From the pain of poverty to the Spirit of Christmas: Ted Long grew up dirt-poor in Toronto, depending on hand-outs. Now, he's the one giving people a hand up, Richard Starnes reports.
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Page: E1 / FRONT
Section: City
Byline: Richard Starnes
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
Ted Long knows exactly what poverty means. He was born into it and grew up surrounded by it in Regent Park, the 69-acre headquarters of despair for the poverty-stricken in the heart of downtown Toronto.
Life was a struggle and climbing out of it leaves scars. Mr. Long climbed out and never forgot. That's why he has spent the past 13 years trying to give the less fortunate a reason to smile at Christmas.
His Spirit of Christmas food hamper and toy program and his Christmas party for kids are just two of dozens of similar programs offered around Christmas.
Their importance cannot be overstated.
Latest city statistics show 40 per cent of all Ottawa food bank clients are children and the fastest growing group of users is the family.
After 15 years as a front-line social worker in the city, Kathy McCurdy knows all about that.
"I see people absolutely not eating because they are so desperate to keep a roof over their heads," she says. "People who were poor 10 years ago are now beyond that. Their situations are extreme.
"There have been cutbacks and cutbacks and cutbacks in funding. It's not unusual for adults to end up with malnutrition because they are giving whatever food they have to the children.
"And there's no escaping Christmas. Even if you have no television, there is no way you can go to the grocery store and escape the message to buy presents, get decorations. Imagine how bad it is for your self-esteem if you can provide none of this."
For Ms. McCurdy it is unacceptable that many families have nothing else to look forward to. But her work gives her a first-hand view of how much it really means to so many to be part of Mr. Long's events and many others like it across Ottawa.
Poverty coupled with sadness is not a new syndrome. It's just getting worse. Mr. Long sent out his first Christmas dinner invitations in 1990, when there was a smattering of food banks. By 1998, the number of food banks had grown to 64. Today there are 103 in Ottawa and the surrounding area.
Because he has first-hand childhood experience of "non-Christmases," Mr. Long may qualify as the perfect volunteer.
"Regent Park was about as low as you can get," he says. "Rents had to be geared to income and we had no income apart from the $40 for food from the Catholic church every two weeks. We had three small bedrooms in the apartment for four boys and mom. Two bunks in one, two in the other and one for mummy."
Mr. Long's dad, a soldier, was never in the picture.
"I didn't see him until I was two and it seems he came back from war a different person. The war destroyed him and he couldn't accept the responsibilities of a wife and four children.
"He was my father but, after the war, I guess he'd seen too much. What I do remember was not good with the bootlegging and carousing around."
So it was left to his mother, Nancy "the angel," to do her best with four rambunctious boys and no money. She worked for a couple of years as a packer for Sears. But she earned a pittance and the Long family's meagre life would not have been bearable without help.
"I didn't know what welfare was," says Mr. Long, Catholic by religion and proudly Irish by birth. All he did know was that it was usually his job to jump on his bike every second week and ride over to the church for the cash and then to the grocery store for food.
He was proud of his first job, earning 50 cents an hour as a grocery delivery boy at Dempster's grocery store on Toronto's, Kingston Road. He was 10 years old.
"I watched my mom struggle," he says. "The apartment was a small place and we had nowhere to go and, boys being boys, we'd get into fights and things got broken."
Nancy Long had a particular way with her, an inner strength and a powerful faith in her ability to set her boys on the right road, poverty or not.
Mr. Long's brown eyes soften and so does his voice.
"My mother was an angel," he almost whispers. "She taught us how to see the good in people, how to recognize the people that can hurt you for real and the people who are just out to scam you.
"She was knocked down all her life but it never, ever, took her off track. She had opportunities, but she turned them down because of her boys. It's sad we never really knew all this until we were older.
"The last thing she said to me was: 'Don't worry.'"
To those who know him, Ted Long epitomizes "don't worry," except when Christmas comes around and it is time to give the poor at least a little something to celebrate.
That's when his life lessons -- all that suffering that collected in his young brain mixed in with his mother's wisdom -- kick in.
"When I was a young guy, I saw and I never forgot," he says. "Growing up it was normal for us to have no money. Christmas was just time, another day. I wanted to find out if life was like that for everyone because it sure was for everyone I knew.
"I met a lot of people who were worse off than me.
"I was making four dollars an hour by the time I hit 20 but I could never turn those people down. If I had a quarter, I'd give them 20 cents. I didn't give them money, I took them to a restaurant and bought them something to eat so I could talk to them.
"There were lots of brilliant people like the University of Toronto professor I met. He was one of those who had got into that poverty rut and couldn't get out. He had given up. Once they were in the system, those people just gave up."
Mr. Long doesn't speak the language of giving up, although he will admit to being shattered when his marriage collapsed and he was left to bring up his son alone.
He earned his living, first running a small print shop and then working for Brewers Retail. "I worked in almost every store in Toronto and I saw it all from there," he says. "I watched as poverty moved from place to place. It's citywide down there. It's scary."
He also admits he could have wound up in the same poverty hole as those he saw most days. Had he not had his son to shepherd through childhood, he might have joined them.
He moved to Ottawa on a whim. He had come visiting a pal and fell for the place.
"Coming from the heart of Toronto, this was country to me," he says. "The people were so friendly."
He spreads his arm in a sweeping motion that encompasses Sonny's, a bar and grill that sits in a small strip mall on Baxter Road, beside the IKEA mall. " I know more people in this restaurant than I did in 40 years in Toronto."
Today, there are growing signs of poverty on Ottawa's streets, people huddled over hot air vents or in shop doorways. Shelters overflowing. Back then, it was almost invisible. But it was there, hidden but there.
Certainly, Mr. Long was hardly aware of poverty in the nation's capital until he began delivering all over the city for Southam Inc.'s advertising organization Flyer Force.
"I learned this city," he says. "Throughout Lowertown I met families on the (welfare) system who could not get off and it was then that I really realized how hard it is for a family or even a single person to get off that system.
"It's hidden here, the welfare people, hidden. It would amaze you. The shelters are jammed and they are going to get more jammed."
He offers an example.
"I met this girl the other day. She has an eight-year-old daughter and lives in a very moderate townhouse in the Hunt Club area. She can't get a job because she is not well, on medications. After rent and utilities are covered by social services, she has $220 a month to feed and clothe her and her daughter.
"In these circumstances, people get depressed, angry and sometimes violent and, in the end, they get so accustomed to being humiliated at Christmas that they lie about it to the children. They won't even come out. They feel trapped. They feel nobody cares any more."
Ted Long cares. He's been showing it for 13 years. He's not a celebrity -- doesn't want to be. He's not a registered charity -- doesn't want to be.
He's a 62-year-old painter, an honest, everyday blue collar worker with a long memory and a continuing need to give the poorest people a few moments of joy. In his mind, they deserve gifts as much as the next guy.
It's an itch that comes every Christmas and must be scratched. "Every year I say I can't do this anymore," he says. "But I can't stop. I'll probably do this until I die."
As December approaches, many, many hands are legitimately open, looking for donations to help the less fortunate hiding behind the curtains while the comfortable celebrate.
That's when Mr. Long's life lessons kick in. That and his twinkling Irish blarney, which he spreads liberally as he pulls at blue collar heart strings.
"Here at Sonny's we play games for a little cash," he says. "Fifty per cent of the pot goes to the Spirit of Christmas and 50 per cent to the winner, although, if I talk fast enough, I can get that off the winner as well.
"I only take money from people I know have it. If someone is in the bar and spending $20, I tell them: 'Spend $10 and give the rest to me.' " He smiles. "They usually do."
It takes lashings of goodwill as well as money to pull off what Mr. Long has managed for the past 13 years.
It began innocently enough in 1990 when he was approached by the owner of the Good Times Cafe in what used to be Shoppers City West at the corner of Baseline Road and Woodroffe Avenue.
He wanted to know if Mr. Long could find him a family who could do with some help at Christmas. It set the Irishman thinking and, before you knew, a modest idea had exploded.
Shoppers City had an open walkway between Loblaws and Zellers, perfect for a big party. The mall owners agreed, Loblaws offered their bread ovens to cook turkeys, Laidlaw donated a bus, and cash donations and volunteers began to multiply.
When the day arrived, the Laidlaw bus was decked with signs, volunteers climbed aboard and off they trundled into the poor neighborhoods. With the horn beeping and volunteers knocking on doors, seats were soon filled.
"There was food, presents and Santa," says Mr. Long. "At the beginning, we hoped for a few volunteers. Well, we had 150 volunteers and 100 people sat down to dinner."
As it turned out, that was a little more than an hors d'oeuvre. By the third year, Mr. Long had to sweet talk Laidlaw into providing seven buses to bring 1,000 of the less fortunate to the party.
The event was almost as much fun for volunteers as it was for guests. Year after year they came back from as far off as Cornwall and Toronto.
Then Shoppers City West was torn down and Ted Long's party lost its home.
"I tried all through the next year to find a place to have it," he says. "But everyone wanted money. We had nowhere to go."
That's when the tactics changed. If there was nowhere to party, take the party to the people. That's what happened last Christmas.
Santa Long organized the show and on Christmas Day his volunteer elves delivered packages that might last a week -- a 15-pound frozen turkey, 10 pounds of potatoes, 10 of carrots and five of onions along with dried goods and children's presents -- to 222 families across the city.
And there was still enough to party. Not the big family affair, just a blast for 100 kids at Sonny's a few days before Dec. 25. Mr. Long dreamed it up, Sylvie Blais made it happen.
Ms. Blais has volunteered with Mr. Long for years and was a natural choice when he asked if she could organize it. "You've got 15 days," he said. "No problem," she said, drawing a deep breath.
Ms. Blais, who has worked at Sonny's since it opened, had a lot to do. First she persuaded the boss to shut the restaurant for three or four hours last Dec. 11. Then she found 80 deserving children, a host of volunteers, a bus for pickups, Mr. and Mrs. Santa, a slap-up meal, a gift for every child, a karaoke machine and a movie.
"What a blast," she says. "We fed them, we laughed with them, we got them excited, some of them went a little crazy. I hope it gave them all something to remember because it certainly gave me something."
Along with a host of other volunteer events, Mr. Long and Ms. Blais are at it again this Christmas. That means they need turkeys, new toys and cash. A Spirit of Christmas bank account has been set up and donations can be dropped off at Sonny's Bar & Grill, 119 Baxter Road. Mr. Long is taking calls at 828-7306.
