The Good Shepherd Hostel on Murray Street in Ottawa where Robert and Janice first met
(Knuckle)
The new Robert Whiteman got a subway token from the YMCA and rode the line up to the York Mills station. From there it was an easy walk to the highway. He had some trouble getting picked up but eventually managed to hitch a combination of rides that brought him to the southern outskirts of Ottawa. Unable to get any farther, he spent the night in the bush fighting a nasty onslaught of mosquitoes. The next morning, damp and dishevelled, he stumbled back out to the highway and hailed a ride that took him directly into Ottawa. The driver dropped him off on Wellington Street near a massive stone building with a green copper roof. When he discovered it was the Supreme Court of Canada, Robert was duly impressed and somewhat tickled by the irony that it was the first building an escaped convict should see upon his arrival in the nation’s capital.
After a number of inquiries, he located another hostel, the Shepherds of Good Hope, on Murray Street in downtown Ottawa. A typical men’s shelter, it was not much to look at on the outside but warm and clean on the inside. In the basement there was a rather spartan dormitory with rows of beds that could sleep about fifty men a night. Most of its tenants were winos and drifters and other unfortunates down on their luck. The rules of the hostel were tight and unbending; the men had to be in by 11:00 p.m. and had to check out by 8:30 a.m. If they wanted a bed for the next night they had to be back in good time, or do without. To the average person the shelter wouldn’t seem like much, but to Robert, at least for now, it was a sanctuary.
The day after he arrived in Ottawa Robert started hiking around the city looking for work. While sitting in front of the Museum of Man, he noticed an ice cream vendor on a bicycle and asked him how and where he could get a job like that. With the information the young man gave him Robert went to the “Frostee” building and talked to the manager, a university student named Brad Stafford. Since they were desperate for salesmen, Robert didn’t have to show any identification to get the job. He was hired on the spot to start the very next day. It wasn’t much of a job but it paid cash money, and this was important to Robert because he had no social insurance number.
The Good Shepherd Hostel on Murray Street in Ottawa where Robert and Janice first met
(Knuckle)
A sign of ominous foreboding outside the Murray Street Hostel
(Knuckle)
The pay was poor and unreliable because it all depended on the weather. On a cool day Robert might make only $2 but on a hot day he could take home $30. The manager liked him because he was dependable. Every day he rode his bike from morning until dark all over downtown Ottawa. Pumping his way along, he went up and down the streets, through city parks, to baseball diamonds, to school yards. If he wasn’t making a lot of money, he was getting to know the city pretty well. The thing he liked best about the job was that he was his own boss; there was nobody looking over his shoulder. When people stopped him for an ice cream he enjoyed being pleasant and talkative with them. Staying at the hostel allowed him to keep most of what he made. His plan was to save his money and move on to Vancouver.
One of the workers at the Good Shepherds hostel was a young night assistant who had been recently hired after graduating from Algonquin College. Her name was Janice McKenzie and her job was to supervise the hostel after 11:00 p.m. and make sure nobody brought in any booze. Handling the rough, transient clientele that came to the door every night was a difficult job for a young woman but Janice seemed to have a knack for it. She used just the right combination of helpfulness and aggression to keep things running smoothly.
About a week after Robert came to the hostel, Janice McKenzie was taken off the midnight shift and promoted to social worker. One of her new responsibilities was to interview the hostel’s clients and record their family backgrounds and personal histories. While making the rounds among the men, she had completed her interviews with most of them but hadn’t, as yet, spoken to Robert.
When she approached him, he was sitting on his bunk untying his Greb boots. Her first impression was that he looked out of place. Not many of the men at the hostel cared about their appearance; Robert Whiteman did. He was always neatly dressed and well groomed. His thick black hair was trimmed and combed and he never went out without shaving. She thought he was handsome.
As she approached him, she noticed him lighting one cigarette from another with nicotine-stained fingers.
“Hi, my name is Janice McKenzie. I’m a social worker here and I’d like to get some background information on you if I could.”
Robert looked at her disdainfully.
“What for?”
Janice didn’t like the way he answered. Most of the men were more cooperative.
“Well, we need it for our records. According to this chart, you’ve been here for more than a week. We’d like some information about you for our files.”
“What type of information?”
Janice wouldn’t be deterred.
“Oh, just the routine stuff, like your birthplace, some family background, why you’re using the hostel, things like that.”
Robert didn’t reply so Janice went ahead.
“Your name please.”
“Robert Whiteman.”
“How do you spell that, sir?”
When she called him “sir”, Robert thought she was being snotty. He answered back sarcastically: “Whiteman. I’ll spell it for you nice and slowly. W-H-I-T-E-M-A-N. You know, like white man.”
“Listen, I’m just trying to do my job here and there’s no reason for you to be snarly.”
If Robert was snarly it was because he was caught unprepared. He hadn’t taken time to think through his story about Robert Whiteman’s background. It was something he should have done long ago. He knew that Whiteman was from Alberta, but all he knew about Alberta was that it had the Calgary Stampede. He only knew that because of his father’s love of rodeo. Robert was troubled because here he was sitting face-toface with this official, having to make up a whole life story on the spot.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to be snarly. What would you like to know?”
“Your birthplace?”
“Calgary, Alberta.”
“Father’s occupation?”
“He has his own security business.”
“Your reason for coming to Ottawa?”
“To get away from him.”
Such a curious answer stopped Janice for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure and continued her questions. As he answered, Robert wove a tangled web of lies. He told her he had been married before but his wife and child had been killed in a car accident. He had to get away from the bad memories of his father. His mother was an American and he had gone to school there.
There was some truth in everything he said. He did hate his father, his mother was an American. One of Gilbert Galvan’s old girlfriends and her daughter had been killed in a car crash years before. But none of it was really the truth.
As she asked more questions his answers became more reflective, more personal. He told her he didn’t think he belonged in the hostel. He felt it was for the lonely and the destitute. He didn’t feel that way about himself. He was sure that at this time in his life he was just on a momentary down turn. He was confident he would work his way out of it, and soon.
She agreed with him and said she believed him. She told him it was obvious he wasn’t a permanent down-and-outer or a hopeless alcoholic. She could see he was a person who was trying to forget his past; someone who wanted to start his life over.
Robert looked up at her with his soft brown eyes and told her that, although he appreciated her sentiments, he didn’t want to talk about it any more. She said she understood.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” he said. “You didn’t deserve that.”
His charm was starting to get through to her.
“That’s OK, don’t worry about it. I only have one more question.”
“Alright. Go ahead.”
“What’s your present occupation?”
Robert felt a rush of embarrassment come over him.
“I drive one of those ice cream bicycles for Mr. Frostee.” He saw her eyes searching his, wondering why he would be stuck with a job like that.
“Look,” he explained, “I just want to make it on my own. Without my father’s help, OK?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll find something better.”
“I’m sure you will, Robert.” She handed him his hostel identification card with the name Robert Whiteman written on it. “I’ll see you around. Probably tomorrow night.” Then she left to seek out another interviewee.
Robert gave a sigh of relief. He was glad the interview was over and was especially pleased to have another piece of identification with his new name on it.
Robert stayed at the hostel for about three weeks. It wasn’t much of a life for him. To save his money, he seldom went out anywhere. Every night he checked in before eleven and spent most of his free time reading and sleeping. One morning he woke to find that somebody had stolen all the money he had earned from the day before.
That finished him with the shelter. He was thoroughly disgusted that in a situation like this, where everybody was down on their luck, trying to get back on their feet, someone would steal the little bit he had earned. Besides that, there was no privacy. New people were always coming and going; he didn’t know anybody. Robert couldn’t stand the place any longer; he wanted out of there.
A man in a wheelchair named Joe who did volunteer work at the hostel had befriended Robert. He knew he was saving his money to go to Vancouver. When he heard that Robert had been ripped off, he offered to let him move into his apartment with him. Robert appreciated his invitation and accepted. Joe’s place wasn’t much, a subsidized apartment with barely any furniture, but it was better than the hostel. Robert helped to furnish the place by retrieving some cast-off furniture from the sidewalk and lugging it up to their living room. He helped keep the apartment clean and contributed his share of the modest rent. For a while, the two men got along well.
Robert hadn’t been living in the apartment very long when Joe asked him if he remembered a girl at the hostel named Janice. Robert told him he vaguely remembered her as the one who did the personal interview with him.
“She wants to know where you’ve gone,” Joe told him.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I told her you were staying with me.”
Robert wondered where all this was leading.
Joe said, “She wants you to give her a call.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
When Robert phoned Janice, they exchanged pleasantries briefly before she asked him if he would like to go out for a beer. That surprised him, but he hadn’t been out with a woman in such a long time, so he was happy to oblige.
That night they strolled around the Byward Market, a nighttime gathering spot of bars and restaurants in downtown Ottawa. The streets were jammed with people. It was a fun place to be. Robert was concerned because he only had twenty dollars. He had earned ten dollars that day and borrowed another ten from his young boss, Bradley Stafford.
He and Janice walked and talked and dropped into a number of different bars for a drink. Robert enjoyed her company right from the start. Although Janice was almost as tall as he was, Robert thought she was attractive. He particularly liked her shoulder length hair and the way it bounced when she walked.
Janice had thought he was handsome from the first time she met him in the hostel. He was always so clean cut and neat, he never looked scruffy like the others. Now she was finding him amusing and interesting. With his wholesome good looks and his pleasant personality, there was a lot to like about Robert Whiteman.
Both of them enjoyed drinking. Robert loved Canadian rye; Janice preferred cold draft beer. When he ran out of money, Janice put her money on the table. Although he was embarrassed by it, she handled it so well he soon got over it. Once their inhibitions were reduced, they went to the dance floor and let themselves go. They both loved to dance.
Between dances, Janice told him that she had wanted to ask him out when he was staying at the hostel but that was against regulations because he was a client. Now that he was no longer there, it was permissible. Robert enjoyed her directness. They were soon very comfortable together and talked the night away.
Robert revealed his intention to leave for B.C. in a few weeks to find work. He wanted to be up front and honest about that. He also told her some lies. He said he had a rich grandmother in England and retold his story about having a wealthy father in Alberta.
He embellished his experiences about going to military school in Texas and exaggerated his attendance at university in pursuit of a degree in political science. Janice found him fascinating. Before they knew it, the evening was ending, the bars were closing. When Robert walked her home, they agreed to see each other again.
Whiteman quit pedaling the ice cream bicycle when he got a better job with a firm on Gladstone Avenue called The Handyman. Here he was employed to do maintenance and repair work on a day-by-day basis. The money was better and he still got paid in cash.
He and Janice were now seeing each other regularly. This put him in a rather difficult position. He really liked her but didn’t want to get too involved because as soon as he had saved enough money he intended to leave Ottawa and go out west. This was his plan. He wanted a secure and permanent life in Vancouver where his true identity would never be discovered.
Before long, those plans were in jeopardy. His feelings for Janice began to cloud his thinking. By now they were going out every night of the week. Neither of them had a lot of money but they loved being together. If they didn’t meet at Noddy’s Bar on Bank Street, they went to the movies or walked along the Rideau Canal. It was a beautiful summer for both of them. By August their hand holding turned into lovemaking. Although their relationship was progressing beyond what Robert had intended, he still proposed to follow his plan and make his move out west.
While things were going so well with Janice, Robert was having trouble with Joe, his roommate. Joe was a lonely soul who had hoped he and Robert could be close friends. When Robert started to spend all his free time with Janice, Joe resented it. He gradually became more and more difficult until, finally, he asked Robert to move out. Since Robert was trying to save as much money as possible, his eviction posed a big financial problem. Janice resolved the situation very quickly; she invited him to move in with her.
They were compatible. Janice found Robert caring and considerate; he didn’t hesitate to help around the apartment. Occasionally he could be quiet, almost sullen, but most of the time he was fun and they had lots of laughs together. Above all, he was interesting. He was terribly bright and seemed to know something about everything.
Janice had an independent attitude that Robert found appealing. There was an aggressiveness about her that made her speak her mind and let her feelings be known. She had a quality bordering on dominance that gave her a raw sexual magnetism.
The more time they spent together the more they recognized they were falling in love. This was a problem for Robert because he still wanted to go out to Vancouver. To make his departure less painful for Janice, he lied. He told her he had a good job waiting for him on a gas barge in Vancouver harbour. She said she understood and she wouldn’t stand in his way. But she also made it clear she loved him and would be waiting for him in Ottawa. Robert was torn. The longer he remained with Janice the more he was tempted to forget about going out west.
When the construction company started paying him by cheque, it caused him some new problems. In order to cash his cheques without a lot of probing questions, Robert had to get an identification card from Money Mart. Using his few pieces of phoney ID he was able to procure a card from them that showed his photo and thumb print. This gave him a third piece of “legitimate” identification in the name of Robert Whiteman so that he could start saving his money in the bank. In establishing his bank account, he acquired even more personal identification in the form of a bank card. His persona as Robert Whiteman was becoming more and more firmly established.
As his relationship with Janice blossomed Robert found himself in a dilemma. He wanted to tell Janice about his past but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He thought it would spoil things between them; he figured there was no way she could stay in love with an outlaw. He concluded that it was wiser to leave well enough alone and keep the truth to himself.
On July 20th Janice threw Robert a small birthday party. She invited a few of her friends and bought him presents and a cake. Robert was extremely moved by her thoughtfulness and her generosity. He hadn’t had a birthday party since he was a little boy and it was astounding to him that someone could be so kind and considerate. It was the nicest thing that had happened to him in a very long time.
He and Janice were deeply in love. In most respects, their life together was very satisfying. Sometimes Robert’s moodiness was difficult for her to handle, but other than that, they got along great.
Then late in September, Robert was laid off work. Although this disturbed him, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Robert didn’t like his maintenance work. He felt it was demeaning and he resented taking orders. He was often late for work and frequently absent. However, it wasn’t his work performance that cost him his job. The company was downsizing and had amalgamated with their Sudbury office, and as a result, they had to let a lot of their employees go. Robert was just one of the many.
At first he was upset, but when he thought about it, Robert realized being laid off gave him a good reason to depart for Vancouver. Even though he was ambivalent about leaving Janice, he decided the time was right for him to go.
For Janice, his timing couldn’t have been worse. In August she learned that her father was suffering from terminal cancer. Janice and her dad had been very close and the news of his illness was unbearable for her. From the moment she heard the bad news about her dad, Robert was her primary support. Every time she asked, he drove her to Pembroke to see him. Robert sat with her for hours, listening as she released her feelings; through it all, he was completely understanding.
Because of her father’s sickness, Robert stayed in Ottawa a little longer than he planned, but he didn’t give up on his idea of going to Vancouver. He was determined to leave once the initial shock had faded.
Robert took her out to dinner and told her he was going. Janice tried to appear calm and reasonable but inside she was devastated. After all they had shared together she couldn’t believe he was just picking up and walking out of her life.
“Why can’t you apply for another job here in Ottawa?” she suggested.
Robert lied to her again.
“Don’t you remember, I got a job waiting for me out there. A good job. I got to give it a try. I’m going to put together some real money and then come back to you.”
Janice knew there was little to be gained by trying to change his mind. If he felt he had to go, she realized there was no sense standing in his way. Besides, she had got along fine after her split with her husband and she would get along fine when Robert left. It was important that she not let him see how painful this was to her. What made matters worse, she had good reason to suspect she was pregnant. But, since he was determined to leave, she was all the more resolved not to tell him about that.
Towards the end of September Janice borrowed a car from a friend and drove Robert to the bus station. Although she was still angry with him for leaving, she had decided to see him off. It was a strained, unemotional departure; she wasn’t going to cry and she wasn’t going to beg him to stay. Before he got on board the bus, she gave him a kiss and said goodbye. By the time Robert got to his seat, she was gone.
Leaving was not easy for him either. As soon as the huge bus began to move, he wanted to get off. Robert realized he was leaving one of the few people in his life that he had ever loved. But he was caught in the terrible bind of living a double life. He wanted her and needed her but staying with her made no sense. He could never tell her the truth about himself, about his past, escaping from jail and being a fugitive. If he did tell her about all that, she would probably leave him. She might even go further and turn him in to the police. He didn’t really believe she would do that but it was a possibility. On the other hand, if she accepted him as an outlaw, she would become an accomplice and could end up in deep trouble herself for harbouring a fugitive.
Robert was not going to turn himself in and start over because he knew he was facing revocation of his parole and a long stretch in an American prison. There was only one way out of his dilemma. He had to go away, put some distance between them so he could think this thing through.
But it was difficult to do. As soon as the bus pulled out of the station, Robert began to miss Janice. Whenever the bus stopped for any length of time, he called her collect. Robert told her he loved her and missed her. Janice told him she loved him and missed him too. She didn’t ask him to come back to Ottawa because she knew he would have to make that decision on his own. On the third phone call, Robert promised that if the job didn’t work out, he would come back right away so they could be together. The fact that he had no job in the first place seemed like a pointless thing to mention.
The farther west he went the more he wanted to stop the bus and get off. Janice had made his life more beautiful, more comfortable and satisfying. With her, for the first time in a long while, he had found a fragile security, living a legitimate existence, not constantly looking over his shoulder, hounded by the fear that the police were on his trail. He missed Ottawa too. It had become his home, a safe haven for him. Yet here he was on a bus, leaving behind both his beautiful woman and his new found security. What he was doing made absolutely no sense.
All these confusing thoughts rolled around in his head as he watched the cities go by: Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary. Wherever he was, he couldn’t get Janice out of his mind.
When he got to Vancouver, Robert took a tiny room with cooking facilities for $25 a night at the Cobalt Hotel. He paid for two weeks in advance, then went to a bar and got drunk. The next day he headed down to the unemployment office but was disturbed to discover that most of the posted jobs of any value required a union card, which, of course, he didn’t have. To make things worse, he learned the unemployment rate in the city was very high and there were few jobs of any kind available. From the unemployment office, he walked around downtown Vancouver making half-hearted attempts to find even a menial job. It soon became obvious that there was nothing.
He called Janice.
“Jesus, Janice, I miss you. I’ve made a big mistake coming out here. My job fell through and there’s no work of any kind. I’m living in a rat trap and my money’s running low. This was a stupid idea.”
“Well, come on home.” She missed him too but wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Yeah, well maybe I will. But I’m going to tell you something, if I do, I’m not going to take the bus. I got saddle sores from riding that goddamn thing. I thought I was going to suffocate in there.”
“Do you want me to send you some money?”
“No. Not right now. I’ll work something out. I’ll hitch-hike back if I have to.”
“Well work it out any way you can. I’ll be waiting for you. Let me know what you’re doing. If you need anything, let me know.”
“OK. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye.” Then he added, “Hey!”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. C’mon home when you can.”
The next day he went to the unemployment office again, but it was the same old story; there were very few jobs and all of them required a union card. One job offered part time work washing dishes but he wasn’t about to stoop to that.
Trying to decide what to do, he went for a walk through Stanley Park, an immense wooded preserve where giant fir trees line the shores of the Pacific Ocean. As he walked he tried to think of a way to resolve his present situation. No work. No prospects. No money. Wanting to go home to Ottawa. How to make it all work out? What to do? Where to begin? Many thoughts went through his mind but only one seemed to make any sense to him. That one idea kept coming back and coming back. It seemed like the only thing to do.
He decided to rob a bank.