Columns

The only consistent thing about the way I interact with people on the street who ask me for money is its complete inconsistency

Any sense I have of being well-grounded, pragmatic, or logical goes out the window the second anyone standing, sitting, or lying on a Toronto street-corner brings up the subject of whether or not I have any spare change. Whenever this happens – about three times a block, in my neck of the woods – the entire convention of my political personalities commences its second-ballot
jostling. It’s as if Dick Cheney and Bono are battling for my soul. There are all-candidate debates that are more rational.

Sometimes, I’m Mike Harris – or somebody who bears a striking resemblance to him. It’s an exorcist kind of thing. I’m asked for a quarter at Queen and Bathurst by a destitute mother of nine, and before I know it my head is spinning on the collar of my Lacoste shirt . “Why should I give my hard-earned money to you, you lazy, good-for-nothing lay-about?” I screech.

To the politically unsophisticated, this may seem churlish. But on the occasions when I am possessed by the discipline of fiscal conservatism, I regard civic churlishness as a sacred responsibility. Do you think there would be any beggars left on the streets of Toronto if every time they held out their hands, those of us with the courage of our convictions shouted our heads off at them?

I’m tough on street-people. At least, I think I am – until, without warning, benevolence descends. I can’t explain it. One second I’m quoting Margaret Wente to runaway orphans, and
the next second I’m Alyosha Karamazov. “Sure,” I say to the guy with the crack pipe, the stolen bicycle, and the beaten-up girlfriend. He has just asked me for cab fare so he can visit his sick aunt in Scarborough. “It’s obvious that you haven’t had any of the advantages I’ve had,” I tell him as, with my arm over his shoulder, I guide him toward the nearest ATM. “So, why don’t I give you $600? That’s the most cash I can withdraw at one time. But don’t worry. I’ll throw in my laptop.”

The only consistent thing about the way I interact with people who ask me for money on the street, is my complete inconsistency. After thirty years of dealing with a steadily increasing number of outstretched palms, whispered entreaties, earnest pleas, and slurred requests, I have no personal policy in place. Do I hand out change or don’t I? Apparently, I have no idea. Perhaps I’m waiting for my own private royal commission to table its report. Maybe I think poverty is a temporary thing, and will be over before I have to make up my mind. Whatever the reason, my hurried decisions are invariably arbitrary, and my assessments of both character and need are often wrong. I wonder whether I encourage addiction and crime with misguided generosity, just as I fear that in my more simple-minded fits of common-sense and work-ethic evangelism, I turn my back on tragedy and illness and misfortune.

And here, I regret to say, the column ends. This is not, of course, what columns are supposed to do. Columnists are supposed to make a point. They are supposed to know, sometimes with the serpent’s tooth of contrarianism, and sometimes with crenellated conceits of recalcitrant
verbiage, where they stand on things. There is no global warming. AIDS conferences are boondoggles. Geese actually like being force-fed and turned into foie-gras. I suppose I envy them the certainty with which they hold to their convictions, but I have to confess that mine is shaken every time somebody on a Toronto sidewalk asks me for money. What to do about the Middle-East? The African pandemic? The environmental crisis? How should I know? I don’t know what to do about the drunk who asks me for a quarter at Sherbourne and Queen.

It’s the odd thing about living in a big city. We are surrounded by our achievements – a new opera house, the ROM’s architectural explosion, the AGO’s forthcoming rise from the ashes -- but on every street-corner we are met, not so much with failure as with our confusion in the face of it. In Toronto, we don’t really need panhandlers to remind us of how muddled we are. Our most egregious architectural blunders, our water-front, our pathetic public transit system, and our inability to deal adequately with our own waste are reminders enough. But it is the poor who have always been with us, and who, despite our affluence, won’t go away. They waylay our confident stride on sidewalks. They confront us in parks, heckle us from the gutters. They are the ones who keep us honest. They are the ones who most vividly represent the reality of Toronto – an uncertain place that cannot decide between its own predictable failure and its still-unimagined success.