Two of the three women who appear in this story spoke to Steph Crosier with the provision of anonymity. Anonymity, granted only sparingly, was agreed to for their safety. These women have been given the pseudonyms Kerry and Claire.
The first night Margaret Wiwchar spent in the Kingston Interval House shelter with her 11-year-old son was one of the longest. They had no place to go, no one to take them in, they were alone in the world and in a country she hadn’t called home for almost 19 years.
“It wasn’t so much a case of domestic violence, as I [and my son were] just going to end up homeless,” Wiwchar said.
Kingston Interval House provides emergency shelter for women alongside myriad other services such as counselling. They also provide Robin’s Hope, a second-stage housing apartment building for women awaiting affordable housing.
Wiwchar had been living in Australia for 17 years as a dual citizen. She worked, she fell in love, she had her son, then disaster struck on either side of the world.
In Ottawa, Wiwchar’s mother was dying, but in Australia, the love of her life, a healthy New South Wales police officer, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of kidney cancer. After considering her agonizing choices, in 2013 she returned to Canada. Ten days after she landed, her partner died.
It was the darkest time in Wiwchar’s life. Unable to afford to return home to Australia for the funeral, a close friend in Kingston took her and her 11-year-old son in. It was successful for a few months, but then things turned south and she and her son were forced to move out.
“We moved into this hotel and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m homeless, with a child, and I don’t know anybody,’” Wiwchar recalled.
Leaning on her church for support and still grieving the loss of her son’s father, Wiwchar called women’s shelters in the area, but she said many told her that her situation wasn’t suited for them.
Interval House decided to accept the small family for her child’s safety. On Aug. 28, 2013, Wiwchar and her son moved into the shelter for six weeks before an apartment at Robin’s Hope opened up.
“I’m super grateful for Robin’s Hope, because my son in the shelter was being exposed to things that he’d never been exposed to,” Wiwchar said. “In the apartment he found a safer space. It literally gave us a launching pad to start over, where he was able to feel stable, to feel he had a home to come to, and to start making friends.”
After a brief stay at Robin’s Hope, Wiwchar and her son are now living in affordable housing. She cannot work and receives disability benefits due to a spinal injury she suffered while working as a paramedic in Australia.
She described their life Down Under as “very comfortable,” and admitted their new one in Kingston was a significant transition. She wants to work, but she’s found that Ontario’s social assistance has made it next to impossible. She said the problem is that if you earn more than $500 a month, the province starts taxing it dollar-for-dollar up to 50 per cent. After 50 per cent, a person loses social assistance and any benefits, she said.
“It makes it frightening. I know why people don’t want to get off of it,” Wiwchar said.
“I went to an employment agency and was told basically I’m unemployable to them … I went home and I cried. How am I unemployable? I worked as a medic, as a makeup artist, I managed retail, and I have office training.”
Kerry is also on disability due to severe arthritis and is diagnosed bipolar. Her life has not been an easy one. In the winter of 2016 she says police recommended she reach out to Interval House because her ex-boyfriend, who constantly assaulted and stole from Kerry, had been released on parole and hadn’t attended his halfway house.
“He just came and went as he pleased,” Kerry said of her relationship with the man. “His whole family for six years just totally took over my life … he would inject me [with hydromorphone] while I was sleeping.”
At one point, she said, he kept her overdosed for three days so that he could steal her medications. Her 10-year-old son and dog at the time waited for her to wake.
“My son just laid with me,” Kerry said. “He should have called an ambulance but he was afraid he’d be taken away.”
Taking her medications left her mentally unstable and unable to fully care for herself. Eventually it hospitalized her for five months, forcing Family and Children’s Services of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington to take her preteen son away.
Kerry was once a successful medical secretary. She says she was good at her job, but she was addicted to crack cocaine. She was introduced to the drug by another former partner who was also abusive.
When she learned that her former partner was being released and was on the run, she was scared that he’d kill her. She called Interval House, stayed in the shelter for six months, and then lived in one of Robin’s Hope’s accessible units for nearly a year and a half.
Kerry has been clean for three and a half years and gives back to Interval House by running painting classes at Robin’s Hope. Kerry has also done her best to separate herself from destructive people, and while her sister has custody of her son, she said that relationship is becoming stronger every visit.
Kerry explains you have to want to get better.
“I wanted to do the programs. You don’t realize about how naive you are about red flags [in relationships] and boundaries,” Kerry said. “I didn’t realize how much of a sucker I felt I was, but also how mentally unhealthy I felt that I was to let someone control my mind like that. Call you stupid, make you feel less than.”
Making Claire feel she was “less than” was her former spouse’s strategy to control her. A highly educated woman with a doctorate, Claire was often invited to speak at conferences around the world, but at home she was his property.
Claire met her former husband at university. They were both getting their PhDs when they fell in love — or that’s what she believed it to be. They were married and had their daughter and son right away.
For nearly her entire marriage, Claire was left a ghost walking on eggshells. Her husband raised their children not to acknowledge her well-being, she said. They listened to their father beat and tear their mother apart, but they never said a word, or she said they would have been attacked, too.
“I’ll never forget one day I was in the kitchen and I cut my hand. I shouted out, and my kids just looked at me,” Claire said. “They didn’t come over, they’d been taught not to care about me. Now they’d rush over and help me, bring me ice or a cloth.”
Finally, after being thrown down a flight of stairs in her underwear and being beaten in a public parking garage, she garnered the courage to go to police. They told her it was a family issue and that they couldn’t help.
Then one day Claire’s husband kicked her out and, with the police’s help, she managed to get custody of her children six months later. When they didn’t come back, he stalked them. Some schools wouldn’t even take her children because he’d regularly go to threaten them. For six months, she was constantly “hunted.”
“As he says, it’s a hunting game for him,” Claire said. “He’d say, ‘You go, I will catch you, eventually.’”
When Claire was invited to be a visiting professor at Queen’s University, she brought her children, knowing they’d never go back to Asia. She’d never see her family, her friends and her colleagues again. She was putting her life and the career she’d worked so hard for on the line, but it was worth it.
When Claire arrived in Kingston with her two children, she was convinced no one would help her because they were non-citizens.
“Interval House took me and my children in and I’m so grateful for this because not many countries practise the rules of international human rights,” Claire said.
Claire admitted that when she was first taken to Robin’s Hope, she was not a good mother. Severe insomnia had left her a ghost. She was desperate for her children to be safe, even considering giving them up for adoption, as long as their father couldn’t find them.
“I will sacrifice everything for my children, but I was so exhausted back then that I was too exhausted to love them,” Claire said. “Every day was survival.”
It took months of talking to Interval House councillors alongside fellow survivors for Claire to realize her life was worth it.
“We come from all walks of life,” Claire said. “Different backgrounds and ethnicities and sexualities, but our stories can be so similar to each other.”
Life is a continuing battle for Claire, Kerry and Wiwchar, but each know they can make it. Kerry wants to continue to rebuild her relationship with her son, and Wiwchar to become a life coach and to teach others to advocate for themselves.
Claire is determined to become an immigration lawyer. With the help of a scholarship, she’s obtaining a master’s degree and is studying for the law school admission test … and working a part-time job and taking her kids to school and extracurricular activities.
“I feel blessed being able to return to school,” Claire said. “This opportunity is so precious to me … now I can feel this power inside of me. I can step out of my previous life.”
scrosier@postmedia.com
twitter.com/StephattheWhig
