As the holidays approach, bringing with them colder weather, loneliness, and isolation for everyone—especially folks in need of mental health support or experiencing homelessness—the Toronto Community Crisis Service (TCCS) “provides free, confidential, in-person mental health supports city-wide from mobile crisis worker teams.

Every Halloween, bobbing on the ocean in Big Barnie, my parents read aloud our favourite ghost story at midnight: The Little Mermaid. “Even the ghosts of the sea were cold,” my dad, Jack, whispered, making use of the gap in his teeth. He frizzed up his blue-black hair so it looked spiked with hair gel. 

The echinacea were still alive when the first bell of the school year rang. They’re also called coneflowers, and this is how my mother ensured we shared a name—that I carried her with me safely. Her name is Echina, mine is Connie. I didn’t understand, at first, why we didn’t have the same name. I both knew and didn’t in 2018, when the Toronto District School Board trustees voted to remove police officers stationed in their schools.