Remembering Harley Lawrence

by Brian Bishop

     A few years ago, like Berwick this summer, Hantsport found itself with its first known "homeless" person.  For both communities it was one and the same individual, Harley Lawrence. 

Shirley and I, in our capacity of food bank volunteers, had received a phone call back then informing us a homeless man was sleeping in the park across from Tim Hortons.  Later that night I met Harley, and over the next several  months we developed a relationship with this man, who we discovered,  was born and raised in our town.  Harley was six years younger in age, so our paths never crossed as kids.  

As advocates for those who struggle "to make ends meet", we were saddened when we were told by a town official that homeless people should be treated like stray cats. "Don't feed him or he'll never go away!"  was his advice.  For us, that advice would be ignored, even though we knew others shared his perspective.

 Many older citizens, when informed that this stranger was Harley, remembered him as a young boy attending the Baptist Church Sunday School.  Others recalled Harley as a neighbor,  a classmate or a fellow worker on the Yeaton farm.  At times his warm smile, baby blue eyes and courteous manner gave these people  a glimpse of that nice young boy they knew many years before.  It was the side of Harley we would want people to see in us.

But  Harley had changed.  He was older, a drifter; dishevelled, dirty,  dressed in tattered clothes and sleeping on the street.  At times he was demanding, defiant, talking to himself or yelling to unseen persons and swearing  at people who shunned or teased him.  It didn't take long for us to realize Harley was suffering from a mental illness.  

Life had obviously been difficult as evidenced by his physical and emotional scars, struggling to survive in a world where the mentally ill are misunderstood, feared, ridiculed, rejected.  He had experienced numerous "run ins" with "the law";  a frequent occurrence of some mentally ill persons.  There was no hiding this side of Harley.  Privacy does not come with homelessness and, the unpredictable actions associated with paranoia can surface without warning.

In the months he was here Harley was supported by many in our community,  He mowed lawns, raked leaves, shovelled snow, dug garden plots and other odd jobs.  He was given shelter, first by Lawrence Yeaton, whose family he had worked for as a teenager, and then by John Harvie, his former Sunday School teacher.  

He worked as a volunteer with the "Friends of the Riverbank Cemetery" and was hired on by the Baptist Church to do labor work.  He was a good worker, enjoying interaction with those he was with.  Harley had a great sense of humor and expressed appreciation for whatever he received.  He told me he needed a postal box, but with no fixed address, didn't qualify for one.  The post mistress and the church helped this to be achieved.  Harley begin to feel what everyone desires, a sense of acceptance.  But acceptance quickly changes for those afflicted with untreated mental illness.

It was in the fall when Harley called me one morning at 7AM.  It had been one of Harley's good weeks. "What are you doing today?" he asked. I knew it was a loaded question.  "What do you want me to do Harley?"  He wanted me to move him to Dartmouth.  He had earned enough money to move on and get a job for the winter in the woods.   

An hour later we loaded his worldly possessions into my truck: three broom stick handles, two dented pots, a plastic covered mattress  off a patio swing, three sheets of bristol board, five pieces of hardwood flooring, a small window, rubber boots, bags of clothing and a good size  trunk secured with a padlock.  

"What's in this?" I asked as we struggled to lift the trunk.  "Gold" Harley replied with a hearty laugh.  And  the window and flooring are for the camp I'm going to build someday."  Like most of us, Haley dreamed of better things.  He once had a good job, owned a new truck and had a network of acquaintances throughout the province.  That was all before mental illness changed his life.

     

Harley and I parted our ways in Cow Bay, after unloading his belongings into a horse stall. He said he would call in the spring.  It was the last I heard of Harley until the news  of his tragic death in the fire at the Berwick bus shelter.

As Shirley and I gazed upon Harley's photo at the candle light vigil held in Berwick Saturday evening  we saw a man with many faces.  He was the face of the homeless, the poverty stricken, the  hungry, the misunderstood and many other faces of the marginalized in our society.  But most of all Harley represented the face of the mentally ill.

      

As we stood with several hundred people in the lightly falling rain at the vigil, a man behind me heard me say I had moved Harley to Darmouth.  In a crowd of hundreds, we happened to be standing by the man who moved him to Berwick last spring.  He and his sister had travelled to Berwick once again during the summer to check on him.   Harley asked them why they had come?  " To see if you are ok" they replied.  Harley's response:  "Well, now that you've seen me, you can go back home!"  Obviously they weren't offended, they drove from Dartmouth to attend his vigil.  Harley's last words to them: "I'll be OK."

Harley has moved on once again, this time I believe to his heavenly home.  He is now OK.  In the memorial bulletin, handed out at the vigil, were these words by Mother Theresa: "Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody; I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than a person who has nothing to eat."

I know Harley left Hantsport feeling good about the time he spent here.    As a way to demonstrate that our community continues to care and has not forgotten, we will be heading up a small fund raiser to plant a tree or shrub in River Bank Cemetery in Harley's memory.  If you would like to support this initiative, give us a call.