Family’s angel keeps watch
Published: December 24, 2005
He found the fake Christmas tree outside, discarded by one of his neighbours.
The crooked angel came from a local dollar store. And everyone needs one of those. Especially Jaime.
While his wife cleans office buildings, working well into the evening, the 40-year-old father of four sits at his plastic-covered kitchen table, a stay-at-home dad — in spite of himself.
The kids scamper as far as they can through the one-bedroom apartment, careful not to trip over the red power cord. It snakes from a kitchen plug through a cluttered hallway to a portable heater in the bedroom.
“There’s no heat in there,” Jaime explains, nodding at the single bedroom where a jumble of beds swallows most of the space. “Someone gave us a bunk bed, so …”
His four children, aged 6 to 16, sleep there. Jaime and his wife take the living room in their tiny, cluttered apartment.
Only the children have grown since Jaime lost his job at the Toronto Community Housing Corp. He doesn’t like to talk about his old maintenance position, especially with the children around. But some of his experiences — racial slurs, threats of sexual assault and violence from co-workers — may be better left unmentioned.
Shortly after vowing to take his complaints to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, Jaime was transferred to another public-housing complex. Three days later, his contract ended.
“My children, they don’t know this story,” Jaime sighs, his accent betraying his roots in Belize, the country he left 10 years ago.
So Jaime’s red tool box still sits idle in the doorway. He takes odd jobs in summer; nothing in winter.
In the morning, Jaime takes the bus or walks to the unemployment office at Queen St. W. and Dufferin St. He gleans a few listings, applies to them all. And just as reliably, the rejection letters come through the mail.
Jaime trudges on.
“All for them,” he says, surveying his children.
Jaime may have gotten lucky on his recovered Christmas tree, but he didn’t expect to find much to put under it. As it turns out, his children are receiving a holiday bounty from The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund.
The first of his children to answer the door when the stack of brightly dressed presents arrives is 6-year-old Gabby. She explodes into an irrepressible grin.
Moments later, she climbs up to her father’s ear.
“Can we open them now?” she whispers.
Yes, he nods, grinning. Yes you can.
And so they head off with their presents to the living room and tear into their gifts, chattering and laughing under the watchful eye of their dollar-store angel.
In its 100th year, the Santa Claus Fund hopes to raise $1.35 million to provide Christmas presents to 45,000 underprivileged children across Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering.
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