The Long Run by Joan Sullivan Read Free Book Online

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pale, Frail, and a Definite Flight of Ideas

    T HE W AR V ETERAN’S Allowance District Reviewer’s Summary confirmed, “At one time he owned property valued at from ten to twelve thousand dollars,” his share from the family estate. Now Robertson’s “bank account shows a balance of $1.62.” His appearance was described as “pale, frail, delicate strained expression…looks all of stated age,” and “his past mental history poor.” At fifty-nine he still listed his career as a manufacturer’s agent, but at this point he was considered “permanently unemployable.”
    In 1951 he was living at 24 Bonaventure Avenue, noted as his sister’s home. His gunshot wounds were judged “10% in extent,” and he was awarded a pension based on this. Payments were effective May 30, 1951. This was the beginning of a continuous back-and-forth between Robertson and the CPC over issues of his health, pension allotments, and support for his wife.
    On January 9, 1952, the War Veterans’ Allowance Board investigated Robertson’s W.V.A. application. This was the beginning of more than two decades of periodic and detailed assessments that would sound a similar tenor. By regular systematic routine, his identity was established by documents and personal acquaintance. It verified the story Robertson related in his letters and found “a definite financial need.” A consultant’s report on Robertson’s psychiatric condition, submitted by C.H. Pottle, M.D., detected a history of hypo-mania, a mood state characterized by disinhibition and energetic talkativeness, “a definite flight of ideas.”
    Robertson had been “a heavy drinker,” suffering “mania bouts and during these episodes has been resorting to alcohol.” Pottle added a “Diagnosis (2) Manic depressive psychosis.”
    In December of that year, Robertson protested a clawback on his pension attributed to some short-term work as a messenger with the province’s Tourist Division (then a subset of the Department of Economic Development): “I received a phone call from the Premier’s 153 office that I was wanted there. I immediately went to Canada House […] I feel I received this three months temporary employment (light work) out of sympathy.”
    Robertson had tried to report this, but due to some misunderstanding and the July St. George’s Day holiday, the allowance was cancelled. “Why all the haste,” he wrote, “I need this little increase badly & I am helping myself, in spite of all I have gone through, & I am still struggling along […] Between the Department & Ottawa you got me ‘all arsed up.’”
    In this letter, Robertson also mentions that he is “trying to pay arrears of board.” Although Robertson lived on Bonaventure Avenue with his sisters into the early 1950s, and seemed to list that as his address for a period after, around this time he had, as the Head of Medical Social Service later wrote,
    Gone on some kind of veteran’s outing and started drinking heavily […] At this time too, he left his sisters and boarded out […] He pointed out that they remained very friendly and he went there for meals, but it was better for him not to live there.
    By February 1955, he was dismissed from his tourism job “due to unsatisfactory service.” From this point, he never really worked again, nor did he settle into a new home. Again and again his assessments and War Veterans Allowance Investigative Reports record that he was not “presently employed,” his income was “Nil,” and (not unsympathetically), “It is this writer’s opinion that because of his present physical condition it is doubtful whether this pensioner will be successful in obtaining work.” He continued to press for coverage for his ear trouble, and in 1953 received an increase in his disability pension for this reason.
    The reports of his on-and-off drinking binges continued. Another report mentions Korsakoff ’s syndrome, a psychiatric dementia syndrome named for