Rose's Cantina

This is part of an ongoing series of articles and columns I wrote for Canadian newspapers. I am grateful to Postmedia and the Ottawa Citizen for permission to reprint this article which ran on March 18, 2002. By Rose Simpson I felt a lump in my throat recently when I heard police had found a 13-year-old Renfrew teenager who had gone missing. The boy was found safe at the Young Men's Shelter of the Salvation Army in the Byward Market. I thought about my own experience with a runaway teenager, an experience the rocked my world to its very foundation. And I wanted to share this story with you because it, too, has a happy ending, thanks to the people at the Salvation Army and the Youth Services Bureau. My son and I had been battling for some time over his penchant for skipping school, his smoking, his friends and his attitude. As the cliche goes, you could cut the tension in my house with a knife. And finally, it all came to a head one Sunday night when he arrived home thre...

When Scott gets paid on Thursday, I will seek out a Salvation Army kettle and put $20 in it. This doesn't make me a hero. I'm just another person who needs to pay forward the gift the Sally Ann gave me 10 years ago. Fueled by a dangerous cocktail of depression, self-pity and substance abuse, my son Nick left home in the winter of his 16th year, headed for the mean streets of Ottawa. Fortunately, he had an angel on his shoulder in the form of Jacques Poirier, a counsellor with Ottawa's Youth Service bureau, who found him a home at the Salvation Army Young Men's Shelter. It wasn't exactly a free ride. Nick had to be out the door by 9 a.m. to either look for a job or get some counselling. He had to be back in time for curfew, or the doors would be locked. Sometimes, he didn't make the curfew and one night he had to sleep in minus 30 temperature in a parking garage downtown with drunks and addicts sniffing around him. Nick learned his lesson and al...