Underdog
Copyright © 2016 by Sue-Ann Levy
Cloth edition published 2016
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This book is dedicated to the memory of my adopted aunt Lena Alexander and my beloved uncle Jeffrey Lyons (Brother Jeff), both of whom were larger than life, who called it the way they saw it and who both passed away suddenly in the summer of 2015 before Underdog went to print.
It is also dedicated to the love of my life, Denise Alexander, the woman who helped make my life whole again at the age of fifty, who encouraged me to write this book and who never got tired of helping with the drafts and rewrites.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
BEGINNINGS
CHAPTER ONE: Underdog
CHAPTER TWO: Lightning Strikes Twice
CHAPTER THREE: Secrets
CHAPTER FOUR: The Good, the Bad, and the Beauty Impaired
CHAPTER FIVE: Unaffordable Housing and Other Tales of Troughmeistering
CHAPTER SIX: Ford Nation
CHAPTER SEVEN: Politicians Give Democracy a Bad Name
CHAPTER EIGHT: Not Your Typical Tory
CHAPTER NINE: Loathing on the Left
CHAPTER TEN: It’s All about Me
CHAPTER ELEVEN: The Neighbourhood Bully
CHAPTER TWELVE: Calling It as I See It
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Manufacturing Outrage
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BEGINNINGS
Although I’ve completed ten half marathons and too many ten-kilometre events to count in my ten years as a runner, I’m probably the least competitive runner there is. This is in stark contrast to how focused I can be in my efforts to scoop the competition with a story. When I run, I rarely pay attention to how fast I’m going or to the obstacles in front of me. I just run around them. I usually sport one of the latest Garmin watches and a Fitbit, but I do that more to clock how far I’ve gone and how many calories I’ve burned, being ever mindful of the cardio burn of running and that endorphin rush that tends to come about twenty minutes into my route. My three- to four-times-weekly jog has become not just a workout but my special escape from all the stresses of life, a time to deal with personal issues and come up with a list of column ideas. I first took up running at the age of forty-eight, the same week I decided to seek therapy so I wouldn’t turn fifty still being angry about my past. And I am not even referring to living in a closeted relationship for twenty years, but rather to having been brutally assaulted not once but twice in my life, the first time left for dead by my assailant.
I am not a runner who finishes a route quickly. More often than not I have the distinction of being the slowest in my running group. I like to take notice of my surroundings, people watch, and observe the goings on of my adopted city of Toronto. I pass my long runs of two to three hours by challenging myself to find at least one story about the city along the way. I often say I’ve gotten to know Toronto’s neighbourhoods far better when I’ve trained for the half marathons than as a journalist for twenty-six years running.
Taking in the world around me is so important to me that I get annoyed if I have to run alongside someone. While training in the winter of 2014–15 with my running group for my first half marathon in three years, I invariably found myself either at the back of the pack or content to do the runs at my own pace. My running coaches have a hard time believing I can run for up to three hours by myself, but I have no problem doing so. It isn’t just the rather late age I took up the sport, or that I have the furthest thing from an optimal runner’s body, carrying far too much weight above the waist. Rather, it’s just that after years of running away from obstacles in my life, I was content to deal with them at my own pace. I enjoy the freedom to cherish the peacefulness of the world around me, at all times of the year, cold weather or warm, snowstorms or searing heat. What I lack in speed, I make up for in endurance. As in other areas of my life, I am an underdog when it comes to running. But I always reach the finish line.
I have approached my calling – investigative journalism – with the same endurance I put into my running. My readers know this, and I choose to believe that the politicians, bureaucrats, advocates, and activists I write about know that I am not one to back down or run away from controversy or intimidation. I am most satisfied when I’m chasing or breaking exclusive stories rather than allowing myself to be spoon-fed the party line, as far too many of my journalistic colleagues tend to be happy to do these days. No doubt that’s the easier route to take, and the most popular, but it’s not what the public deserves.
Like my columns in the Toronto Sun, this book pulls no punches. I say it the way I see it, in a cheeky and certainly tell-all manner. I hoped, by writing it, I might motivate others to pursue what makes them happy and to be honest about themselves. I hope I can also inspire and give others the courage to deal with their traumas, to come out, and to say what is on their minds. After pretending I was someone I wasn’t for so many years, I have no regrets about speaking out now.
The theme of the book is its title: Underdog – whether I’m talking about my own personal struggles or the causes I’ve championed. I write about political underdogs like the late Rob Ford and my own uphill (and losing) battle to try to win the hearts and mind of voters as the first openly gay and married Progressive Conservative candidate in the Toronto provincial riding of St. Paul’s. I challenge the myths perpetuated by the Liberals and those who align with the left about each other and the ways they indoctrinate voters into believing they truly are compassionate, tolerant, and open-minded. I question what truly motivates politicians like Barack Obama, Kathleen Wynne, and former mayor David Miller, suggesting they are more enchanted with the image they see in the mirror than truly driven by a need to change the agenda and help those who elected them. I suggest that most politicians are really in it because they’re narcissistic, that they’re far too concerned with getting re-elected, and that they’re essentially too cowardly to do what’s right. I respect very few of them. I also tackle the rise in anti-Semitism dressed in the guise of criticism of Israel. If ever an entire people could be called underdogs, Jews are it. I advocate for the poor and homeless, who have far too often been used as props for photo ops by poverty pimps more concerned with keeping themselves employed than with truly helping the vulnerable. I take on waste, mismanagement, and the abuse of tax dollars by politicians, few of whom seem to care about the endless burden they pass on to the people who pay the bills. I am not afraid to tell Ontario’s empowered unions that they are bankrupting the province with their ridiculous 1950s-style demands, or to advise Muslim cabbies – who are licensed to serve the public – that if they don’t want to take
my dog in their car (for religious reasons), perhaps they should find another line of work.
In my Twitter handle, I state – with a certain amount of pride – that I’m a shit disturber. My friends and my readers often tell me, accompanied by a laugh, that I really like to stir it up, both in my columns and in my radio spots. There’s no doubt that I get under the skin of many of those I write about. But it’s anything but a “shtick.” I often feel I’m merely saying what is on the minds of many – those who don’t have a soapbox or are too afraid for whatever reason to speak up. As I do in my columns, I hope that in this book – with its many behind-the-scenes anecdotes and my cheeky observations of all things political – I will help inspire people to pay more attention to what politicians of all stripes are doing or not doing for them; will give readers the other side of the story from the endless, mind-numbing political spin often repeated (without question) by all too many of my media colleagues; and will provoke discussion, whether you love me or you love to hate me.
CHAPTER ONE
Underdog
It was like a flip of a switch. His arrogance and dismissiveness made me so angry I walked up to Joe Pantalone in Toronto city council during a break in 2008, looked him in the eye, and told him off. Deputy mayor at the time and a long-serving politician, Mr. Pantalone – who had taken on the job of council’s first Tree Advocate – had just stood up and delivered a blistering attack on a poor, innocent semi-retired couple for allegedly allowing their tiny home to “deteriorate.” Mr. Pantalone, clearly suffering from short man’s syndrome, blamed their home’s lousy foundation for the problems they were experiencing with an out-of-control Norway Maple tree. The weed tree’s aggressive roots had infiltrated the home’s foundation, their pipes, and basement. When I happened on the scene, Perry Thompson and his wife had already spent $17,500 on repairs to rectify the damage. They were beside themselves because their insurance company had warned them their policy might be cancelled if the tree didn’t come down. The couple felt they were being “held ransom” by this crazy out-of-control tree. And they were.
Toronto’s tree police – drunk with their own power to decide what stays and what goes in the city’s urban forest – had flatly denied the couple’s request to take down the tree, dismissing the clearest evidence of the damage it had done. For heaven’s sake, it was a weed tree known to be invasive, to have a highly aggressive root system that smothers other plants and wildflowers, and to even have the power to raise sidewalk pavement. Yet the city’s tree police and Mr. Pantalone had passed judgment without once visiting the couple’s small house, as I had. Shaking with anger at his arrogance and the way he’d abused his power, I approached Mr. Pantalone and told him he had no right to judge the couple that way and that he owed them an apology. Taken aback at the reprimand, he tried to defend himself and then beat a retreat as hastily as he could. That wasn’t the only time I’d reacted like this; the misuse and abuse of power, not to mention the city’s often bordering on irrational intransigence, had and has a way of setting me off.
Whether it was this couple with a weed tree, or the Ontario seniors who’d been mistreated, students who’d been bullied while the school principal and teachers stood by and did nothing, or what I clearly came to recognize as a homelessness industry happy with keeping its pawns (street people) living out on the sidewalk or in the city’s parks to guilt the politicians into spending more money on shelters, drop-in centres, and social workers, with no desire to reverse the cycle of dependency – all of this made me (and continues to make me) crazy mad.
Helping the underdog became a crusade because I could relate to each and every one of the people I’ve featured in a column or story. That’s not to say I’ve ever been homeless, but I’ve known, from a very young age, what it’s like to feel intimidated, bullied, mocked, helpless, powerless, and betrayed by those in positions of trust. Once I found my courage and the voice to go with it, I was determined to speak for others, remembering what it was like to be that little girl from Hamilton, the one who for many years felt she was on the outside looking in at others who seemed to have it all.
That feeling of being powerless became evident to me at the young age of twelve, when I was outed by a religious school teacher. Yes, a Sunday school teacher. I’m not referring to the fact that he revealed I was gay. He could have hardly known that. My coming-out story would unfold many, many years later. I’m talking about being labelled an outsider. One Sunday morning, when he was supposed to be teaching us lessons from the Bible, this teacher decided, instead, to sit us in a circle and analyze us. When he got to me, he announced to my fellow twelve-year-olds that I was an “outsider.” I’m really not sure to this day what caused him to come to that conclusion. Did I appear vulnerable or lacking in self-esteem? Or was it already clear that I didn’t fit in? It doesn’t really matter. For an awkward, chubby twelve-year-old desperately trying to be accepted by her peers, that day became forever burned in my memory because of the collateral damage it caused.
I came home in tears, absolutely devastated by what had been said. My father Lou, livid at the idea that a Sunday school teacher would overstep his authority in this way, angrily complained to the principal of religious studies at our synagogue. I’d been labelled very publicly. The kids who heard the word “outsider” felt empowered, or at the very least enabled, by what that teacher had said. As kids will do, my circle of religious school peers carried on their bullying unchecked. Those years in junior high school are a blur to me now except for my attempts to run away from the constant insults my tormenters hurled at me. They called me fat, they called me “four eyes” for wearing thick glasses to correct my extreme nearsightedness and even for being an A student.
Because I developed physically earlier than some, the rabbi’s daughter was fond of telling everyone who would listen that I stuffed popcorn in my bra, joking that she could hear it crackling as she chased after me. I can laugh about it now, but at age twelve I was mortified whenever she said it. (Ironically, popcorn has turned out to be one of my favourite treats.) That marked the beginning of my attempts to prove my peer group wrong, to be the best I could be at whatever I did – and to stand up for what’s right. The shift certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took me years to recover from the verbal abuse and the many, many other obstacles that life threw my way, but in the process I developed both a strong work ethic and an unshakeable self-esteem. I was no longer the underdog. The Sunday school teacher ended up teaching me something other than religion, but a lesson just as important: That those in positions of authority cannot always be trusted to do what’s right; that respect for one’s elders should be earned and not simply given. I’m convinced that my irreverence with politicians and others in power and my constant need to question authority grew from being let down by those in positions of trust, starting with that teacher.
I did have strong, loving influences in my life that showed what it was to be compassionate under the most difficult of circumstances. Whenever I could, I sought comfort and unconditional love at the home of my father’s mother – my Bubby Becky. Every Thursday I’d walk the twenty minutes from my junior high school to her house, eager to be embraced by her warm hug and to hear the same words week after week, said in her thick Eastern European accent: “You vant chips?” What she meant were french fries, lovingly made from scratch – as was every dish served in her home. We both looked forward to those weekly lunches. She didn’t care that Thursdays were her busiest day – the day she prepared gefilte fish and her sweet, chewy bagels for her weekly Shabbat dinners using the techniques she’d brought from her native Poland. Most often when I’d turn up I’d find her kneading the bagel dough or pounding the whitefish into gefilte fish. Her home was a safe harbour for me. She was in her late sixties and I was not yet thirteen. But we had an undeniable kinship. She was not just loving but incredibly sharp. I admired her for her strength, her forthrightness, and her kind heart. One afternoon, because she wanted to buy me a Hanukkah gift, we took
the bus together down to the old Eaton’s in downtown Hamilton to purchase the latest rage at the time – white go-go boots à la Nancy Sinatra. I’m sure they looked ridiculous on me, but my Bubby Becky knew my heart was set on those boots. I can’t remember if I ever ended up wearing them that much.
She had a hard life but did what she felt was right. There was no casting her husband aside when my Zayda suffered a serious stroke. She was in her late seventies when that happened, and she cared for him at home until she could no longer continue to do so physically. Her strength, compassion, and loyalty to her loved ones have undeniably rubbed off on me, and I’m a better person for it.
When I got to high school, barely thirteen after accelerating a grade in elementary school, I found comfort with a rather eccentric group of “browners.” What we lacked in athleticism and grooviness, we made up for in smarts. One old friend with whom I’ve renewed acquaintance in recent years I fondly named Frigga Factfinder the First. I probably did it back then because I was envious of her brilliance and ability to retain facts. I can’t for the life of me say why I came up with Frigga, other than to speculate that even then I was fond of alliteration. Gwen Rousseau (Gwen Roper in those days) was serious about her studies. But she was always a good sport with a genuine twinkle in her eye and a zest for life, which she has to this day. And she was brilliant – destined to spend most of her career as a nuclear engineer. Another close friend, Rosemary Euringer (née Reid), and I shared a passion for languages as well as many, many laughs about our similar family situations. Both of us had outspoken and at times demanding mothers, both of them married to men who were nurturing fathers.
I served on student council and on house council as social and publicity coordinator. I even fulfilled a term as senior representative on Hamilton junior city council, unwittingly setting in motion a lifetime of political involvement. Quickly bored with the less than creative and often tedious instructional methods of many of my high school teachers, I said what was on my mind and challenged them continually, probably to the point of rubbing every last one of them the wrong way. Many years later, in the mid-nineties, when I covered the education beat for the Toronto Sun and started writing about teachers who went the extra mile, I had trouble remembering any in my own high school who had inspired me. I sought my challenges outside school, filling up my spare time by playing roles in amateur theatre productions, taking voice and piano lessons, and competing in the voice category in the yearly Kiwanis Festival.