Time to talk about my families and the process of recreating myself over the years, so let’s start at the beginning I was born into the family name of Hedgeman. My mother was born in Ireland and my father a black Canadian born in the Welland, Ontario area. His mother my grandmother and grandfather were American’s originally from the south and traced back far enough I would have an ancestor who landed in Buffalo, New York as a slave and transported to Canada through the Underground Railroad.

The story of my biological parents is a tragedy. My mother was married with two children and my father had just returned from a tour in France during the 2nd World War. However, their lives from that chance encounter would forever be changed and filled with hurt, pain and sacrifice. My mother became pregnant and unsure as to whose child it was, she and my father had to make a decision. As you can imagine, my father’s family being the only family in the area of colour how to explain, a cream coloured baby to her husband and the community that tells all and knows all at a time in society where interracial relationships were not acceptable. So, they ran off to Toronto and there my brother Ronnie was born.

Ronnie came into this world handicapped in so many ways, he was white. Which angered my father [who now feels he was duped]and he had Cerebral palsy defined as a central motor dysfunction affecting muscle tone, posture and movement resulting from a permanent, non-progressive defect or lesion of the immature brain. Cerebral palsy can occur during pregnancy, during childbirth or after birth up to about age 3. He died institutionalized and alone having been shut away by his siblings who had control of his life and finances after my mother passed away.

I don’t know when my father started drinking, but I do know that he was an alcoholic, and drank on the weekends when he wasn’t working. I’ll give him that he always worked and provided the basic necessities, but he was a very violent and angry man and took it out on his partner and children throughout the years. My mother once told me that Ronnie was her punishment and I did not understand it at the time, but do today. When I was older I remember many a night after a beating my father would throw my mother and brother out in the cold of winter, calling them white trash.

As the first child for my father, I become the number one daughter. I was his and during my early childhood, I loved him. He worked as a truck driver for the Ontario Foods terminals and he would take me everywhere all over Ontario to all the local farms. I loved meeting all the farmers, getting to taste produce fresh out the fields and travelling the Ontario Roads. This happy period lasted only until I started school and became more aware of the violence in my home.

Tom was next, the heart of my heart. He was brave, defiant, and grew up hating my mother for her weakness. He struggled during his teenage and young adult years with the violence of our environment, and drug addiction. Fortunately, for him a short stint in jail and he knew that was not a place that he really wanted to end his life and he married, got clean and settled after 25 years.

Bobbie [Roberta}, my one and only biological sister so tragic was her life. So much jealousy between us over the years with drugs and alcohol in the way running interference of any real relationship she and I could have had. Given several opportunities to get out she just did not have the strength and in the end she lost her only son and her life and I’m just glad that I had the opportunity to be there for her when she passed last year.

Terry, was unique and disturbed. As a teenager, he had acquired a ventriloquist puppet and he would go down to Yonge Street and street vend. This puppet was an extension of him and he would always talk to you through this damn puppet. He also loved to climb buildings; I’m talking about tall apartment buildings climbing from balcony to balcony and as an experiment he would lock my youngest brother in boxes, to see if he could get out like Houdini. I think it was his way of coping with the insanity of our lives and in the end his life ended from a drop of 13  floors.

And finally, the baby who unfortunately has followed in my father’s footsteps with the violence and drinking and I’m sure like my father will live a long life inflicting hurt and pain on those closest to him.

As for my mother having survived eight live births and two miscarriages, she was as much a victim and a survivor as her children, caught in an abusive relationship at a time when there was no such thing as women’s shelters, or support for women of violence. The abuse of that era was kept behind closed doors although everyone was aware. I believe now, she did the best that she was capable of and towards the later part of her life she became a pillar for her community helping initiate support programs and push through the proposal for the now Regent Park Health Centre [actually lobbying Queens Park]. At her funeral in 1997,  I was told by a number of women what a wonderful women my mother was, how proud she was of me and how much work she had done for the community and to my surprise last year I was able to see that on the wall in the Health Centre is a big mural with her face smiling down into the waiting area watching over those who come for care.

Dysfunctional was an understatement for this family and out of six children only three of us have survived. This family was toxic and destructive and survival for me was based on being able to remove myself emotionally through my dolls as a child and later as a teen through school, athletics and art. I was an accomplished track and field runner, jumper and competitive swimmer. I don’t think either of my parents ever saw me run. I would just disappear for a day and return home with ribbons and trophies for which I’d hide in my room. At our around grade four I figured out that to get out I needed to learn and with the help of Mrs. Forbes at Park School, who somehow recognized the survival need in me and showed me the possibilities of life with an education and a way to be normal. I grabbed hold and never let go and will forever be grateful to her for opening my eyes and showing and giving me a future that against all odds I survived…