010—It
felt odd. This was going to be the last annual memorial before the
construction of Edmond Place was finished. Before the next anniversary of
his death rolled around, there would be 29 new homes built in his memory.
Thirteen long years had passed to get to this day. Earlier in the week I
had printed off some large photos of Edmond Place to show how the work was
coming along. The front, side and a rear lane views showed the changes in the
building’s appearance, the scaffolding and construction hoardings around the
site. A big sign out front blared HOME. The photos were placed in
an envelope and stuffed into my bag. I planned to pass those pictures around at
the memorial. It was going to be a happy event.
I
had a morning meeting to attend before the noon memorial start. For some
reason I decided to clean out the back pack I carry. I am not sure why I
did this because I usually like to carry a lot of work around with me.
The only thing left in my empty bag was the envelope of 8×10 pictures of Edmond
Place. I had a quick look to make sure they were there and closed it
up.
I
left early so I could walk to the meeting. I had only walked a short
distance before I had to stop. In front of me, at the edge of the
sidewalk, was a line of framed photographs. When I saw them I felt an odd
physical sensation, a strange feeling of convergence with the past. I
remembered finding the hammer. I bent down to look at them. They
seemed to have been laid out in a sequence. Four frames with color
images. The fifth and largest frame was empty.
The
first one was a butterfly, a symbol of change and its inevitability, commented
on by the Buddha who said the butterfly was special, because it did not know
its own mother.
The
second image was a starfish lying on the ocean floor. The starfish is a
symbol of direction but not the kind which the stars in the sky guide. It
represents the direction of our unconscious mind and thoughts.
The
third frame held a waterfall, cascading over rocky ledges, the symbol of
endurance and fortitude.
The
last photograph was of a lotus. The lotus flower seed contains the tiny
miniature leaves of the fully grown flower. This is one of the reasons it
is revered as a symbol of rebirth and wisdom across many cultures. The
lotus is born complete. It grows in muddy water, disappears each night
below the surface and rises at dawn every
morning.
I
picked up the four framed photographs and put them into my empty bag. Then I
began to walk away, leaving the empty frame lying on the street. But the
further I walked the more uneasy I became. It felt like I was trying to
wake up.
I
thought about the empty picture frame I had left behind. Why had I done
that? I turned around and went back. The empty frame still
lay where I had left it. As I bent down to pick it up I knew why I had
been compelled to return for it.
I
reached into my bag to pull out the pictures of Edmond Place housing and placed
one in the empty frame. It was a perfect fit.