His face is deeply creased and weathered. His hands are littered with tattoos and thick with calluses — mementoes of his time living on Edmonton’s streets. But he looks healthier than he did a year ago and his eyes have a spark in them that says he might be down, but he’s
not out.
For the past hour, Cardinal has been telling his tale of a life of tragedy, addiction, and the glimmer of hope that briefly arose on a vacant plot of provincial land during the summer of 2007.
“I don’t know where my path is going, but hopefully it’s on the straight and narrow,” he says in a ragged, soft-spoken voice brought on by years of smoking.
Cardinal, then homeless, arrived in tent city in July 2007 just as the original mayor, Marvin Ross, was preparing to step down after finding a place to live. “He said, ‘You want to take over?’” Cardinal says. “So I said, ‘Sure I’ll take over.’ That’s how I became mayor of tent city. It was kind of passed down to me.”
Cardinal acted as a liaison between members of his community and the bureaucracies that controlled the fate of the makeshift community. Together, they made tent city a safer place to live.
“It wasn’t an easy situation at first,” Cardinal says. Tent city was a wild place that was infected with what he describes as a bad element.
As a part of the province’s promise to house its homeless residents, Cardinal found a bed in a boarding house called Urban Manor, at 9524-104 Ave., a week before the temporary campground was shut down. The decision to move left him with mixed feelings. Cardinal felt guilty and frustrated, thinking that there was more he should have done for his “brothers and sisters” on the street. On the other hand, he was relieved to have a place to call home again.
Cardinal pauses from reading a journal that he started in February 2008. Aid workers at a rehab centre in Bonnyville told him that writing would be therapeutic and help him stay away from liquor. Completing the 28-day program is a point of pride for him.
The writing on the pages is scratchy and almost illegible, but the story it tells is clear.
Cardinal was born into a native family on July 6, 1957 in Calling Lake, Alta. Straight from the womb, he faced complications.
“Feb. 11: At first I wasn’t expected to live. I had [a] hole in my stomach the size of a quarter, it had foam and something else come out. I survived that ordeal with the help of my parents and a [medical] belt to push my insides in.”
Cardinal wore the specialized belt for 10 years. He remembers being teased by kids growing up, but he still considers his childhood to be “normal.”
His mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1967, and the Cardinal family moved to Edmonton so his mother could be treated. Cardinal stayed with her for a year, and when he turned 11, his eldest brother Gilbert took him under his wing and moved Cardinal to the Alexander reserve to give him a break from his depressing home life. Young Dean only stayed with Gilbert long enough to finish Grade 8, before being sent south to Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, where his sister-in-law Sandy helped with school.
By 1972, Cardinal had returned to Edmonton to be with his mom as her condition deteriorated. She eventually had seven operations. “She died at the age of 56 or 57 due to her illness,” Cardinal says. “I didn’t cry because the suffering was gone. I loved her very much.”
With nothing to tie him down, Cardinal dropped out of school to work with his older brother Ron at a custom wood planing company. It was heavy work, but it afforded Cardinal a lifestyle that would appeal to any adolescent. “[I] was 16 at the time. Booze came around that age, making money and freedom,” he says. “I moved around a lot from job to job.”
Cardinal worked at the company for 30 years, until March 6, 2003, when a stolen vehicle slammed head-on into a car carrying Cardinal, Ron, and Ron’s wife. Only Cardinal survived, but his back was broken.
“All in one shot I lost a brother, a best friend and a boss,” he says. “In a matter of minutes, you can lose everything.”
When he felt well enough, he tried to work again, but returning to the trailer he had shared with his brother on the job site was too much for him to take. “It was hard for me to stay in that trailer by myself,” he says. “I stayed there for two weeks and I just couldn’t handle it. So I told the boss, ‘I got to move on.’”
So he hit the road, traveling through northern Alberta, to find peace of mind and a new place to work. However, his spinal injury made it impossible for him to hold down a job.
Eventually he returned to Edmonton, and in November 2006, he moved in with someone he knew. The arrangement lasted until February 2007, when his host was arrested on a charge of armed robbery, Cardinal says. When the landlord discovered his tenant was in jail, he kicked Cardinal into the street, because his name was not on the lease. “It was one of those situations where the landlord wants you out, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he says.
Cardinal was homeless, and it wasn’t long before the frustrations of living in the city’s shelter programs pushed Cardinal toward tent city. After losing the foundation of family that his mother and brother brought to his life, Cardinal found security among his comrades in the tents and hovels in Edmonton’s shantytown.
In tent city, Cardinal was able to reclaim some of the pride he had lost. He became a leader. For a brief moment, meaning and purpose were restored and he felt that he made a difference. However, Cardinal’s new sense of home was short-lived, as authorities closed down the site on Sep. 15. “We kept together like a family unit,” he says, “and when it came [time] to separate, that was hard.”
He pays $400 a month to live at Urban Manor, and as long as he stays clean and sober he can remain there under a subsidized rental agreement.
As for his future, Cardinal wants to go to school so that he can become a counselor for inner-city kids. However, he admits that its an ambitious plan with many uncertainties.
“Depression always gets to me so I stay home a lot. That’s where my pills used to help, but I haven’t been taking them.”
apaul@see.greatwest.ca
