I moved into this pavilion in September 1999. At the time I was horrified. I am naturally unable to speak and the place
is not only very big it is full of international travellers. I was told from the outset I would not be
heard. The women who run the place have
their own mandate in their mind and I would be left to myself. Chronically so.
I expected this. I
had lived in a group home before and the way I avoided social isolation was to
always go out I society. As much as I could I drank in the Montreal
cultural scene. I did this until I literally started dying and then I was told
to stop or I would lose everything. This
is a period about fifteen years.
At the time, I also was instrumental as a resident, in
starting a very important meal making program.
The sophistication of the meals became so important that finally a
social worker from the CLSC wanted to move into our half way house. This was a very great compliment.
I also never stopped volunteering my time to help social
concerns. I worked in a food bank and
with seniors. In retrospect, although
this move is popular with the authorities that handle my case, and they are
very important in what they do, I feel this is a fatal mistake. The only people that care about my life are
people who do not place an importance in anything but unpaid social concerns
for someone on a social solidarity pension.
Rather than get rewarded I have been placed in the first place that
feeds me properly and after a while leaves me unmolested from bodily
attacks.
However I was told, as I said before, that my personal wellbeing
will be studiously ignored. Not only
that the right to live and work as I choose and the right to be paid will be
taken away. This has come through with a
vengeance.
The last time I started writing letters like this was the
time of my father’s death. He left me
very little except promises that I would be well kept care of upon the death of
my mothers. And several pairs of his
pajamas and ties. The pajamas and ties I
distributed to the cultural communities I frequented. I d o not remember all of them but a large
amount of ties went to the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. I had chosen them and
one of the ties was a yellow silk one, I remember that was near the start of the
Nagano era. I also gave a pair of
pajamas to the Centaur theatre.
As I said the trouble is coming to be very grave. I have been on a solidarity pension my whole
life. I have state that t family that
uses the Fabian name is not the original members of my family. These people, and there are many of them now,
have taken everything, including the name they left me with, and have beaten me
many times. So many times have I been
beaten and forced to take mind-dimming medication, I did not even have the
energy to say anything until now.
Despite the terrible isolation I knew would encounter in a
home run by this order, I have been eating steadily and sleeping without being disturbed
for years. So I have a tiny computer and I take my pen in hand to write my problem
to you.
My father died a few years ago and my mother died with
him. Now there is another woman who has
the name and has lived in the house that was the Fabian house.
I have said I am on a solidarity pension. It is about half the sum of the amount of
money that one would get if one was living on the poverty line. When
my father died, he had increased the money so that I could live in my current
residence comfortably and with the very basic dignity the distinguished order
demands. Taking this into account, it is
very difficult to even have the most basic comforts. I regret and resent this greatly.
I would like to have several things verified.
I am on a social solidarity pension of $927.00 a month and
receive a shelter allowance and a social solidarity subsidy of $80.00
each. All this covers roughly the total
of my room and board.
To even be able to communicate to anyone at all I have this
computer on which I am writing. As I stated
I have lived with order for years and I cannot accept their teachings. For extra food and clothing, any kind of entertainment,
and personal grooming I receive money from the people who state they are my
family. The only frequent contact I have
with these people is every two weeks with the man who states he is my brother
Leslie Fabian. He refuses to do any kind
of socializing. He will not break bread with me at the table. I meet him sitting at a restaurant. It is an
hour journey there and back to my brother’s neighborhood where I must go to get
the money. He refuses to make the
transactions above board and place it regularly in the bank. For this reason the whole affair is done
clandestinely. So much so I have often wondered why he does this in the first
place.
I have often been told that as a single woman with no family
I should work for my brother’s family as a maid. Seeing the brutal treatment that I have
received from them and their community I see only a future of unpaid, and anonymous
bondage, contempt so much so that I am afraid that what little is left of my identity
will be stolen. As a university graduate
and a life-long resident of Montreal I would make a great illegal alien. So again, I take pen in hand because the
matter has come to a head.
I have been read my mother’s will (I am refused a copy by
the public notary for a reason that I do not know). It states that I will be entitled from the family
estate a pension of $1500 a month for life. This is a solid sum unindexed to
inflation and as I write below the poverty line.
My brother has told me that if I accept this fund I will not
be able to have a social solidarity cheque.
If I refuse to accept this sum which will be adjusted according to my brother’s
conscience then I will not receive any more supporting money from the family
estate. Which means that I will have only
the government pension to live on. Not
only that this will be cut drastically when I reach retirement age, very soon.
The will also states that the estate will be divided
completely in half except for my parents’ house in the city (and ally snide
it). This will be left to my
brother. The house and all the
possessions and my mother’s jewels are worth I believe about $500,000.00.
When I protested about the meagreness of the amount that I
would live off of, he said that if I calculate the total sum for thirty years
(a lifetime) it will be about $300,000.00 which is a great deal of money.
It is actually much less than my brother is receiving when
he gets the house and then there will not only be money but the rest of the
estate for him.
The estate is supposed to be divided equally. This is what my father said.
So the two questions I have are;
If I remain on welfare in protest, will I not have any money
from the estate or the family to be given to me? Will the scant money they give me now (to
live near the poverty line) be taken away?
Will I have to be deprived of much more when I reach retirement?
In other words do I have no choice but to take a meagre sum
from a family that does not respect my wishes, that are brutal aggressors and
that do not believe are my family in the
first place?
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