Deconstructing the Panhandling Norms: Federated Anti-Poverty Groups of B.C. V. Vancouver (City )and Western Print Media

• Author: Raewyn Brewer
• Pages: 25-39

25 AP PE AL  V OL UM E 10  2005

DECONSTRUCTING THE

PANHANDLING NORMS:

FEDERATED ANTI-POVERTY GROUPS OF B.C.

v. VANCOUVER (CITY) AND WESTERN

PRINT MEDIA

Raewyn Brewer

Introduction

Now, at nineteen, she’s so brimming with goodness that she sits

on a Toronto street corner […] Norah sits cross-legged with a

begging bowl in her lap and asks nothing of the world. Nine-

tenths of what she gathers she distributes at the end of the day to

other street people. She wears a cardboard sign on her chest: a

single word printed in black marker—GOODNESS.

1

Norah is Reta Winters’ daughter. Reta is the narrator of Carol Shields’

Unless. Shields’ novel, however, is not about panhandling per se.

Rather, Unless traces the impact Norah’s situation has on her family.

While Norah sits passively on the corner of Bathurst and Bloor and

passersby drop money into her bowl, her mother writes “My heart is

broken” on a washroom wall.

2

Norah’s father surmises a traumatic

event may have triggered her move to the street. Her two younger

sisters sit beside her every Saturday afternoon, sandwiches and water

in tow. Yet one is sleeping poorly, the other falling behind in math.

Norah’s behaviour does not attract a legal response. No law

enforcement officer approaches Norah and asks her to move. No law

enforcement officer tells Norah she could be fined. However, if

1

C. Shields, Unless (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2002) at 11-12.

2

Ibid. at 67.