THE DINNER

6:00 p.m.

Oshawa

Ribs, rice, mixed vegetables and apple crisp.

THE DISCUSSION

Richard Catton is unapologetically country. He says hello to people he has never met and usually ends up talking for hours. He thinks that people should ask how you are before they ask you to do something for them. And he is determined never to make the same mistakes twice.

He knows that he has “that addictive personality. When I take something on, I take it on full force. I throw myself into work.”

His union involvement has been a part of most of his work life, though he had his qualms initially.  He says, “My answer was that unions are just for lazy people and I am a hard worker. They convinced me that the others were not the people that I wanted representing me. I said I will not defend lazy people. I will encourage the employer to hold the employees accountable to do their jobs. And I will hold the employer accountable. I guess I’m old fashioned that way.”

Richard has worked in a number of places saying, “I had a pretty successful career in steelwork. I’m sort of a jack of all trades.” On the day of his accident a number of things had already gone wrong. He was working with another crew because his had not shown up and he had eagerly agreed to climb despite the fact that he was often on the ground in a supervisory role.  He “was sitting across a beam, twelve feet in the air, when a new worker leaned against the column and knocked the whole structure.”

“I was falling towards the rebar so I unclipped my belt quick and jumped. I landed on a frozen clod of dirt and shattered my foot right up into the ankle. I fell down and caught myself on a steel beam and sheered the end of my elbow off. I told them I had broken my arm and they needed to get me up. Then they got me up and I told them to put me down.”

Once he arrived at the hospital, he remembers, “my only concern was my coveralls. I didn’t want them cut. I had my good Sorrels on too.”  His foot was so damaged it was inoperable, but he had himself released days later when, to everyone’s surprise but his own, he was able to make it to lobby to meet his doctor with just a walker for support.

Married only a year and with a newborn at home, it was no time for an accident that left him unable to work. Given his history with alcohol and drugs, Richard was not going to take the painkillers prescribed.  By the time he was being assessed to return to work, “the ergonomics guy was more concerned about [Richard] working for an asshole than anything else. So he asked about retraining.”

Richard had left school in Grade 10, but “they said you don’t need your Grade 12 because you have enough understanding to succeed at college. They had more confidence than I did.”  Richard took some of his courses during the summer to prove to himself that he could do the work.  This also allowed him the time to really focus on his courses.  He graduated with numerous awards cautioning, “I wouldn’t say I outperformed everyone in the class, but I spoke up.”

Richard was asked to start his first shift as a Child and Youth Worker the afternoon of his graduation and he has not stopped since. Always a hard worker, he can recall that “in a ten month period [he] made $56,000 at $15 an hour.” More important than the money he makes is the recognition for his particular expertise working with adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities. He is adamant that people need to understand where others are coming from in order to treat them fairly.

He says, “I love what I do. Even when I was a drug addict and a drunk I took care of everyone else.”  It has been almost twenty years since he met with the public health nurse that he credits with getting him into rehab. “I went for the assessment and they said it would be three months. I said I’d be dead. I’ve already had a gun in my mouth. I’m just not happy. Three months and I’m not going to do it purposely, but I won’t make it. The drugs will win. The nurse came back and said there was a spot.”

When the first step of the program mentioned a higher power, Richard was ready to leave. But he says, “I couldn’t just walk out of rehab. That was rude.”  While he was waiting to let them know he was leaving, he read the poem ‘The Man in the Glass’.  It was a cathartic moment and the poem still makes him so emotional that he rarely reads it aloud.

He admits he “was a mess, but you get your 24 hour medallion, your one week medallion, your one month, your three month, your six month. Then you get your one year solid medallion. You can get whatever you want put on it. I got ‘easy does it’. I carried that in my pocket for a long time. It’s still not going in a box.”

Now approaching twenty years of sobriety, he vows “never ever is that gonna happen again. After rehab, I thought I cannot do this again. I cannot do this a second time.”

People are sometimes shocked to hear how open Richard is. His answer is simple, “it’s part of my story. I am frequently told I am brutally honest.  I seek out people I can be myself with.”

Richard is certainly himself with his family. His parents fostered over 65 children in their 38 years of service as foster parents so Richard knows what it means to embrace someone as one of your own.

He and his daughters talk openly about the consequences of the party one of them had while he was away hunting.  They distinctly remember a much earlier flash of Richard’s temper which he describes as his “steelworker years coming out of me.” After an incident when he lost his temper fixing a van, “both kids had cried. When I found out I had made my daughters cry because I was frustrated working on a van, I had to take a step back.”

As honest as their father, both daughters are eager to share both school challenges and successes.  They are also keen to hear him tell the story of how he met their mother.

“They told me I should stay away from relationships and women for one year because it was just an excuse to start drinking again. I met their mother on Saturday, got my one year medallion on Sunday and we moved in on Monday. We’ve been together nineteen years now.”   He laughs and says, “it definitely wasn’t planned to happen that way.”

Despite the growing pains of raising adolescent daughters while his wife works an evening shift, it is clear this is a close family that confronts things head on. Richard says of his daughters, “When they’re actually being friends and doing things together, I could sit and watch forever. You can see they actually love each other.”

Richard is just as direct with his affection as he is with everything else. He has always been outspoken and anyone that knows him can recite with him: “You do something wrong once and it’s a mistake. You do it twice and it’s stupid. The third time is on purpose.”  Richard has little tolerance for stupid and would never intend to hurt anyone so he holds himself to as high a standard as anyone.

STILL DIGESTING

Richard can tell what people are made of by the way they interact with the young people he works with. There are two things he looks for.  He expects adults to stand their ground to provide consistency. And he expects adults to get down to another person’s level.  If you can do that, not only will you earn the respect of his clients, you will earn his.

Richard’s connection with some of the hardest to reach people is undeniable. Not only does he spend his days with adolescents with developmental delays, he completed rehab while sharing a room with a high ranking biker. If anyone knows that people are people, it is Richard.

I believe him when he offers to do anything he can to help me out this year, including fixing my car. He will keep his word not only because he respects me, but because he answers to the man in the mirror.  Richard reminds me that it is not our bonds to others that keep us honest, but our commitment to ourselves.