Twenty-six years in the past, Lorenzo Berardinetti was a pacesetter on the daybreak of a brand new civic period, the top of the Scarborough delegation within the first Toronto megacity council.
Six years in the past, he was at Queen’s Park, serving to steer the province from the helm of its justice coverage standing committee after successful 4 elections as a Liberal MPP.
Tonight, he can have his bag searched. He’ll take his sneakers off and have them inspected for weapons and medicines. He’ll sleep in a room with 23 different folks.
“I may end up in tears telling my story,” Berardinetti stated not too long ago from the general public library he makes use of as an workplace.
“It’s been really hard. Really hard.”
Most individuals Berardinetti used to control Ontario with — or sit on council beside, or practise legislation with — don’t know he grew to become homeless final yr. He stated he agreed to an interview with the Star to share his story of how he wound up the place he’s to remind them that luck is the one actual insulation from hardship.
“People will start laughing at me, saying, ‘What an idiot, he should have saved his money,’” he stated. “But anyone can end up homeless. Unfortunately, I got sick, and it’s taken a long time to recover.”
Marla Walters, government director of the Ajax shelter Berardinetti lives in, is aware of he’s proper. A veteran politician displaying up needing a mattress isn’t outstanding to somebody who works to assist homeless folks: Berardinetti sleeps subsequent to docs, nurses and different attorneys some nights.
“Life can change suddenly for people,” she stated. “People from all walks of life end up in shelters. We’re not as far away from their situation as we think we are.”
A political contact
Berardinetti received his first elections early. As pupil council president in highschool, he used to meet with youngsters individually to “make sure they were happy.”
He took that micro-level methodology to grownup politics. A longtime supporter of his, Doris Ward, 85, was quoted in a 2011 Toronto Observer article characterizing him as “a person who listens to people.” He, in return, was recorded eulogizing her within the on-line visitor e book hooked up to her 2021 obituary as “one of the most beautiful people that I have ever met in my life.”
Lorenzo Berardinetti, proper, presents actor Mike Myers with a avenue register Toronto in June 2003. Myers was additionally honoured by the town of Toronto with the important thing to the town.
Aaron Harris/CP
At 26 years outdated, Berardinetti each handed the bar and bought voted onto Scarborough council. As he tells it, his intention then and all through his profession, was to “be honest, to serve with good intentions and to help people.”
Politics as household affair
Berardinetti’s life had all the time hewed near that of his older cousin, politician Mike Colle. They grew up collectively in the identical dwelling in downtown Toronto.
“He was really a very sweet little boy,” stated Colle, who’s 16 years older. “It’s hard to believe that from one family, one house, we both ended up where we did. I was in city politics, then he got into city politics. We were in the legislature together. Our paths have been intertwined.”
Lorenzo Berardinetti, seen right here at his election win in 2014 as MPP for Scarborough Southwest.
Metroland file photograph
Each cousins have been voted out within the provincial election in 2018. Colle says there’s a depressive “black hole” on the finish of a political profession — he doesn’t assume Berardinetti ever made it out.
“People have no idea the psychological impact it has, especially if you lose your seat,” he stated. “How do you adjust? There’s no one to help you. And once you’re out, nobody wants anything to do with you. They won’t hire you.”
Colle wasn’t within the abyss lengthy. Simply weeks later, he received the Eglinton-Lawrence seat on council after the front-runner — his son, Josh — stop the race and retired. Final yr, Colle was elevated to deputy mayor. Berardinetti hasn’t discovered work since.
“Lorenzo was a lawyer, he certainly had the credentials,” stated Colle. “But if you’re a defeated politician, no one wants to give you an opportunity. There’s always an excuse. I’ve seen it happen with so many people over the years.”
A life-changing loss
Berardinetti tried operating within the 2022 municipal election however was badly overwhelmed.
“That was a huge mistake,” he stated. “I wasn’t getting donations, I wasn’t getting volunteers. But I needed a job. I was running out of money. I had to sell my car to pay my rent.”
Solely 4 years faraway from his three-decade profession in politics, Berardinetti was already destitute. He says now the membrane separating a safe life from one on the road is thinner than anybody with means is snug imagining. As Berardinetti tells his story, rips shaped when he misplaced his job, nevertheless it tore open when he had his first seizure.
He stated it occurred when he was almost 60 years outdated. “I just got divorced and I was all alone,” he stated. “I don’t remember calling my brother. But he told me I did. I said, ‘I don’t feel well, something weird is going on.’ He called the ambulance.”
Berardinetti awoke a month later. The nurse altering his IV bag advised him he had been seizing uncontrollably. He needed to be ferried from Scarborough to a specialist at Toronto Western Hospital to be put in a coma.
The trigger, he was advised, was an over-prescription of Trileptal, a medicine for epilepsy generally used to deal with bipolar dysfunction.
Berardinetti stated his psychiatrist prescribed him the drug together with a sleeping tablet and a tranquilizer. He stated he’s neither bipolar nor epileptic, however as an alternative believed he had been given Trileptal to handle unwanted side effects from his different prescriptions.
“I couldn’t do anything for a while after the coma,” stated Berardinetti. “The doctors told me I needed to rest for a couple years to get my brain back.”
A plea for assist
In the meantime, his financial savings have been ebbing away. After Berardinetti’s failed return to metropolis council, he couldn’t make hire, and his landlord in Scarborough kicked him out. He moved to Ajax to dwell together with his brother however ended up leaving, with nowhere else to go, after what he stated was a dispute over funds.
Berardinetti’s sister known as Colle for assist shortly after.
Lorenzo Berardinetti was elected 4 instances because the MPP for Scarborough Southwest.
Justin Greaves/Metroland
“He called me back and said, ‘I can’t help you, there are no shelter beds in Toronto,’” stated Berardinetti. “I said, ‘I’m OK, I’m going to be starting my law practice soon.’”
Colle stated it was regrettable, not having the ability to discover his cousin a mattress in Toronto. He stated it’s been months because the two final spoke.
“He was in a coma, so there’s no income coming in, but you’ve still got to pay your bills, you’ve still got to pay your rent,” stated Colle. “You know, it gets to a point where your own relatives and friends, they don’t have the wherewithal to help you get out of the financial hole.”
The exhausting monetary fact
Leaving Queen’s Park in 2018, Berardinetti had a couple of yr’s wage saved up. Base pay for an MPP has been frozen at $116,000 since 2009 — $12,000 much less per yr than a metropolis councillor. He used to personal a house together with his spouse, former councillor Michelle Holland, however moved out after they divorced.
After Berardinetti transitioned to provincial politics, he says he cashed out his municipal worker pension, price about $200,000, to repay a bit of his and Holland’s mortgage.
“I should have kept the money in the account, I guess,” he stated. Holland declined an interview request.
Life can be simpler, Berardinetti stated, if it wasn’t for the Mike Harris authorities, which removed the lifetime pension plan for MPPs in 1995 in an effort to win again public belief in authorities. Councillors and MPs nonetheless get pensions, and Berardinetti stated that his lack of 1 has pressured him, at 63 to attempt to reignite his authorized profession so he can afford to maneuver out of the shelter.
“I’m not saying I should be getting more than other people,” stated Berardinetti. “But I could have had a successful law career. I put it on hold to serve the community. Now I’m surviving on $830 a month from my Canada pension.”
Berardinetti stated he wished the 2 Liberal leaders after Harris weren’t “too afraid” of blowback from the media and public to reinstate the pension.
Kathleen Wynne stated she was “tormented” by the pension situation when she was premier. She stated she knew some MPPs who solely stayed in workplace as a result of they couldn’t afford to retire, however there was no “public permission” to assist them out, she stated.
“It’s very hard, once you’ve taken something away from politicians, to give it back,” Wynne advised the Star. “It looks like you’re feeding fat cats. People think politicians are at the trough. They think that we’re all crooks.”
A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford’s workplace advised the Star his authorities is not going to be reinstating the pension plan both.
“That’s easy for Doug Ford to say,” stated Berardinetti. “He’s from a rich family. It’s not the same for him. My father worked at a lumber mill.”
“Having been through the system, my perspective is totally different,” stated Lorenzo Berardinetti.
R.J. Johnston/ Ontario Chronicle
Cash can create emotional distance — even Berardinetti had bother empathizing as soon as. As a rookie councillor, he fiercely opposed a brand new youth shelter in his ward.
“Having been through the system, my perspective is totally different,” he stated. “People see me, see homeless people as dangerous. I walk into the shops around here and get asked to leave. But we just need compassion.”
Discovering a brand new goal
Berardinetti has taken an expert curiosity in filling that void of compassion.
He stated he needs to work for Authorized Help Ontario to signify low-income newcomers and refugees. There have to be a goal behind all his misfortune, he stated — possibly it was assembly different susceptible folks he may assist.
He’s additionally been processing his ache into literature. Final yr, he self-published a e book known as “The Owl and the Dove.” Chapter one opens with a meditation on his disaster of religion within the wake of his coma.
“How could God allow me to go through this terrible experience?” he wrote. “Why does God allow terrible things to happen?”
The birds, which signify rationality and spirituality, respectively, discuss him by means of his anguish. He feels reduction when the dove tells him he, like everybody, is tethered to God. The owl reminds him he isn’t the one individual to have suffered seizures. In that second, he writes, they make him really feel as if a lifetime of “joy, abundance and love” remains to be potential.
Over the summer time, across the third anniversary of the coma, Berardinetti stated his neurologist gave him the inexperienced gentle to work once more.
By early December, he’d regained the licence to practise legislation he let lapse when he was elected to the legislature.
For now, Lorenzo Berardinetti Barristers & Solicitors solely exists on paper, registered in the identical constructing because the shelter he lives in.
However he’s working to convey it to life. Identical to he did with the megacity all these years in the past. As administration committee chair, he helped appoint this metropolis’s inaugural treasurer and hearth chief, weighed in on its flag and coat of arms, too. He is aware of the way to construct a spot up.
“It’s hard to start a law practice at this age,” he admitted. “I have friends my age who are retired. But I have to do it. I have no pension. I can’t survive.”
