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Lewis (not his real name) is one of our favourite characters around The Good Neighbours' Club.
Lewis hails from a small town, where things were pretty lean. At the age of eighteen, without any foresight, Lewis got hooked up with a notorious criminal organization. Before he knew it, he was in too deep to get out. Even when he found a regular job, his connections followed him, and he was blackmailed into further criminal activity, each time being promised that this "last" act would buy his freedom. It never did.
Lewis' assistance to his blackmailers was detected, and he went to prison for several years. When he got out, he fled to Toronto, where many years later he still feels compelled to keep his whereabouts unknown to his friends and family back home. Lewis knew the power of his organized taskmasters in gathering information, so Louis believed--probably correctly--that remaining homeless would keep him off the radar. In need of meals and a place to be during the day, Lewis became a fixture at The Good Neighbours' Club.
This last eighteen months or so, Lewis has been sleeping in a tent in the Beaches during the warmer months, and at Nathan Philips Square in the colder months, all the while stopping by the Club every day, volunteering wherever a hand was needed. Recently he calculated that those who would still be interested in finding him were probably either past caring or dead, and so he took the risk of asking the social work staff at the Club for help in finding a place. Assisted by a housing worker deployed at The Good Neighbours' Club, Lewis found housing, and has since settled in.
Lewis often calls home, but won't let even his family know what city he's living in, for their sake. He's done his crimes, and he's done his time, and now he just wants to give back a little, and he does, every day at the Club. Asked the other day how he was settling in, Lewis said that he was doing fine, and has gotten a little dog for companionship. Let's hope that Lewis is never alone again.