Monday, 1st December 2003, 11:17am
An opinion by:
Noemi
Off The Beaten Path by Noemi LoPinto
I began my career in journalism at the School of Hard Knocks. In 2000, I was a single mom on welfare whose Plateau apartment was being repossessed at a time when that was still unusual. I had none of the passivity of the perrenially poor. Full of righteous anger at this domestic injustice, I began harassing the news editor at the Montreal Mirror. My story ideas' central theme, oddly enough, often centered on the housing crisis. The editor finally bought a story, and my first article was all about the failures of the Montreal rental board, powerless to protect people from the ravages of gentrification. My news editor was inexperienced himself, or he never would have given me a chance. I sucked. But progressively I did improve, working with him and learning the ropes of basic journalism in about six weeks. I wrote and re-wrote at night, writing third or fourth versions of the same article while the baby slept. A few months into my career, my news editor quit the paper, and I was finally kicked out of my apartment.The Mirror asked me to stay on, I found an appartment and kept writing at night. When I needed to interview an official type during daylight hours, friends and relatives were called upon to babysit. My daughter, who was one year old by then, was less than thrilled. My taped interviews from that era have a nice background soundtrack of her screeching "Mama, mama" with a helpless babysitter, while I locked myself in my bedroom and pretended nonchalance with my interviewee. "Tell me more about Bill c-11, sir. (SCREEECH!!) But does it discriminate against immigrants, in your opinion?" (MAMA!! ) I have been freelance ever since.
On some levels, being freelance has been convenient, a creative and domestic compromise of sorts. I could stay home, supported by government agencies for the very poor, keep writing and expand my repertoire. Constant worrying over bills was balanced against editorial and writerly freedom. Plus, I was always available for my daughter. When she was three I went back to school part-time, still on welfare, and began a degree in journalism. Welfare recipients are entitled to take two university courses without being cut off, but they are given no financial support. I paid my tuition by exchanging babysitting for free, I did fundraising on my birthday, and occasionally went begging to Mom and Dad. I bicycled to the west end of Montreal on my bike year round, and stole my lunches from the school cafeteria. I never bought the books.
I remember once when I was sixteen, I saw an anti-poverty activist on television talking about the pain of choosing between having to buy food or pay bills, as if everyone could relate to that. I certainly couldn't. Now I can, and I can tell you that there is nothing like it. The fridge is empty, but the phone will be disconnected if you don't pay it. Without a phone you can't make living, can't get help if you need it, and most importantly, are cut off from your support network. The fridge is empty, but the hydro will be disconnected if you don't pay it. Then the house will be cold, you can't cook food, you can't read stories or give your kid a bath. But the fridge is empty. Without food, what kind of parent are you? So you go buy groceries, throw the corporations a bone, and hope next month will be better. I have been hungry and pregnant, and then became a "welfare mom", with all that implies. Being pregnant and hungry is a terrible feeling. The demands on your body are so intense you can feel your bones being looted for nutrients. Being the caretaker of a child and being unsure where the next meal is going to come from is almost as bad. Your bones aren't melting, but you feel a consuming sense of shame and fear, of instability and insecurity about the future.
An unacknowledged truth known only to welfare recipients: everybody works under the table somewhere. There is no way of surviving any other way. Welfare payments for a single mother with one child is $656 a month. Most welfare recipients pay more than that in rent, and then there is heat, the phone, food, and internet if you want to splurge. I have met welfare recipients who sell jewelry or art on the side, work as waiters, do translation, paint houses, are movers, do corporate writing, phone sex, make clothing, clean houses, fix plumbing, cater - anything to get the ends to meet some of the way. "Welfare bum" is a misnomer.
But I have had enough. So this summer I began a seduction campaign aimed at the human resources departments of fifteen Canadian newspapers. I deluged them with letters of references, CV's, clips of my work, and boxes of chocolate. I got two bites: the Edmonton Journal and the Ottawa Citizen. Somehow, both interviews were scheduled within 24 hours of each other; one in Ottawa, the other in Toronto. On a Thursday morning in September I got my daughter to daycare, packed my things, and got on the bus to Ottawa. I had a minor skirmish with a Chinese man whose habit of violently sucking his teeth every thirty seconds was interfering with my I-Am-Employable-yes-I-am mantra, I made it to Ottawa in one piece. I changed in the bus station bathroom, going from Disheveled Traveller to Employably Yours in under ten minutes.
The taxi ride from the downtown core to the Ottawa Citizen headquarters is about twenty minutes long. After an emergency huddle with an Iranian taxi driver over a map of Ottawa with fifteen minutes to go before the appointed time, we finally found the place. A woman named Ruth Dunley came to get me at the security desk, and we proceeded with little ceremony to the inteview. Two women and a man asked me the usual questions: where do I see myself in five years, why am I interested in this position, what do I have to offer the paper etc. I talked about the reporting I did, having followed the gay marriage issue since 1998. I covered it for five days in 2001, regardless of the pay I would receive. I talked about how hard I can work to tell a complete story. Possibly because of my circumstances, I have covered every hard-knocks story to hit Montreal. I am a writer with a bleeding heart, never writing far away from the harder issues.
If I were a single young writer fresh out of university, I could rent a room for low rent in some slum building, and work the night shift. I could promise the dedication and naivetee of the ingenue, write stories about fires on fifth street with something akin to glee, and then go home to my one-bedroom with a futon on the floor and milk cartons for a desk. But I am not. I need to start in the middle of the ladder. If I relocate, I need the costs paid for. There has to be daycare nearby. I might have to buy a car. I need to know what the vacancy rate in the city is, and the job must be renewable. I mentioned some of these things to my interviewers, and their faces fell.
After the interview, I got back in a taxi with the same Iranian man, went back to the Ottawa bus depot and bought my ticket for Toronto. On the bus, I read four New Yorkers back to front. I arrived in Toronto at around midnight, and my Dad picked me up in his stinky truck. In the three days I stayed with him, we never figured out what the smell was--part socks, part sweaty shirt. In the morning I put on another Willing & Employable outfit, and drove to the FREAKING YUKON--well, Don Mills actually, but I was nervous. Executive editor Roy Wood was uncomfortable with the blind date-like self-descriptions we had to exchange before our meeting. He said he was a "balding, middle aged man with a gut, in a sports jacket". Hey, I could spot that. I pictured a cross between Jackie Gleason and Elmer Fudd. But when I enter the lobby I was approached by a fairly handsome, well dressed (yes, middle-aged) guy with a signet ring on his baby finger. Mr Wood, I presume...I tried to keep my jaw from hitting the carpet.
I was my usual unintimidateable self. I was at ease and confident. He asked me many of the same questions as the Citizen. We talked about Social Credit, Quebec politics, the difference between a writer and a journalist. The job was great. The only disadvantages would have been: social isolation in Edmonton, single motherhood without the network of friends, emotional trauma for my daughter, and culture shock for me. During the interview, I spoke without sarcasm about the advantages of the freelance life, and how every article I have penned reflects a little of my personal politics. Despite all this, I am sorry to say dear reader, I would have taken the job and split, in a heartbeat.
But I didn't get either job. Two days after getting the news, I was asked to speak to the first-year journalism undergrads at Concordia University. I had by then delivered a resignation letter to the Mirror, was officially underemployed, and other than that faithful blue check from the people at Emploi Quebec, had no idea where the money for my next grocery list was going to come from. I sat on the professor's dusty brown desk, and described how I had started from zero, progressed to where I am now (could somebody please tell me where I am now?) and watched their young faces get bright with hope. Goddamn, it was cute. It was also enormously ironic. Later that week, when the Jehova's Witnesses came by to save my soul, I let them in. Did you know they don't celebrate christmas?
later,
N
