Halfway through her second year at Osgoode Hall Law School, she was struggling with money, housing, her health, and loneliness.
Babcock was an oddity at Osgoode. She left home as a teenager and by 15, was turning tricks for money. She never finished high school. She lived on the street for stretches of time and had lost her son to children’s services.
She’d made it into Osgoode through sheer grit and determination to make a difference for people like her. The powerless. The voiceless.
But convictions are sometimes not enough.
“I don’t belong here,” she told me over lunch at the graduate students lounge that day. “They come from really nice upbringings and I come from the gutter. They’re not engaged in the same issues as I am.”
Half a year later, Babcock was found dead in her home. She was only 32.
What would she make of the fact that her fellow law students raised $18,000 in her name?
That money, raised to $33,000 by the administration, will be put into the Wendy Babcock Bursary, 5 per cent awarded each year to a graduating student bent on a career in social justice law.
“It’s become a collective student cause,” says Joey Hoffman, one of Babcock’s former classmates who helped spearhead the fund. “We all recognized we lost an important person who was going to go on and do really cool work.”
There have been Wendy Babcock Bursary pub nights and basketball matches and concerts. After a cheque for $5,000 arrived from an anonymous donor, they produced a small thank-you video, which flew around campus, inspiring more money.
But the big draw was a benefit drag show — a first for the law school, according to Osgoode professor Bruce Ryder.
“To see guys in wigs and heels and dresses, to me it spoke a lot about the impact Wendy had on people and the legacy she left behind,” says Ryder, who mentored Babcock. “More people than she knew respected her.”
The irony, and the tragedy, is that Babcock was more present on campus after her death than ever before.
But there is so much tragedy here.
Babcock was a fighter. She’d survived an abusive home, many “bad dates” as a prostitute, nights sleeping in shelters, the loss of many friends and the removal of her son. In each case, she fought back, founding the “bad date” coalition, getting a job as a harm reduction worker, earning a counsellor/advocate diploma from George Brown College for assaulted woman and children. She even was named a Public Health Champion by the city.
Law school was the next step in her battle. She wanted to change the children’s aid rules that prevent homeless women from keeping their children, among other things.
And, despite her insecurities, she was succeeding.
“She did extremely well in her exams,” Ryder says. “She had supremely good writing and analytic skills for someone of her background.”
For once, she had money in the bank and a $10,000 bursary coming to her, says Penny Spence, director of Osgoode’s student financial services who says without hesitation that she loved Babcock.
She, and many others, think Babcock’s death was a mistake. And, like everyone, she believes Babcock would have made “the best lawyer.”
The Osgoode students and faculty aren’t the only ones paying tribute to Babcock. Eva’s Phoenix, a youth shelter Babcock once stayed at, has raised $3,000 for its own Wendy Babcock bursary — helping young homeless women go to university.
And Babcock’s friends and former co-workers have bought a plaque for a bench in Allan Gardens, with a nice view of both the flowers and the Sherbourne stroll. They plan to sit there for comfort and inspiration.
All these things have happened independently, without cross-pollination. These are the disparate patches of Babcock’s life — why it was so rich, and sometimes, so confusing.
“I’ve never had an easy life,” she told me near the end of our lunch that afternoon. “I want to prove that what I went through mattered. It’s hard to get depressed if you know what you went through helped other people.
“If this works out, I’ll make sure society benefits.”
Society has, Wendy.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Catherine Porter
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