One of Canada’s most decorated soccer players sleeps under a tall leafy tree in a west-end Toronto park. It’s one of the places Paul James — an Olympian and member of the country’s only men’s World Cup team — calls home.No sleeping bag sheaths James; his was ruined days earlier, soaked by lawn sprinklers. Just a waterproof plastic strip lies beneath the 54-year-old’s thin frame. His head rests on a gym bag that holds his few possessions, which he fiercely guards. The Welsh-born midfielder who battled the game’s top players — France’s Michel Platini and England’s Glenn Hoddle among them — once had his running shoes stolen from his side as he slept. He went barefoot until he found replacements.From under the tree’s shade, James rises, stiffly. His feet hurt; right shoulder and abdomen, too. He’s eating scarce amounts — his ninth hunger strike in 18 months — and it’s taking a toll. He nibbles between 200 and 1,000 calories a day, he says, give or take, since April to protest what he describes as Canada’s systemic discrimination against those, like him, with what he calls a substance disability.In James’s case, he’s condemning his “forced resignation” as York University’s head soccer coach in 2009 during an extended period of depression and crack cocaine use.That protest has now turned extreme. As of Sept. 1, James began starving himself. To death, if need be, he says, to help others stigmatized for their substance use by restricting himself water, broth and bits of bread.“I have such conviction that what happened to me is wrong and unjust that without correction, how I lived my life — which was to be an honest, fair, caring human being — and my commitment to the football industry, will add up to nothing,” he says.To end his starvation, James wants two demands met: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other po ...
|
