Terry Hogan has put a life of crime,
addiction and homelessness to use in
helping to pull others out of the gutter
Ken Gray
OTTAWA CITIZEN - MAY 28, 1998
There's not much anyone can tell Terry Hogan about being down and out.
The lifeskills counselor at The Mission for homeless men has been hooked on alcohol, heroin, speed and Listerine; has eaten out of garbage bins; has lived in garbage huts, on the warm air vent under the Laurier Avenue bridge, in apartment stairwells and in underground parking lots; has been beaten up hundreds of times; and awakened, teetering halfway down the cliff behind the Château Laurier, after someone threw him there "while he was drunk".
He has begged, cheated and stolen; has been in and out of prison a number of times; has seen drug addicts die or hang themselves; has been sexually abused; and has had his money, jacket and shoes stolen while he was on the street.
After all that, the 48-year-old bounced back from massive addiction and destitution to lead a normal life. And his experience on the street has become part of his vocation. Mr. Hogan leads a lifeskills course for homeless people, and a program for male survivors of sexual abuse.
He is a critical cog in the effort to keep the homeless and underprivileged alive. Mr. Hogan jumps from tragedy to tragedy at The Mission, a shelter for homeless men on Waller Street in downtown Ottawa.
"He's on the fly all the time," said fellow lifeskills counselor Debbie McConkey.
Besides the two programs he runs, Mr. Hogan regularly deals with a myriad of crises - from seizures, to washing the homeless, detoxification, and emotional breakdown.
"He relates to these people," Ms. McConkey said. "He's a very loving person."
"He often deals with violent, out-of-control people, the diminutive Mr. Hogan is a brave man." Ms. McConkey said. "He's all heart and total courage."
Mr. Hogan approaches the homeless at The Mission with a very forthright philosophy. If he can get out of addiction and homelessness, so can they.
"I would never wish my life on anybody, to come back from where I had to come back from," Mr. Hogan said. "It really impresses on me that there is no such thing as a lost cause".
That so much hope could come from a man who has lived through so much trauma, is, in itself, a testimony to his optimism.
Life began normally enough for Mr. Hogan. The son of a Timmins miner and a homemaker, he grew up in a family of five playing hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer. He also had a trapline outside the hard-rock Northern Ontario town.
Mr. Hogan said an older family friend sexually abused him when he was 12, an incident that left him emotionally scarred and fearful, perhaps setting him up for his downturn in life.
"That was the most shaming thing that ever happened to me," Mr. Hogan said. "I was absolutely terrified and couldn't trust anybody."
His father hated mining, finally quitting after years underground, and moved the family to Niagara Falls in 1964 where the elder Hogan worked on the nearby Welland Canal.
The proximity of their home to the U.S. border proved to be Mr. Hogan's downfall. Drinking legally in upper New York state was great sport for highschool students in the area, and Mr. Hogan joined in.
Drinking quelled his fears and gave him a peer group. Mr. Hogan finished high school, but he graduated to alcoholism.
It was during this time that another landmark event scarred him badly. Two friends, drinking in a car, died from carbon-monoxide poisoning.
Fear, resulting from the sexual abuse and the alcoholism, sent him down a nightmarish road.
On top of the booze, Mr. Hogan started doing speed, acid, pills, "anything you could get your hands on."
To feed his multitude of drug habits, Mr. Hogan wrote bad cheques, for which he served six months in jail for fraud. It ran concurrently with a year sentence for break-and-enter at a fur store.
That started a litany of prison time, probation, broken probation, attempts to get clean of drugs, failures, violated parole, more fraud, more charges and reformatories and jail in Brampton, Guelph, British Columbia, Kingston and a myriad of other locations.
There was never any trouble getting a drink or drugs in jail, Mr. Hogan said. In fact, he became hooked on heroin during a stay in a B.C. institution.
"You could get all the drugs you wanted in jail if you had the money," he said.
Generally, Mr. Hogan would get out for about 30 days, violate parole and be back in jail.
Mr. Hogan stumbled upon Ottawa in 1975, after jail and street stints in B.C. and Toronto. He took odd jobs, rarely used welfare and "begged, borrowed and stole."
For four years, he lived about 75 per cent of the time on the streets of Ottawa, and the rest of the time in shelters or rented rooms. Mr. Hogan has called a number of unlikely places home: The roadsides of Colonel By Drive; areas around Ottawa city hall; Major's Hill Park; the banks of the Ottawa River; underground parking lots; apartment stairwells and garbage-bins.
"There is nothing you won't do to survive," said Mr. Hogan. "All kinds of people die on the street. I've stolen from everybody possible because I needed a fix. I was a just like an animal".
Meals came from garbage bins, shelters and food banks.
Finally he fell so low he sought help.
"I was sick and tired of being sick and tired," Mr. Hogan said.
He began going to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, where he was befriended by social worker John Mansfield. Mr. Mansfield showed interest in him and had faith that Mr. Hogan could turn his life around.
"I didn't have an easy time at first" shaking the drugs and alcohol, he said. "I relapsed hundreds of times."
Sometime around 1979, he successfully broke the addictions that had haunted him since the 1960's.
About the same time, Mr. Mansfield helped Mr. Hogan get a job as an attendant at the Ottawa General Hospital detoxification centre. That put value in Mr. Hogan's life and gave him a reason for living beyond his next fix.
Mr. Mansfield started a behavior modification program in 1982 and took Mr. Hogan with him.
That's when Mr. Hogan started helping the homeless.
"You have to love the homeless back to life," Mr. Hogan said. "It's a lot of caring and compassion. They've all been victimized.''
Years of drug, alcohol and other assorted abuses had dulled his memory and diminished his usefulness.
"It took two or three years for my memory to come back," he said.
Once it did, and fueled by a passion to help the people from where he had come, Mr. Hogan became a very motivated social worker.
"It's not a job. It's a way of life," he said.
He attended Algonquin College, taking a two-year social-work program and a two-year addiction studies course, graduating in 1991.
In the early 90's, Mr. Hogan came to The Mission as a lifeskills counselor and has played a big part in the sex-abuse survivor and homeless lifeskills programs.
In the lifeskills program, Mr. Hogan tries to build trust among the 12 or 13 participants; rid them of some of their substantial fears; relieve anger; build self-esteem; help them develop financial-management acumen; tell them about personal hygiene; and attempt to prevent relapses into addiction.
With the survivors of sexual abuse program, the eight participants deal with such things as fear, shame and guilt.
The lifeskills program operates on an $82,000 grant from the United Way, while the sex-abuse survivors group receives $15,000 from the regional government.
"I have the greatest respect for Terry," said Brenda Saxe, a psychologist who works in connection with The Mission. "He is a jewel."
She credits his amazing strength of character for his miraculous comeback from the street.
"There's a place in Terry that retains that capacity to love," Ms. Saxe said. "He has devoted his life to those people."
For a man who, at one time, never expected to have much of a life, Mr. Hogan now has a great deal.
He is married to Joyce Thompson-Hogan, and they have 14-year-old twins Sean and Virginia.
His $30,000 salary has yielded him a townhouse in Arnprior and a 1993 Honda Civic.
Spending time with his family, gardening and building are his private pursuits.
As well, having dealt with so many native people at The Mission, Mr. Hogan enjoys studying their culture and beliefs. He finds theirs to be a more nurturing and compassionate society than the strict Roman Catholic culture he knew as a child.
In all, his life is a stark change from his days on the street. "Love will win out," Mr. Hogan feels. "Living is giving."
"Homeless people all have a magnificent story, and they are human beings who deserve to be listened to," he said. "They really do want to have a life, but they don't believe that they can". "I know if we can spend time with them, we can love them back to life. I believe that 100 per cent. I see too many success stories, and I am one of them."