He apologized remorsefully, shamefully. I went to sleep frustrated and upset. The next day, I returned from class to study and he was sitting quietly on the couch. I could tell he was still feeling bad about the day before. He still didn’t seem totally with it, but I let it slide. Better me than Mom, I thought.
The next day, when I returned home, my dad was gone. I figured he was out for a walk, so at first I was grateful for the break. But then I started to fear what condition he might return in. As the hours ticked by, I wondered if I should go looking for him, but I had no clue where to start. Just before I was about to leave and start searching, my cell rang. It was my mom.
“Your dad’s in Windsor,” she said. “He took a taxi to his friend’s house and made him pay for it. We owe him $400.”
Angry as I was, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at the insanity of my life. “I can’t believe I thought I could handle him,” I said. “Is he still at his friend’s place?”
“Yes, his friend offered to let him sleep there for a few days, thank God.”
I assume my dad wore his friend down quickly, because my dad was back at home within a couple of days and the cycle of chaos continued.
“It doesn’t look like he’s going to stop, and I can’t keep an eye on him,” I said to my mom. “I’m worried about you.”
“It will be okay. Don’t worry about it, beta,” my mom said. I finished off my first year and came back to Windsor for the summer.
In my second year of law school, my mom called me in panic. My dad was getting worse. My sister was back in town. Both my mom and sister were afraid. I had been struggling with this decision for a while, and I finally decided enough was enough. There was no other option.
“We have to do something. This isn’t fair to anyone.” I sat back and sighed as I thought things through. “If we can find a separate apartment for him for cheap, it probably wouldn’t make much difference to our financials.”
“Are you sure?” my mom asked.
“It would be worth every cent in the peace of mind it would bring us,” I said. We talked through a solution over a few days.
“I don’t want to be the one to tell him,” she said.
“I would never put that on you. I’ll explain the situation to him.”
The next weekend, I drove back to Windsor. I tried to stay calm as I prepared for what I had to do. I found my dad in the living room, and I told him we needed to talk. He could tell it was something serious, so he was more coherent than usual. We went upstairs and sat down in his bedroom. I looked around the room and thought about how many times my siblings and I had run to that same bedroom when we had nightmares or just wanted the company of our parents. It was ironic and tragic all at once.
“Dad,” I said gently, “you need to leave. You can’t live here with Mom anymore.”
“I’ll stop now, I promise,” he said. “Please, my son, don’t do this to me.”
“I hope that you do stop,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “But I don’t believe that’s going to happen right now. You can’t put Manjot and Mom through this and then leave us wondering whether or not you’ll stop.”
“I’ll get better, I promise.”
“If you get better, we’ll figure it out. But, for right now, it’s not fair and it’s not healthy for you to be here.”
He looked at me in disbelief. I couldn’t tell if he was so hurt because he was being asked to leave or because things had gotten to the point where we had to choose between life with him and life without, and that we’d chosen the latter. Making that decision, I had to finally fully admit to myself that my dad’s illness had hurt us all. Not just in that moment—it had been painful for years. Seeing my dad so lost and alone cut me to my core.
I kept explaining to him that his decisions made people unsafe. Eventually, he resigned himself to leaving. Over the next few days, I tried to make him feel involved with the apartment search, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. My mom, ever the frugal one, found a suitable apartment building. The building’s demographics included a mix of new immigrants trying to make it and other folks facing difficult times. My dad had started his life in Canada in the first category and he’d prospered beyond anyone’s imagination. Now, twenty years later, he’d fallen into the second category from ten thousand feet above.
The day he got the lease, my mom and I filled the back of a borrowed truck with leftover furniture from the basement, mismatched and old but sturdy. He would hang nothing on his walls. No family pictures, no Sikhi inspiration, not even a calendar to keep track of time.
“The apartment has a lot of natural light, doesn’t it,” I said.
My dad shrugged his shoulders, unable to look me in the eye.
I looked out the window. “You’ve got a pretty nice view from here. And a balcony, too. That’s nice.”
My dad smiled ever so slightly, trying to humour my attempts to make conversation.
I pointed out a few more obvious things to try to lighten the conversation and distract us from the weight of the moment. There was no way around it, though—the apartment, my dad, and the day were all sad.
Initially, my dad seemed okay. He maintained some pride in his appearance and enough coherent hours each day to make a network of friends from the building. A Polish neighbour visited often. Another Eastern European woman brought him leftovers, though he rarely had an appetite anymore.
Still, the apartment was depressing, and he soon got anxious living by himself. A few weeks after the move, my mom called me to say he’d come back home—just walked through the door with his house key—and was refusing to leave. She put him on the phone. I told him to go back to his apartment, hung up, and called a cab for him. He went back without a fuss, so I hoped it was just a one-time thing.
But a few days later, he was back.
“That’s it,” I said when my mom told me.
I stopped what I was doing and immediately got in the car to drive the three hours back from York. When I arrived at my mom’s house, I found my dad seated on the couch.
“You have to go,” I said. “You cannot stay here. Do not come back here.”
Our first discussion had been rational, logical, a discussion of fairness between two men. This was different—I was issuing a decree.
“You are not welcome here,” I told him. “Get out.”
Despite everything we had gone through and all the pain his illness had caused, when I looked at my dad, I still felt deep love. Seeing the look on my dad’s face as I ordered him to leave, something inside of me broke. I hated knowing that my words and actions were causing pain to someone I loved. But I remained steadfast. Eventually, my dad left. He didn’t have much of a choice. Soon his apartment would be the only place in Windsor to call home.
In spring 2004, my mom got a knee replacement, and I moved back in to take care of her before my third year of law school. She was afraid to be in the house by herself, so it was incumbent on me to help her dress, cook her meals, and sometimes help her in the washroom. As fall semester and my return to York inched closer, I worried that she’d hurt herself climbing stairs or walking Jugnu after I left.
But there was a bigger problem. Though my parents owned the Santo house, they were deep in debt and the creditors were closing in. Even if they sold the house and used it to pay off some of their debt, my parents would still be behind. But there was no choice. They had to sell the house. There’s a difference between selling your house because you want to and being forced to sell because you are in massive debt. In this case, it felt less like selling the house and more like losing the house.
We put the property up for sale and started calling relatives, asking if we could stay with them for a bit. It was a tense time. We’d already agreed that, with me at school in York and Gurratan at McMaster, it made sense to find a place in the Greater Toronto Area so that the two of us could look after Mom. We had already given up my apartment at York. And I wanted to buy a place, if I could. But I wa
sn’t sure I could. I was still in law school, didn’t have an income or anyone to co-sign a mortgage with me. On top of that I hadn’t been able to find a place within the modest budget I had. I was afraid we were not going to have a home.
It took a while for our home to sell, and when it eventually did, we were confronted with a problem. We didn’t have anywhere to go yet. We negotiated a little time on the closing. This gave us some time to empty out the house and figure out the next steps. Luckily, one of our relatives agreed to let us stay with them for a bit until we figured out our next move.
Meanwhile, an uncle helped find a place within my budget, a modest two-storey house in Mississauga. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to secure a mortgage. I emptied out my personal savings. I tried the banks but was immediately refused because I was still a student. I confided in one of my friends and he told me about a mortgage broker who had some experience working with young professionals. I spoke with him and he said the only way he could secure a mortgage given my situation was if someone with sufficient proof of income co-signed the mortgage. I asked around to no avail. Finally, after some persuasion, an uncle agreed to help me as long as I promised to take his name off the loan as soon as I started practising as a lawyer. At long last, I was approved and I closed the deal on the house.
Next, my uncle, Gurratan, and I spent a weekend emptying out the house in Windsor. It was bittersweet for Gurratan and me. We had some fond memories there—warming up in front of the fireplace and hanging with friends by the pool. But we had horrible memories, too, like hiding from my dad in the basement, trying to drown out the screaming and crashing noises with pillows, and picking up after Dad the next morning.
As anticipated, selling the family home put only a small dent in the debt my parents owed. “It doesn’t make sense for you to keep paying these interest fees,” I told my mom. “You’re spending too much.”
“Your dad’s not well and there are no guarantees he’s going to get better any time soon. What do we do, then?”
“I hate to say it, Mom, but I think you just have to stop paying the amount you and Dad owe. I think I should help you file for bankruptcy.”
I’d taken a bankruptcy law course earlier that year, so I knew the procedure was more complicated than filling out a form. On their behalf, I’d need to argue for a full discharge, and there was a risk of applying for bankruptcy and the judge not actually granting it.
“We can’t afford a lawyer,” my mom said.
“You don’t have to do anything right away,” I said. “And besides, you don’t need to hire a lawyer. You already have one.”
I had a basic understanding of the bankruptcy process, but I wasn’t an expert. I was still in law school, but I knew the filing process and challenges could drag on. It was likely that I’d be out of law school by the time the case actually went to court. When that time came, I’d be ready to represent my parents. I hadn’t yet worked so much as an articling job, but I had fought for my family in every arena so far. The courtroom was next.
Chapter Fifteen
TO WALK A BETTER PATH
One day, in June 2005, Jugnu stood by the back door and whined for my mom to let him inside. He was twelve years old by then, an old man whose age was catching up to him. While he still loved going for walks and his tail still wagged every time I came in the door for a visit, he was definitely slowing down—sometimes, a sore hip would cause his back leg to give out during a walk. Thankfully, Jugnu’s more mellow nature had grown on my mom, and she spent more time with him.
When she heard his whine, my mom slowly made her way to the back door to let him in. He settled down for a while, but then started whining at the door again. My mom thought his behaviour was odd, but didn’t think much of it. The next morning, though, Gurratan came downstairs and found Jugnu lying in front of the door, not breathing.
Gurratan called me at school to break the news. I blinked back my tears, thinking about how Jugnu’s companionship had helped me through some of the most difficult periods of my life. He had protected me from bullies and listened to me when I was too ashamed to talk to anyone else. He had provided comfort and companionship to my brother. In fairness, Jugnu was often the only one in the house who would spend time with my dad.
That evening, along with Manjot, Gurratan, and my mom, we said our own tearful goodbyes. Finally, Gurratan and I wrapped Jugnu in a cloth and brought him to an animal clinic for cremation. I comforted myself with the knowledge that he had lived a good life. I was sad, but not overwhelmed by it—it was the sort of sadness that comes from knowing that you’ve loved and lost.
I was trying to channel that resilience and direction in all areas of my life. I was enjoying law school, and although I knew that I would enjoy a career in law, I didn’t know what type of law I wanted to practise.
At the time, I would have been happy to practise any of them, just so long as I got to work. After my first year, my grades weren’t good enough for a summer job in law. Without work experience, I began to fall behind some of my classmates. Nobody hired me the summer after my second year, either, so I fell further behind. I should have been stressed, but I wasn’t. I continued to work as hard as I could, and I honed the chardi kala spirit my mom had taught me about so many years ago.
In June 2005, after I graduated from my third year of law school, the bar admissions classes and exams began. I saw my classmates again after a couple of months’ break at Ryerson University, where the classes were taking place. As we mingled outside the classroom, waiting for the doors to open, surrounded by a thousand future barristers and solicitors from other law schools, we did what all graduating law school students do: we talked about articling.
“Jagmeet, where are you doing your articles?” one person asked.
“I don’t have a position yet,” I said.
“Oh,” they responded, and the group fell silent. It was as if I’d just told them I had a terminal illness.
“It’s all good, I’m sure I’ll figure out something soon,” I said.
“Well, it was nice seeing you,” they said before turning away, no doubt thinking, How is that even possible?
After I finished the bar admission courses and passed all my exams, I put all my energy into transforming that faith in my future into reality. I started by making regular trips to the courts nearby. Our house in Mississauga was located just a few minutes away from the A. Grenville and William Davis Courthouse, one of the busiest in Canada. I thought if I saw some court cases, maybe I could figure out what type of law I wanted to practise. So I started going to the courthouse whenever I could.
One day, I watched a lawyer named Richard O’Brien cross-examine a police officer. O’Brien’s client was a young black man facing serious drug charges, and O’Brien was arguing that his client should be released on bail. The officer on the stand testified that he believed the young man would not return to court when required and that he was at risk to commit further offences. O’Brien proceeded to systematically destroy each of those arguments.
He revealed that police had stopped the same young man multiple times, going back years to when he was a young teen—he’d been carded and questioned aggressively all his young-adult life. There were no grounds for any of it. Through his cross-examination, O’Brien tore apart the officer’s alleged reasons for detaining the young man, and step by step, he deconstructed the officer’s bias.
I was captivated by the cross-examination. As I watched O’Brien eviscerate the witness—every razor-sharp question intended to challenge and hold accountable the power of government—I thought back to all the times I’d been harassed by the police since I was a teenager; at least eleven, from what I could recall. And the carding incidents I experienced in Windsor and then in London had continued after I moved to Toronto.
I remembered an incident that happened when I was in my third year of law school. I was visiting a friend who lived near Casa Loma in Toronto. I drove to the castle and parked in the public lot. It was a be
autiful day and my friend was running late, so I got out and walked around. I sat on the low concrete barrier surrounding the castle property, my legs dangling over the edge, and took in the scene. There were kids screaming and running around a large, ornate fountain. Tourists were posing in front of the castle, and a bridal party was capturing their special moment.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two police officers pedalling up the steep hill. I started staring for a couple of reasons. For one, they were biking up an incredibly steep hill, so I was curious to see if they could make it. And secondly, my experiences had also trained me to pay close attention to what nearby police were doing.
I watched them bike up the incline, and then I lost sight of them as they rounded a corner. Then I called my friend to let her know where I was waiting.
“I’ll be right out, just need a couple more minutes,” she said.
“No worries,” I said. “I’ll wait by the castle.”
All of a sudden, I looked up and noticed the two bike officers had stopped a few feet from me.
I switched to Panjabi. “The police are here.”
“What happened?” she asked in alarm.
“Nothing,” I continued in Panjabi. “I’m just sitting here at the castle.”
“Do you need to deal with this? Should I let you go?”
“No,” I said. “Stay on the line a little longer and let’s see what happens.”
“Okay,” she said with a touch of concern. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
I laughed. “When do I ever do anything stupid?”
We chatted for a couple more minutes, and all the while I felt the intense stares of the police officers on me.
Finally, my friend said, “Listen, I’m just about ready. I’m going to hang up and walk over.”
“Okay.”
I flipped my phone closed and looked up to see if the officers were still watching me.
Love & Courage Page 19