| "HOUSTON V. HOUSTON ET AL." BY CALLUM HOUSTON |
Powell River, British Columbia waterfront. This is my first meeting with my dad since I was
released from prison in November of 2001. He makes no effort to conceal an expression of naked
happiness, an expression that tells me, without words, that he is pleased to be seeing his son for the
first time in over two years. Sentimentality aside, a very important question must be asked before
my visit comes to an end.
"Dad, what's going on with your lawyer Carey Veinotte?"
A look of baffled puzzlement appears on my father's face. "Who?" he asks.
"Your lawyer with the law firm Taylor Veinotte Sullivan in Vancouver."
He leans forward in his chair at the other end of the kitchen table and scrunches his face in
increased perplexity at my question. "Who?" he asks again.
"The lawyers involved in the lawsuit against me. The one in Vancouver," I tell him.
The puzzled look on his face gives way to a look of understanding. Now he seems to know what
I'm talking about. He leans back in his chair.
"Lesley," he says.
Taylor Veinotte Sullivan is one of a number of Vancouver law firms who have ostensibly claimed
to represent my father, Scot Guthrie Houston, in a couple of legal actions in British Columbia's
Supreme Court. Why do I say "ostensibly"? Because my dad is infirm of mind; mentally
incapacitated; not in possession of his full faculties; unable to instruct counsel. There has been no
official certification made by a court, but I know it to be so. He is my father after all. On the
morning of October 17, 1996, while driving his Dodge Ram pickup truck to work, he barely
survived a massive stroke that saw him crawling at the doorstep of death's dominion. For six
months his body was almost entirely paralyzed. Gradually, after much time and therapy, he
regained some mobility, although his right side remained immobilized. It wasn't just his physical
being that was damaged. It was like the stroke had taken a whisk to his brain and scrambled his
mind. His speech was limited to single word phrases that usually made little sense to the listener
although they may have made absolute sense to him. The same question asked twice might garner
two different responses. He looked for clues in your reaction to see if he was providing the
appropriate answer. Although my father was still alive, and occasionally familiar mannerisms would
surface in him, he was someone else now. I could talk to him, but we would never again have a
meaningful conversation of any kind. In a sense, he had gone full circle: The child that had become
a man was now a child again. It was as confusing for him as it was for me. I didn't know it at the
time, but it was then that I began grieving the loss of a parent. My father as I had known him was
lost forever.
My father, an accountant by trade, immigrated to Canada in 1962. He has never voted in a
Canadian election. He was born in Belgium and raised in Scotland and he remains a UK citizen.
His father, a flax merchant who was rarely home, had passed away when dad was sixteen. As far
back as I can remember my father had been inflicted with a hearing impairment, but he never
made an effort to remedy it. I sometimes suspected that his hearing problem may have been more
manipulation than reality. My relationship with my father had been hot and cold - mostly cold -
since my parents split up when I was in my early teens. In an extremely rare moment of candour
he once admitted that because he had seen little of his own father he lacked a reference to follow
in his role as a parent. The divorce had been a caustic and foul affair, my father's deep pockets
allowing him to purchase a court settlement to his liking. He was a troubled man suppressing
simmering desperation in the grand tradition of generations of men from the British Isles. A critical
turning point in his life was an audit by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of BC in the
mid-'80s that resulted in him resigning from the association. He was a noticeably humbled man for a
time after that. I think the expulsion also unleashed the more profligate side of his persona.
When my father was struck by that lightning bolt from within I immediately went into action.
During a lay over on a 1992 trip to Asia, dad and his second wife Doreen overnighted with my
girlfriend Yvonne and I. Doreen privately told me that my father was in the midst of a
psychological mortality crisis. The night before his trip to Malaysia dad took me aside and said that
should health concerns ever incapacitate him, I was to take over the business dealings. The
succession logistics were being put into place. He was appointing me both executor of his will
and president of the family companies. Now, six years later, the time had come to follow through
with my father's charge. Dad was unmarried, divorced a second time and essentially alone. He
wasn't dead but he was certainly out of commission. As his eldest son it was my responsibility to
go to him, assess the situation, and do whatever I felt necessary to keep things in order. My sister
was not of the same mind. Lesley, four years my junior at 30, would have preferred I was not
involved at all. She made this clear with hysterical tantrums that exploded whenever I attempted to
discuss ways of handling dad's arrangements. It was déjà vu. We were re-enacting childhood
squabbles of twenty years previous. Time and relationships and distances had passed, but bitter
resentments were entrenched like the roots of a two hundred year old oak tree. It seemed like she
took a contrarian stance to my every point of view on a matter of principle alone. Because I hadn't
nurtured a loving relationship with dad, she cried, I was not now entitled to make a sudden
entrance into his life at this late stage. She had been the loyal progeny, not I. I was intruding on her
domain. Regardless, like geese flying south in the winter or salmon struggling upstream to spawn,
my sense of duty was innate and unquestioning.
He lived in Powell River, British Columbia, a small pulp mill town about a hundred miles north of
Vancouver, accessible only by ferry or air. My employer was incredibly supportive and gave me
carte blanche to take whatever time I considered necessary to get things sorted out. The day after I
got the call about my father's condition I left. I would have my work cut out for me. My father's
affairs were a bloody nightmare.
First I discovered that he was being investigated by the police for fraud committed against
MacMillan Bloedel, a forest products corporation with interests in Powell River. Then, one
Sunday evening as Yvonne and I were quietly watching the television after dinner, a process server
shows up and presents me with documents that name a company of which I am president as a
defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by MacMillan Bloedel. I knew nothing about the allegations that
were described in the papers. Damn him. My good name sullied by actions not of my doing. No
wonder he had a stroke. Questions were asked, and although an associate of his was charged, my
father never was. Eventually the civil case was dropped. It was a painstakingly slow and
methodical process, but eventually I got his affairs into a manageable order.
While he was in the hospital I traveled to see him every weekend, leaving Friday after work and
returning home Sunday. After a few months he was transferred to the excellent G.F. Strong
Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver. Because G.F. Strong was close to my place of employment I
visited him daily after work.
When it was time for him to be discharged from rehab Lesley insisted that she wanted him to stay
with her and her husband Tom Bradley, a firefighter, in their North Vancouver condominium.
They soon discovered it was more than they could handle. I would pick dad up and take him on
the weekends to relieve the pressure on them, but after four months they'd had enough. My sister
and her husband literally dumped him on my doorstep one Sunday evening – brought him up to
the front porch with some of his belongings, knocked on the door and left without a word to me
or my wife. Like a petulant child, my father decided he didn't want to stay with us and began
wandering off down the street into the night. His mind didn't seem to register that he needed a
place to live. After thirty minutes of persuasion I was able to get him to come into the house. He
stayed at our home in Crescent Beach in South Surrey for six months. There were four of us: my
wife, her son, me, my father. It worked out okay. He went to the local stroke club twice a week
and I would take him out to practice his walking when I got home from work. After six months his
mobility and communication seemed sufficient enough that he could live on his own, so my wife
and I set him up in a retirement complex in the White Rock area. All was pleasant for a time. And
then Melissa entered the picture.
Melissa was a matronly woman in her fifties who made her living doing the rounds at the local
retirement homes assisting residents. What exactly she did for them I'm not sure, but she worked
independently, not directly affiliated with the homes. Melissa had approached my father with the
proposal that he rent a room in her home. The rent would be lower than he was presently paying
and the environment more comfortable, less institutional she reasoned. Dad decided that this was
what he wanted so I accommodated him – notice was given, a moving company hired, and the
transfer was done.
Like Lesley and Tom before them, it didn't take long for Melissa and her husband to realize that
they were not cut out to cohabitate with one such as my father. I received numerous phone calls
from both Melissa and her husband complaining that all he did was go out for a walk around the
block twice a day and spent the rest of it sitting in his room. When he spoke, they lamented, he
spewed profanity; when he ate, he dribbled food and saliva. I couldn't disagree. When you got my
father, these were the idiosyncrasies that came along for the ride. They implied that I was negligent
in not getting proper rehabilitation for him. Little did they know that he had received the best
rehabilitation available and the level of ability that he was at now was much greater than anyone
had ever expected. Around this time he was receiving treatment for prostate cancer and one of the
side effects was very minor incontinence. Melissa asked me to purchase a pack of adult diapers. I
bought the diapers and delivered them to her but dad refused to wear them. The donning of
diapers was an affront to his masculine dignity and probably an unnecessary overreaction on
Melissa's part. I began receiving calls from both Melissa and her husband stating that my father
was "shitting all over the place." This was more likely a metaphor for how they felt about him in
general than reality. I listened to their grievances but I didn't know what they wanted me to do
about it.
One day I came home from work to find my father sitting in the living room watching the
television, my wife in the kitchen preparing dinner.
"What's going on? Why is Dad here?" I asked.
Yvonne proceeded to tell me that Melissa had been admitted to the hospital suffering from anxiety
after her husband had been gone for forty-eight hours, apparently having abandoned her. Seems he
had done this before. The police had picked my father up from Melissa's home and brought him
over to our place.
The husband returned, Melissa left the hospital, and my dad went back to them three days later.
Obviously the writing was on the wall. It wasn't long before I received another call from Melissa
saying she'd had enough and that we had thirty days to find somewhere else for my father to live.
Two retirement homes and two hip replacements later, I finally got dad set up in another residence
in our neighbourhood.
Now it was my turn.
In late 1998 it all caught up with me. I had had enough. Prior to my father's stroke my life had
been quiet and sedate. I needed to return to that somehow. I decided I wanted solitude, seclusion,
contact with no one. I needed to rest my mind. I announced to Yvonne that I was leaving. She
didn't take it well. The separation was extremely hard on her - which made it extremely hard on
me. She was my best friend. It broke my heart to see my best friend cry. But over the last two
years I had changed. And these changes in me created difficulties that were straining our ten-year
relationship. So I set myself up in an apartment, isolating myself, refusing to purchase even a
phone or television.
Tearing myself away proved to be much harder than I ever imagined. I suffered a mental collapse;
a breakdown. A door had opened to a personal crisis of life-changing proportion. Paralyzing
depression, anxiety and paranoia crept up on me out of nowhere like a deadly virus. I was sinking
into a bog of dark psychological desolation. When I got to a doctor he was unequivocal and quick
in his diagnosis: bi-polar disorder probably of the situational type brought on by the stress in my
life. I was prescribed anti-depressants, I vacated my position as a producer at a Vancouver soft
rock radio station, and I began receiving disability benefits. Months later, after I regained mental
stability, my wife and I reconciled and began living together again.
Meanwhile, back at the retirement home my father had taken up with a lady friend. She was a
proud woman in her late seventies called Carol Froese. Tall and thin, Carol held her head high in a
stately manner when she entered a room. Twice a widow, Carol's last husband had suffered a
fatal heart attack and Carol herself had been hit by a stroke. She had left behind a brand new
home in British Columbia's Okanagan region. It was a recent mortgaged purchase and was now up
for sale. She desperately wanted to sell it. Like a new parent she was eager to show real estate
photos of the house to anyone with even a cursory interest. I visited them once a week and the
three of us would go out for lunch at a local eatery, usually Chinese food. It seemed to me that all
was smooth sailing at this point: dad was in a home that I considered first class, he had
companionship and he seemed content. I guess he felt the same way because he decided he didn't
need me anymore. My usefulness expired, I was to be discarded like a dairy product gone sour.
The night of Saturday, June 3, 2000 started out as a pleasant one for Yvonne and I. It was a
delightful early summer evening, residual heat from the sun-baked asphalt warming the legs of
giggling children in shorts playing in the street. Having finished supper we sat in the living room
quietly watching television, our two cats dozing on the carpet before us, when a figure appeared at
our doorstep. I opened the door. The man, a process server, tossed an envelope at my feet and
left. I picked it up and opened it. It was from a lawyer. It was a document revoking my father's
power of attorney. At the bottom was my father's almost indecipherable signature. Beside his
signature was Carol's signature as his witness. Attached on another page was a statement sworn
and signed by Carol stating that she believed my father to be of sound mind and reason. I was
unaware that Carol had the expertise or authority to make such a judgment. It certainly would hold
no legal weight.
Now, my father did not have a phone, he did not have transportation. He had extreme difficulty
communicating, his memory was damaged. He was suffering from dementia. There was no way
he could have found a lawyer, traveled to the lawyer's office and communicated his desires. Seeing
Carol's signature on both pages of the two page document made it clear where his assistance was
coming from.
The next day I went to visit him. I intended to take him out for lunch, just the two of us, and find
out why he suddenly felt it necessary to communicate with me through a lawyer.
When I got to the retirement complex I passed Carol in the hall. She was leaving dad's room. With
a look of contemptuous fire in her eyes she hissed, "I'm so disappointed with you, Callum. How
could you do this to your father?"
I said nothing. I continued on to dad's room. I knocked and entered. He was lying on his bed. I sat
down on the couch in front of him. But before either of us could say anything Carol was back.
She was indignant.
"I can't just walk away from this! I've got to say my peace!" she shrieked. "How dare you live off
your father! Why don't you go out and get a job? You're so lazy! I would never permit my son to
conduct himself the way you are! Don't you see what you're doing to your father?"
I was amazed. Who was this woman - a woman that I barely even knew - to talk to me in such a
manner? Did she think she was my mother? Where could her misguided wrath have originated
from? I wondered.
When she stopped talking I politely asked, "Are you finished?"
"Well, yes I am," she replied. Her rage diffused, she appeared somewhat astonished at herself for
her outburst.
"Let me ask you this then: Do you always go around interfering in the affairs of other peoples
families?"
"No."
"Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't start with this one, okay."
She was flummoxed, nonplussed. I don't think anyone had ever spoken to her this way. For
someone my age to take any approach other than deferential with a senior citizen was utterly
incredible to her, it just wasn't done. With a gasp of shock she stumbled around in a circle a
couple of times as though wounded and confused (I was concerned she might actually collapse)
and then she bolted from the room, speechless.
My father was a man of arrogant, frightened pride. All his life he had hidden his fears and
insecurities within the empty refuge of money, power and control. It was punishing for him to be
seen by me, his son, in a state of impotence and weakness. It was becoming clear. He resented
me. Melissa was his first attempt to dismiss me. That had failed. With Carol's assistance he would
now try again. A virtual stranger, she was appointed (or appointed herself) overseer of my father's
concerns. I went back to see him once or twice after Carol's distraught outburst, but a cold barrier
had been erected for me to face. The weekly lunch excursions ended. In my father's mind I was
out of the picture. He wanted nothing more to do with me. I knew problems would arise, but what
could I do? My help was not welcome anymore. My father had been poisoned against me.
I contacted my sister and made her aware of the situation. Her lack of concern and impassive
response gave me the feeling that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. I got the indication
that she too was glad to finally see my extrication. She had always said that dad was completely
capable of looking after himself. I considered it astonishing that she thought this was possible.
Three weeks later I received a phone call from my mother. She was at Lesley's home babysitting
my sister's newborn son Ross. She did this three days a week while Lesley worked at her job at
the bank.
"Callum, your father has gone to the police! He's accusing you of stealing from him!"
"You've got to be kidding. How do you know?"
"I just talked to Lesley. She was questioned by a police officer at work."
I was mortified. "Good God. What did they ask her?"
"They asked her if she knew anything about it and if there was any truth to it."
Oh that's just great. The decision of whether I was to be the subject of a criminal investigation
determined by my estranged sister.
"What did she say?"
"She said she didn't know of any wrongdoing, and that your father was aware of everything that
you did."
Thank Christ.
"Well, I suppose the police will be coming around to ask me some questions at some point."
And so I began waiting. Waiting for the white sedan to pull into the driveway; the unmistakable
police-knock on the door; the "do you have a moment to answer a few questions, sir?". But it
didn't happen. I was never questioned.
One of the companies that I was now managing, Alco Enterprises Ltd., had a $105,000 secured
mortgage with Dina Drummond, a businesswoman from Powell River, British Columbia. In
October 2000 she put a stop payment order on her cheque thus becoming delinquent with the
payments. I retained Daniel D. Nugent of Vancouver's Webster Hudson & Akerly to initiate
foreclosure action against her. Drummond retained a lawyer called Michael R. Giroday as her
advocate.
Around the same time as I was preparing to put the foreclosure into motion I received a letter from
the Public Guardian and Trustee of British Columbia. This is an official provincial office that
answers to the court. One of the trustee's mandates is "to provide assistance to adults who need
support for financial and personal decision making." Also, if there is an allegation of abuse, the
trustee can be asked to investigate. The letter said that my father had been referred to them (likely
by the police – it didn't say) for assessment of his situation. The reality was, with my presence
removed, dad would need assistance in the management of financial and living matters. But I knew
my father. And I knew that as long as there was even a minute particle of free will remaining
within his injured mind, there would be absolutely no way he would permit any kind of outside
government body to have a say in the running of his life. Two months later I received a follow-up
letter from the public trustee's office stating that they had reviewed my father's circumstances and
did not find any grounds for their involvement.
After I received the initial letter from the public trustee I received a letter dated August 15, 2000
from a lawyer called R. Alan Hambrook of White Rock, BC. Purporting to represent my dad,
Hambrook alleged that I misused my father's funds. No figures or evidence were provided, just the
empty accusation. The lawyer also demanded that I disclose the disposition of various business
bank accounts to him. I contacted him by phone and discussed the issue with him, telling him that
there was no basis for such an accusation. I also wrote him a letter to that effect, stating that I now
considered the matter closed. Then I gathered up all the company documentation I had, brokerage
statements and financial statements, and dropped it off at my father's apartment. Even though
I had given dad all the records I had, I received one more letter from Hambrook on September 12,
2000 asking for more business records. Hambrook also confirmed that dad didn't want me to
handle any of his business affairs. I didn't reply and I did not hear from Hambrook ever again.
Another lawyer from another local company contacted me with similar imputations. Again, I told
him that there was no foundation for these continued requests. He disappeared.
A disturbing pattern was becoming evident: My father, with the assistance and support of someone
very close to him (Carol perhaps?), was consumed with grinding me - and absolutely refused to
take "no" for an answer. Receiving correspondence from solicitors is jarring. How many times do
I have to keep repeating the same thing; defending myself? I was starting to feel a degree of
increasing exasperation.
released from prison in November of 2001. He makes no effort to conceal an expression of naked
happiness, an expression that tells me, without words, that he is pleased to be seeing his son for the
first time in over two years. Sentimentality aside, a very important question must be asked before
my visit comes to an end.
"Dad, what's going on with your lawyer Carey Veinotte?"
A look of baffled puzzlement appears on my father's face. "Who?" he asks.
"Your lawyer with the law firm Taylor Veinotte Sullivan in Vancouver."
He leans forward in his chair at the other end of the kitchen table and scrunches his face in
increased perplexity at my question. "Who?" he asks again.
"The lawyers involved in the lawsuit against me. The one in Vancouver," I tell him.
The puzzled look on his face gives way to a look of understanding. Now he seems to know what
I'm talking about. He leans back in his chair.
"Lesley," he says.
Taylor Veinotte Sullivan is one of a number of Vancouver law firms who have ostensibly claimed
to represent my father, Scot Guthrie Houston, in a couple of legal actions in British Columbia's
Supreme Court. Why do I say "ostensibly"? Because my dad is infirm of mind; mentally
incapacitated; not in possession of his full faculties; unable to instruct counsel. There has been no
official certification made by a court, but I know it to be so. He is my father after all. On the
morning of October 17, 1996, while driving his Dodge Ram pickup truck to work, he barely
survived a massive stroke that saw him crawling at the doorstep of death's dominion. For six
months his body was almost entirely paralyzed. Gradually, after much time and therapy, he
regained some mobility, although his right side remained immobilized. It wasn't just his physical
being that was damaged. It was like the stroke had taken a whisk to his brain and scrambled his
mind. His speech was limited to single word phrases that usually made little sense to the listener
although they may have made absolute sense to him. The same question asked twice might garner
two different responses. He looked for clues in your reaction to see if he was providing the
appropriate answer. Although my father was still alive, and occasionally familiar mannerisms would
surface in him, he was someone else now. I could talk to him, but we would never again have a
meaningful conversation of any kind. In a sense, he had gone full circle: The child that had become
a man was now a child again. It was as confusing for him as it was for me. I didn't know it at the
time, but it was then that I began grieving the loss of a parent. My father as I had known him was
lost forever.
My father, an accountant by trade, immigrated to Canada in 1962. He has never voted in a
Canadian election. He was born in Belgium and raised in Scotland and he remains a UK citizen.
His father, a flax merchant who was rarely home, had passed away when dad was sixteen. As far
back as I can remember my father had been inflicted with a hearing impairment, but he never
made an effort to remedy it. I sometimes suspected that his hearing problem may have been more
manipulation than reality. My relationship with my father had been hot and cold - mostly cold -
since my parents split up when I was in my early teens. In an extremely rare moment of candour
he once admitted that because he had seen little of his own father he lacked a reference to follow
in his role as a parent. The divorce had been a caustic and foul affair, my father's deep pockets
allowing him to purchase a court settlement to his liking. He was a troubled man suppressing
simmering desperation in the grand tradition of generations of men from the British Isles. A critical
turning point in his life was an audit by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of BC in the
mid-'80s that resulted in him resigning from the association. He was a noticeably humbled man for a
time after that. I think the expulsion also unleashed the more profligate side of his persona.
When my father was struck by that lightning bolt from within I immediately went into action.
During a lay over on a 1992 trip to Asia, dad and his second wife Doreen overnighted with my
girlfriend Yvonne and I. Doreen privately told me that my father was in the midst of a
psychological mortality crisis. The night before his trip to Malaysia dad took me aside and said that
should health concerns ever incapacitate him, I was to take over the business dealings. The
succession logistics were being put into place. He was appointing me both executor of his will
and president of the family companies. Now, six years later, the time had come to follow through
with my father's charge. Dad was unmarried, divorced a second time and essentially alone. He
wasn't dead but he was certainly out of commission. As his eldest son it was my responsibility to
go to him, assess the situation, and do whatever I felt necessary to keep things in order. My sister
was not of the same mind. Lesley, four years my junior at 30, would have preferred I was not
involved at all. She made this clear with hysterical tantrums that exploded whenever I attempted to
discuss ways of handling dad's arrangements. It was déjà vu. We were re-enacting childhood
squabbles of twenty years previous. Time and relationships and distances had passed, but bitter
resentments were entrenched like the roots of a two hundred year old oak tree. It seemed like she
took a contrarian stance to my every point of view on a matter of principle alone. Because I hadn't
nurtured a loving relationship with dad, she cried, I was not now entitled to make a sudden
entrance into his life at this late stage. She had been the loyal progeny, not I. I was intruding on her
domain. Regardless, like geese flying south in the winter or salmon struggling upstream to spawn,
my sense of duty was innate and unquestioning.
He lived in Powell River, British Columbia, a small pulp mill town about a hundred miles north of
Vancouver, accessible only by ferry or air. My employer was incredibly supportive and gave me
carte blanche to take whatever time I considered necessary to get things sorted out. The day after I
got the call about my father's condition I left. I would have my work cut out for me. My father's
affairs were a bloody nightmare.
First I discovered that he was being investigated by the police for fraud committed against
MacMillan Bloedel, a forest products corporation with interests in Powell River. Then, one
Sunday evening as Yvonne and I were quietly watching the television after dinner, a process server
shows up and presents me with documents that name a company of which I am president as a
defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by MacMillan Bloedel. I knew nothing about the allegations that
were described in the papers. Damn him. My good name sullied by actions not of my doing. No
wonder he had a stroke. Questions were asked, and although an associate of his was charged, my
father never was. Eventually the civil case was dropped. It was a painstakingly slow and
methodical process, but eventually I got his affairs into a manageable order.
While he was in the hospital I traveled to see him every weekend, leaving Friday after work and
returning home Sunday. After a few months he was transferred to the excellent G.F. Strong
Rehabilitation Centre in Vancouver. Because G.F. Strong was close to my place of employment I
visited him daily after work.
When it was time for him to be discharged from rehab Lesley insisted that she wanted him to stay
with her and her husband Tom Bradley, a firefighter, in their North Vancouver condominium.
They soon discovered it was more than they could handle. I would pick dad up and take him on
the weekends to relieve the pressure on them, but after four months they'd had enough. My sister
and her husband literally dumped him on my doorstep one Sunday evening – brought him up to
the front porch with some of his belongings, knocked on the door and left without a word to me
or my wife. Like a petulant child, my father decided he didn't want to stay with us and began
wandering off down the street into the night. His mind didn't seem to register that he needed a
place to live. After thirty minutes of persuasion I was able to get him to come into the house. He
stayed at our home in Crescent Beach in South Surrey for six months. There were four of us: my
wife, her son, me, my father. It worked out okay. He went to the local stroke club twice a week
and I would take him out to practice his walking when I got home from work. After six months his
mobility and communication seemed sufficient enough that he could live on his own, so my wife
and I set him up in a retirement complex in the White Rock area. All was pleasant for a time. And
then Melissa entered the picture.
Melissa was a matronly woman in her fifties who made her living doing the rounds at the local
retirement homes assisting residents. What exactly she did for them I'm not sure, but she worked
independently, not directly affiliated with the homes. Melissa had approached my father with the
proposal that he rent a room in her home. The rent would be lower than he was presently paying
and the environment more comfortable, less institutional she reasoned. Dad decided that this was
what he wanted so I accommodated him – notice was given, a moving company hired, and the
transfer was done.
Like Lesley and Tom before them, it didn't take long for Melissa and her husband to realize that
they were not cut out to cohabitate with one such as my father. I received numerous phone calls
from both Melissa and her husband complaining that all he did was go out for a walk around the
block twice a day and spent the rest of it sitting in his room. When he spoke, they lamented, he
spewed profanity; when he ate, he dribbled food and saliva. I couldn't disagree. When you got my
father, these were the idiosyncrasies that came along for the ride. They implied that I was negligent
in not getting proper rehabilitation for him. Little did they know that he had received the best
rehabilitation available and the level of ability that he was at now was much greater than anyone
had ever expected. Around this time he was receiving treatment for prostate cancer and one of the
side effects was very minor incontinence. Melissa asked me to purchase a pack of adult diapers. I
bought the diapers and delivered them to her but dad refused to wear them. The donning of
diapers was an affront to his masculine dignity and probably an unnecessary overreaction on
Melissa's part. I began receiving calls from both Melissa and her husband stating that my father
was "shitting all over the place." This was more likely a metaphor for how they felt about him in
general than reality. I listened to their grievances but I didn't know what they wanted me to do
about it.
One day I came home from work to find my father sitting in the living room watching the
television, my wife in the kitchen preparing dinner.
"What's going on? Why is Dad here?" I asked.
Yvonne proceeded to tell me that Melissa had been admitted to the hospital suffering from anxiety
after her husband had been gone for forty-eight hours, apparently having abandoned her. Seems he
had done this before. The police had picked my father up from Melissa's home and brought him
over to our place.
The husband returned, Melissa left the hospital, and my dad went back to them three days later.
Obviously the writing was on the wall. It wasn't long before I received another call from Melissa
saying she'd had enough and that we had thirty days to find somewhere else for my father to live.
Two retirement homes and two hip replacements later, I finally got dad set up in another residence
in our neighbourhood.
Now it was my turn.
In late 1998 it all caught up with me. I had had enough. Prior to my father's stroke my life had
been quiet and sedate. I needed to return to that somehow. I decided I wanted solitude, seclusion,
contact with no one. I needed to rest my mind. I announced to Yvonne that I was leaving. She
didn't take it well. The separation was extremely hard on her - which made it extremely hard on
me. She was my best friend. It broke my heart to see my best friend cry. But over the last two
years I had changed. And these changes in me created difficulties that were straining our ten-year
relationship. So I set myself up in an apartment, isolating myself, refusing to purchase even a
phone or television.
Tearing myself away proved to be much harder than I ever imagined. I suffered a mental collapse;
a breakdown. A door had opened to a personal crisis of life-changing proportion. Paralyzing
depression, anxiety and paranoia crept up on me out of nowhere like a deadly virus. I was sinking
into a bog of dark psychological desolation. When I got to a doctor he was unequivocal and quick
in his diagnosis: bi-polar disorder probably of the situational type brought on by the stress in my
life. I was prescribed anti-depressants, I vacated my position as a producer at a Vancouver soft
rock radio station, and I began receiving disability benefits. Months later, after I regained mental
stability, my wife and I reconciled and began living together again.
Meanwhile, back at the retirement home my father had taken up with a lady friend. She was a
proud woman in her late seventies called Carol Froese. Tall and thin, Carol held her head high in a
stately manner when she entered a room. Twice a widow, Carol's last husband had suffered a
fatal heart attack and Carol herself had been hit by a stroke. She had left behind a brand new
home in British Columbia's Okanagan region. It was a recent mortgaged purchase and was now up
for sale. She desperately wanted to sell it. Like a new parent she was eager to show real estate
photos of the house to anyone with even a cursory interest. I visited them once a week and the
three of us would go out for lunch at a local eatery, usually Chinese food. It seemed to me that all
was smooth sailing at this point: dad was in a home that I considered first class, he had
companionship and he seemed content. I guess he felt the same way because he decided he didn't
need me anymore. My usefulness expired, I was to be discarded like a dairy product gone sour.
The night of Saturday, June 3, 2000 started out as a pleasant one for Yvonne and I. It was a
delightful early summer evening, residual heat from the sun-baked asphalt warming the legs of
giggling children in shorts playing in the street. Having finished supper we sat in the living room
quietly watching television, our two cats dozing on the carpet before us, when a figure appeared at
our doorstep. I opened the door. The man, a process server, tossed an envelope at my feet and
left. I picked it up and opened it. It was from a lawyer. It was a document revoking my father's
power of attorney. At the bottom was my father's almost indecipherable signature. Beside his
signature was Carol's signature as his witness. Attached on another page was a statement sworn
and signed by Carol stating that she believed my father to be of sound mind and reason. I was
unaware that Carol had the expertise or authority to make such a judgment. It certainly would hold
no legal weight.
Now, my father did not have a phone, he did not have transportation. He had extreme difficulty
communicating, his memory was damaged. He was suffering from dementia. There was no way
he could have found a lawyer, traveled to the lawyer's office and communicated his desires. Seeing
Carol's signature on both pages of the two page document made it clear where his assistance was
coming from.
The next day I went to visit him. I intended to take him out for lunch, just the two of us, and find
out why he suddenly felt it necessary to communicate with me through a lawyer.
When I got to the retirement complex I passed Carol in the hall. She was leaving dad's room. With
a look of contemptuous fire in her eyes she hissed, "I'm so disappointed with you, Callum. How
could you do this to your father?"
I said nothing. I continued on to dad's room. I knocked and entered. He was lying on his bed. I sat
down on the couch in front of him. But before either of us could say anything Carol was back.
She was indignant.
"I can't just walk away from this! I've got to say my peace!" she shrieked. "How dare you live off
your father! Why don't you go out and get a job? You're so lazy! I would never permit my son to
conduct himself the way you are! Don't you see what you're doing to your father?"
I was amazed. Who was this woman - a woman that I barely even knew - to talk to me in such a
manner? Did she think she was my mother? Where could her misguided wrath have originated
from? I wondered.
When she stopped talking I politely asked, "Are you finished?"
"Well, yes I am," she replied. Her rage diffused, she appeared somewhat astonished at herself for
her outburst.
"Let me ask you this then: Do you always go around interfering in the affairs of other peoples
families?"
"No."
"Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't start with this one, okay."
She was flummoxed, nonplussed. I don't think anyone had ever spoken to her this way. For
someone my age to take any approach other than deferential with a senior citizen was utterly
incredible to her, it just wasn't done. With a gasp of shock she stumbled around in a circle a
couple of times as though wounded and confused (I was concerned she might actually collapse)
and then she bolted from the room, speechless.
My father was a man of arrogant, frightened pride. All his life he had hidden his fears and
insecurities within the empty refuge of money, power and control. It was punishing for him to be
seen by me, his son, in a state of impotence and weakness. It was becoming clear. He resented
me. Melissa was his first attempt to dismiss me. That had failed. With Carol's assistance he would
now try again. A virtual stranger, she was appointed (or appointed herself) overseer of my father's
concerns. I went back to see him once or twice after Carol's distraught outburst, but a cold barrier
had been erected for me to face. The weekly lunch excursions ended. In my father's mind I was
out of the picture. He wanted nothing more to do with me. I knew problems would arise, but what
could I do? My help was not welcome anymore. My father had been poisoned against me.
I contacted my sister and made her aware of the situation. Her lack of concern and impassive
response gave me the feeling that she knew a lot more than she was letting on. I got the indication
that she too was glad to finally see my extrication. She had always said that dad was completely
capable of looking after himself. I considered it astonishing that she thought this was possible.
Three weeks later I received a phone call from my mother. She was at Lesley's home babysitting
my sister's newborn son Ross. She did this three days a week while Lesley worked at her job at
the bank.
"Callum, your father has gone to the police! He's accusing you of stealing from him!"
"You've got to be kidding. How do you know?"
"I just talked to Lesley. She was questioned by a police officer at work."
I was mortified. "Good God. What did they ask her?"
"They asked her if she knew anything about it and if there was any truth to it."
Oh that's just great. The decision of whether I was to be the subject of a criminal investigation
determined by my estranged sister.
"What did she say?"
"She said she didn't know of any wrongdoing, and that your father was aware of everything that
you did."
Thank Christ.
"Well, I suppose the police will be coming around to ask me some questions at some point."
And so I began waiting. Waiting for the white sedan to pull into the driveway; the unmistakable
police-knock on the door; the "do you have a moment to answer a few questions, sir?". But it
didn't happen. I was never questioned.
One of the companies that I was now managing, Alco Enterprises Ltd., had a $105,000 secured
mortgage with Dina Drummond, a businesswoman from Powell River, British Columbia. In
October 2000 she put a stop payment order on her cheque thus becoming delinquent with the
payments. I retained Daniel D. Nugent of Vancouver's Webster Hudson & Akerly to initiate
foreclosure action against her. Drummond retained a lawyer called Michael R. Giroday as her
advocate.
Around the same time as I was preparing to put the foreclosure into motion I received a letter from
the Public Guardian and Trustee of British Columbia. This is an official provincial office that
answers to the court. One of the trustee's mandates is "to provide assistance to adults who need
support for financial and personal decision making." Also, if there is an allegation of abuse, the
trustee can be asked to investigate. The letter said that my father had been referred to them (likely
by the police – it didn't say) for assessment of his situation. The reality was, with my presence
removed, dad would need assistance in the management of financial and living matters. But I knew
my father. And I knew that as long as there was even a minute particle of free will remaining
within his injured mind, there would be absolutely no way he would permit any kind of outside
government body to have a say in the running of his life. Two months later I received a follow-up
letter from the public trustee's office stating that they had reviewed my father's circumstances and
did not find any grounds for their involvement.
After I received the initial letter from the public trustee I received a letter dated August 15, 2000
from a lawyer called R. Alan Hambrook of White Rock, BC. Purporting to represent my dad,
Hambrook alleged that I misused my father's funds. No figures or evidence were provided, just the
empty accusation. The lawyer also demanded that I disclose the disposition of various business
bank accounts to him. I contacted him by phone and discussed the issue with him, telling him that
there was no basis for such an accusation. I also wrote him a letter to that effect, stating that I now
considered the matter closed. Then I gathered up all the company documentation I had, brokerage
statements and financial statements, and dropped it off at my father's apartment. Even though
I had given dad all the records I had, I received one more letter from Hambrook on September 12,
2000 asking for more business records. Hambrook also confirmed that dad didn't want me to
handle any of his business affairs. I didn't reply and I did not hear from Hambrook ever again.
Another lawyer from another local company contacted me with similar imputations. Again, I told
him that there was no foundation for these continued requests. He disappeared.
A disturbing pattern was becoming evident: My father, with the assistance and support of someone
very close to him (Carol perhaps?), was consumed with grinding me - and absolutely refused to
take "no" for an answer. Receiving correspondence from solicitors is jarring. How many times do
I have to keep repeating the same thing; defending myself? I was starting to feel a degree of
increasing exasperation.
Pest, n. 1. a person or thing that
annoys, esp. by imposing itself when it
is not wanted; nuisance. 2. any
organism that damages crops, injures
or irritates livestock or man, or
reduces the fertility of land. 3. an
epidemic disease or pestilence.
Vampire, n. 1. a corpse that rises from
its grave to drink the blood of the
living. 2. a person who preys
mercilessly upon others, such as an
extortionist.
MILLENNIUM WAR:
THE BAR ATTACKS
It's the morning of January 14, 2004
and I'm sitting down with my father at his
kitchen table in his rural home on the
annoys, esp. by imposing itself when it
is not wanted; nuisance. 2. any
organism that damages crops, injures
or irritates livestock or man, or
reduces the fertility of land. 3. an
epidemic disease or pestilence.
Vampire, n. 1. a corpse that rises from
its grave to drink the blood of the
living. 2. a person who preys
mercilessly upon others, such as an
extortionist.
MILLENNIUM WAR:
THE BAR ATTACKS
It's the morning of January 14, 2004
and I'm sitting down with my father at his
kitchen table in his rural home on the