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pitalization, and so wasn’t able to use the new benefit.”
Why was the old death benefit dropped? “It was so expensive for
the small amount of coverage it offered that they (AFLAC Insurance)
felt people were better off to go out and buy a separate life insurance
policy where they could get significantly more coverage for the same
premium,” said Sylvia.
Well, it all made good insurance sense to us, but none of it helped
Lacelle’s policy. I said something like that to Sylvia, who told me he
had already decided to pay out on the policy “because of the client’s
circumstances.”
And so now there is a little bit of money in a family nest egg that
will buy graduation and wedding gifts for thirteen grandchildren who
will remember the kindness of Yvette and Raoul Lacelle.
210
10.
Unforgettable
So much of what happened at Goldhawk Fights Back was unforgettable.
The injustice and unfairness; the outrage; the cold cruelty and the
amazing kindness; the unbelievable life situations; as always, the
humour; the people themselves who pulled us, with little effort since
we were willing participants, right into their lives.
I remember as if it were yesterday the Christmas party that Goldhawk
Fights Back threw for its clients at CBC, back in 1982. Producer Trudie
Richards and I had what we thought was the idea of the century. We
would bring together all the clients we had helped at GFB during that
year, at a Christmas party to be held in “The Kremlin,” the nickname for
the old CBC Regional Headquarters building on Jarvis St. in Toronto.
Management types were cool to the idea. That was usually the pat-
tern. Richards and I had to heat them up with our usual whining, cajol-
ing, and shouting. Management reluctantly agreed, warning us that
CBC security guards would be posted, just in case a few of the more
troublesome clients we had might find something worth stealing.
The party was wonderful. The guests knew each other by their prob-
lems. They had seen each other on television and needed no introduc-
tion. It was a room full of famous people eager to talk to each other and
celebrate their victories over the heartless and inattentive system.
One little girl brought me a Goldhawk Fights Back drawing and pre-
sented it proudly. It was a picture of a hawk with a little, pink, dripping
thing in its mouth. Each week, we gave a “Razzberry of the Week”
award to some deserving public personality blockhead. I dropped a
dripping raspberry on a letter to the proud recipient.
Getting What You Deserve
“So what is that in the hawk’s mouth,” I asked. “The Razzberry?”
The little girl shook her head.
“Oh no, Mr. Goldhawk,” said the father. “It is the flesh of
the bureaucrat.”
“Ah. Well, there you have it,” I said, with no more questions to ask.
At the end of the evening, CBC Newshour host Fraser Kelly and I
were trying to stuff John Kellerman’s wheelchair into the back of a cab.
John was already in the back seat, entertaining the driver. Kellerman
had first come to us about the telephone company that wouldn’t allow
him enough time to dial his call with his cerebral-palsy-disabled fin-
gers. John was unsinkable. He had once run for mayor of Toronto.
Other guests were streaming by the cab, bidding farewell to us and
to each other. They waved at John. There was much laughter —
including laughter at the inability of the two us to get the folded
wheelchair properly positioned in the trunk.
“Goldhawk, I tell you,” said Fraser, pausing in his labours with a big
grin on his face, “this is what journalism is all about.”
For cruelty, however, nothing was more memorable than the heartless
bastards at Procan in Montreal — a mail-order house that sold cheap
junk for big prices in the hope you would get an even bigger prize that
never came.
Ellen Ennett was eighty-two and suffering from multiple sclerosis
when the mail-order jackals found her. She was living in a convales-
cent hospital where she spent most of her days in a wheelchair.
Somehow, the marketers got her name, address, and room number at
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