HER MOTHER WAS DOWN, AND SO SHE STOOD UP TO PROTECT HER

HER MOTHER WAS DOWN, AND SO SHE STOOD UP TO PROTECT HER

There is something about my case that I have not spoken about enough.

My adult daughter came to court.

She came forward to give evidence in a proceeding that carried enormous consequences for her mother.

As I prepare my appeal, I have been thinking deeply about why that matters—not only to me, but to other women, and to the daughters who are watching what happens to us.

————— ADSUM MEANS: “I AM HERE.” —————

After my 27-year relationship ended, there was a period when I stayed at Adsum House.

Adsum House is an emergency shelter.

I will never be ashamed of saying that.

But it is important to understand what that means—and what it does not mean.

Adsum was created for women who had nowhere secure to live. Its work has long centred on homelessness, housing insecurity, poverty, and the many circumstances that can leave a woman without a safe and stable home. Older women can also experience homelessness for the first time later in life.

The name Adsum means, in essence:

“I am here.”

I was one of those women who needed somewhere to be.

I was approaching an age when rebuilding a financial life becomes extraordinarily difficult. My long relationship had ended. I was not yet receiving Old Age Security. And I found myself without secure housing.

The women I met there became my friends.

I remember other older women whose circumstances reminded me of my own. I remember women dealing with addiction and trying to rebuild their lives and their relationships with children and grandchildren. I remember young women who had run away. I remember immigrant women who had been deserted. I remember women who were simply poor, displaced, or without anywhere else to go.

Their individual stories belong to them. I cannot know everything that happened in their lives, including experiences they may never have disclosed.

But I knew them as women.

We ate together. We talked. We worried together. We laughed. We supported one another.

And something happened there that I have never forgotten:

We could imagine walking in one another’s shoes.

There is not always some enormous distance between the woman sleeping securely in her own bedroom tonight and the woman sleeping in an emergency shelter.

Sometimes that distance is one relationship ending.

One illness.

One lost income.

One unaffordable apartment.

One legal battle that lasts for years.

One birthday arriving before the pension income you were counting on begins.

THERE IS SOMETHING I NEED TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR

Because I am about to speak about my daughter, there is a part of the court record that I cannot leave hanging.

My stay at Adsum House became connected in the Decision under appeal with a characterization that, in my view, can leave a profoundly mistaken impression about my daughter.

So I want to say this plainly:

My daughter did not abuse me.

She has never abused me.

I was not at Adsum House because I was fleeing abuse by my daughter.

I was there because I needed somewhere to live.

In a later update, I intend to take readers carefully through what I actually said about Adsum House, what the evidence established, and precisely what the Decision says.

I want to do that from the record rather than asking anyone simply to accept my interpretation.

But there is one thing I will say now:

My daughter should not carry an implication that does not belong to her.

AND THEN MY DAUGHTER WALKED INTO COURT

The same daughter who can be left under that shadow by a permanent, publicly available court decision later walked into a courtroom and testified.

She came forward in a case that would affect her mother’s future.

The Decision’s treatment of the adult children and their involvement is another part of the record I intend to examine publicly and carefully. Again, I will show readers what was actually said rather than asking them simply to accept my characterization of it.

But beneath all of this is a question that reaches far beyond one court case:

Why should an adult daughter not care deeply about what happens to her aging mother?

Why should she not care whether her mother has financial security?

Why should she not care whether her mother’s evidence is accurately understood?

And why should she not look at what is happening to her mother and wonder:

Could this someday happen to me?

OLDER WOMEN AND THE PRICE OF STARTING AGAIN

When a long relationship ends later in life, time itself can become part of the inequality.

A younger person may have decades of employment ahead in which to rebuild savings and retirement security.

An older woman may not.

If she leaves a long relationship with little accessible capital, limited income, inadequate retirement savings of her own, and years of litigation ahead, the promise that everything will eventually be decided does not answer the immediate question:

How does she live while she waits?

Before my trial, I tried to address that problem.

On March 21, 2024, I put a request in writing seeking permission to bring a motion for interim spousal support and other interim financial relief involving bank accounts, RRSPs and rental profits. I prepared the motion form.

In a later written submission to the Court, I recorded that the request had been refused at the March 26 pre-trial conference as being too late, although the trial was still more than six months away.

I am continuing to seek the official conference record so that the Court’s exact words can be verified.

The final Decision eventually awarded me one-half of the net equity in the Indian Point home. Cathy Bennett herself had acknowledged that I should receive a share of that property’s value.

The Decision also ordered that each of us keep the bank accounts, TFSAs and RRSPs held in our respective names.

On paper, that can sound equal:

Each woman keeps her own.

But equality in wording and equality in lived consequences are not necessarily the same thing.

If one woman enters retirement with substantial investments and the other does not, the same sentence can produce profoundly different realities.

The financial evidence concerning our respective circumstances, and the Court’s treatment of that evidence, are among the matters I am now examining carefully in my appeal.

MY DAUGHTER LOOKS AT ME AND SEES HER MOTHER

But perhaps she sees something else too.

A possible version of herself twenty years from now.

I am her mother. I am standing at a place in life that she may someday reach.

And that changes the way I understand her decision to come forward.

I understood her presence in that courtroom as an act of support for her mother.

And part of the reason I continue now is that I want the questions raised by my experience to matter for the women who come after me—including her.

I WANT TO REACH WOMEN MY AGE—AND THE DAUGHTERS WATCHING US

I want to hear from women who rebuilt their lives at 60, 65 or 70.

Women who left long relationships.

Women who suddenly discovered that the retirement security they thought belonged to the household did not necessarily belong to them.

Women who tried to navigate courts without enough money for lawyers.

Women who experienced homelessness for the first time late in life.

Women whose adult daughters stood beside them.

And daughters who have looked at their mothers and quietly thought:

Twenty years from now, that could be me.

I do not want older women frightened into believing that justice cannot help them.

I want us asking whether our institutions adequately understand what time, age and economic inequality mean when justice takes years.

Because five years means something very different when you are 35 than when you are entering your senior years.

THE UNDERDOG DOES NOT NEED SPECIAL JUSTICE

She needs justice that still works when she has less money, less time and less power.

The women I met at Adsum taught me something about fellowship.

We did not need to have lived identical lives to recognize one another’s vulnerability, dignity and hope.

We could imagine walking in one another’s shoes.

That is what I am asking people to do now.

If you are an older woman who recognizes some part of yourself in this story—or a daughter who recognizes her mother—I hope you will stay with me.

Tell me your story.

Follow this one.

Share it with another woman.

Because perhaps protecting our daughters’ futures begins with refusing to allow the women who came before them to become invisible.

ONE MORE REASON THIS MATTERS TO MY APPEAL

There are many reasons I am appealing this case.

But this particular discrepancy in a Decision that is permanently available to the public matters to me in a deeply personal way.

In my view, the Decision can leave readers with the impression that my daughter abused me.

She did not.

That is not a small matter.

A public judicial decision can follow the people named or described within it for years. An inaccurate implication concerning the relationship between a mother and daughter can carry consequences far beyond the immediate litigation.

Whatever produced that characterization, I am concerned about its effect.

Older women experiencing financial insecurity, homelessness or litigation may depend enormously upon relationships with their adult children, relatives and friends. Those relationships should not be placed under an unnecessary shadow by something the evidence does not establish.

My daughter should not have to carry such a shadow.

And I should not have to remain silent about it.

That is one of the things I am asking the Court of Appeal to examine.

A NOTE ABOUT THIS SERIES

I am preparing an appeal.

Where I state something as established by the court record, I am working to verify it against the underlying documents and transcripts.

Where something remains under investigation, I will say so.

I am not asking readers to decide my appeal.

I am asking them to look with me at what the record actually