Elliot, an alcoholic, asked his parole officer for help. She sent him back to prison

“Elliot Hudson found the box on his first afternoon home from prison. He’d gone up to his old bedroom in his parents’ Ottawa house to unpack some of the clothes his father tidied away while Elliot had been incarcerated. He pulled out the old crock-pot box with ‘recovery stuff’ Sharpied on the side. Inside there were maybe six or seven leather-bound journals, dating back to 2012. Elliot, a contemplative 37-year-old man with an occasionally destructive tendency to get trapped in his own mind, couldn’t resist flipping through. It was disheartening. The dates scrawled in the corners changed but the story didn’t.”

 

Jane Gerster – Global News – February 2020

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He tried to kill her twice. Now, she helps him rehabilitate domestic abusers

“One day in 1980, Joe Fossella grabbed a bolt action rifle, intent on killing his wife Joyce. But the bolt was missing, so he couldn’t fire it. Fossella chuckled grimly to himself, put the rifle away and went to join his wife and son in the kitchen. It was the first time Fossella tried to kill the woman he loved, but not the last. Some five years later, he tried again.”

Jon Azpiri – Global News – December 2019

‘I just want to go back’

“Muhammed Ali sat on the couch in the prison commander’s office, still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants he had on four months ago when he was captured by Kurdish fighters in northeast Syria. Four years ago, the Canadian was a defiant voice of the so-called Islamic State, using his social media accounts to spread beheading photos, threats and incitement messages to an English-speaking audience. But now he looked defeated. ‘I’m just tired of everything,’ he told Global News, which interviewed him last weekend at a facility run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the U.S.-backed fighters who control the country’s northeast.”

 

Stewart Bell – Global News – October 2018

Brian Sinclair

“On Sept. 19, 2008, Brian Sinclair went to a community health centre in Winnipeg. He was in pain and needed help with his catheter bag. A doctor examined him and decided he needed to visit the Health Sciences Centre emergency department. Sinclair, a 45-year-old double amputee, was in the early stages of a bladder infection that might lead to sepsis if untreated, the doctor said, and the centre did not have the capabilities to care for him. She wrote a letter for the emergency room explaining the situation, folded it into an envelope, and handed it to Sinclair, who tucked it into his pocket.”

 

Jane Gerster – Global News – September 2018