Bonnie and John
by Steve Andrusiak
08/04/09

There is a sign on the door of Bonnie Grills’ Ontario Street home. It reads- “Do Not Disturb On Pain Of Death”. But the warning is framed inside of a big red heart. Before you can decide whether to knock or flee, the door opens. “I get migraines,” explains the woman in the wide white-framed glasses. “When that happens I don’t want visitors.” She smiles. “Today, I’m feeling fine. Come in.”

The shades are down. The room is dimly lit. Her husband- John is in the kitchen, having just come into the house from his workshop “out back”. He explains that he is recovering copper and tin from old appliances. The metals are sold to a salvage yard. “I do that to make an extra little bit of money,” says Mr. Grills. He walks stiffly and explains that a car hit him when he was 19. He has lived with some pain ever since.
…
Bonnie and John Grills first met at a Toronto Subway station. She had been asking for directions. “I had been working at the CNE that summer. The subway was at Spadina and Dupont,” she recalls. They struck up a conversation. A friendship grew. They married in 1974. They have lived in East London ever since and on Ontario Street longer than anywhere else.

Their first home is gone. The lot is now the site of the Old East Community Garden. Today, they rent the first floor of a house almost directly across the street. Just to the right, they face the home Ms. Grills lived in as a teenager with her parents.

…

“I was wondering if I can get a couple of Tylenol(s) from you. It’s my lower back.” A man in his early twenties has just opened the front door. Ms. Grills introduces him as JJ- “one of my street kids.” “Yah,” adds the man, “I’m one of her street sons.”

“Just give him the regular ones,” says Ms. Grills to her husband who leaves to search out a bottle of Tylenol. “You have to get water out of the kitchen,” she adds.
Then without missing a beat she continues with her explanation. “I tend to be mother to a lot of troubled teens. They (grow up and) continue to call me ‘Mom’. They drop by for food. They drop by for…” The man is back in the room and he completes her sentence. “(They drop by) for attention.”

The visitor has duct tape around one of his shoes. “He’s the only person I know who can go through a pair of shoes in under two months,” says Ms. Grills. Nice meeting you,” he says. The door closes. And JJ is gone.

“There has to be at least twenty,” she continues. “I don’t know how many people call me Mom. I have a constant stream. … My son met (JJ) at a function he was working at. He called me Mom almost from the start,” she says.

John and Bonnie’s daughter lives two blocks away on Woodman Avenue. Ilse Grills remembers her parents’ generosity. She still refers to some of her friends as her foster brothers and sisters. “Melissa, Paul- some of them stayed for months. …”

“More than 20, I lost count. I was the one who brought most of them home. They were friends that I met at the Youth Action Centre or kids at school. Usually my Mom would be somebody they could talk to. She made sure they had something to eat. If we had extra cloth(ing), my mother would give it to them,” says Ilse.

…

Ilse Grills remembers when prostitution and drug dealing were rampant. She remembers when Lorne Avenue and Bouley Street each had a gang. “It’s actually cleaned up quite a bit. It used to be a pretty bad neighbourhood.”

But her mother and father say for all the changes, people have become more careful, less open. “It was a very friendly area,” says Mr. Grills.

I think this area could be much better if more people were friendlier and more talkative with each other,” says Ms. Grills. She says it’s important to be friendly first and to give people a chance to respond in kind. “If someone new comes into the neighbourhood, I’ll go over and say, ‘Hi, welcome. My name is Bonnie’.