DEB’S LIFE AND mine underwent a huge change late last year. It was one of those unexpected things that rocks you back on your heels. We didn’t receive earth-shattering news or lose someone special. But a seven-year business relationship was terminated, and that meant a substantial hit to our income.
Deb and I are both self-employed. At least we were. Deb worked as a business consultant, handling the daily affairs of a psychiatrist’s office in Vancouver. She did it remotely, using a computer program that allowed her to access the office computer from anywhere. She kept track of appointments and cancellations, paid bills and maintained inventory. The arrangement was inventive and successful.
Whenever we travelled to my speaking engagements, performances and workshops, Deb trundled along her computer, office ledgers and journals. She managed that office from Saskatoon, Christian Island, Regina, Winnipeg and, one memorable time, from the front seat of a rental car on a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway. She was a dedicated, loyal worker. The doc’s schedule was busy, and his practice was thriving. She spent long hours keeping his records straight, advising his patients over the phone and making sure everything stayed on an even keel.
And then, after seven years of doing the job, Deb was terminated by fax. The doc didn’t call to thank her personally for her years of work. The message she got was sterile and bluntly worded. That was hard.
I earn my living as a writer. My books come out regularly, although there’s generally at least a two-year gap between titles, and royalties on sales are paid twice a year. I freelance in radio and TV and write for newspapers and the occasional magazine and journal. But my money arrives in dribs and drabs, so we lost a lot when Deb lost that contract.
Luckily, my wife is a financial genius. Everything we do is budgeted for, and a significant part of every dollar that comes into our house is devoted to savings. Deb has made shrewd investments over time. Her ledgers are in awesome shape, too, so when her job ended, she knew precisely where we stood.
Our lifestyle is simple. We live rurally, with no need for trendy clothes, four lattes a day or toss-away shiny things we see in passing. We get our books from the library. We download movies. We eat simply but well, and last year, in a crush of conscience over my age and my waistline, I cut out soda pop. We chop our own wood and use the woodstove to heat the house in winter. We have workout equipment in the studio, and the land is a great place to stay fit with regular walks. I still buy CDs, because I’m a music freak, and we each pander a bit to our particular joys, but we’ve always kept our acquisitions to a reasonable cost. So even before the loss of income we were living a frugal, sensible life.
The tenants in our rooming house have also taught us a great deal about managing on very little. That’s really helped us to keep things in perspective. The people who live there have forged a community out of their collective poverty. They share cigarettes, food and supplies. They check on each other if they haven’t seen someone for a few days. It’s an amazing thing to watch, and it offers a view of marginalized people most of us never get.
In 2008, Statistics Canada defined the poverty line (they like to use the term “Low Income Cut-offs”) for a single person living in a major city as $21, 666 before taxes. Because they exist on social service payments, all fourteen of our tenants live on an income almost $15, 000 below that determinant. Take Lionel, for example. He suffers from a mental illness and is chronically unemployable. He’s so incapacitated he hasn’t managed to get a diagnosis. Disability status would qualify him for a higher payment, but Lionel wouldn’t allow anyone to label him as disabled anyway. So he exists on the monthly welfare payments he receives from the B.C. government, currently $610 a month. After paying rent, Lionel lives on $205 a month. If you do the math, that means he lives on $2, 460 a year. Even if he spends only $150 a month on groceries, less than what many of us spend in a week, he goes hungry a lot of the time.
Last year, we bought slow cookers for all of our tenants so they could fashion simple meals that would last a few days. Everybody has their own refrigerator, too. But there are some months when the welfare payments are five weeks apart, and when you walk into the house near the end of that long struggle, hunger hangs in the air. I never realized before that you could feel someone else’s starvation. Deb and I bought cases of food from Costco during one long month and left them in the common room. The food was gone in minutes.
Most of our tenants walk to the Salvation Army once a week for bread and pastries. There’s a St. Vincent de Paul kitchen not far away where they can get a hot breakfast, and a mission that serves suppers. There are people who say you can’t starve in Canada, but I’d challenge any of them to try and live like our tenants do for one month. Starvation doesn’t just mean not having food—starvation of the spirit is long, debilitating and lonely. Few people ever think about that.
But the people in our building survive with grace. They understand their limitations, and they live within them. They’ve learned to accept, with a grim sort of satisfaction, that as long as they have walls around them and a roof over top, they’ll be okay. They know they will likely never move up from where they are, but they appreciate small mercies and unexpected boons.
So, sure, Deb and I lost a lucrative contract. Our monthly cash flow has decreased. Our ability to be frivolous has been curtailed. But we feel gratitude for what we have. We’re thankful for our ability to be productive and creative. We’re overjoyed that our home is exactly the place we want, and we can’t abide being away from it for long. The true spirit of Canada doesn’t emanate from the glass and steel edifices of Bay Street, the tumult of the TSX or grand neighbourhoods full of huge houses. It doesn’t come from big business, corporate enterprise or the chest-thumping grandiosity of big oil. No, the spirit of Canada resides in those who struggle every day to be here. It rests in the hearts of those for whom the poverty line is too high to even reach for, those who trundle home the day-old bread, comb the alleyways for bottles or limit the laundry to once a month to make their three changes of clothes last longer. That’s where the spirit of Canada really shines—in the will of the people who survive despite the deck being stacked so dauntingly against them.
So Deb and I carry on. We love each other, and there isn’t anything that can knock us off that foundation. Low on cash, rich in spirit. Our tenants have taught us that.