He lost a home but later found a home page, and a friend
Dot-com partnership takes off in Toronto as street-dwelling blogger works with MBA
HAYLEY MICK
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
TORONTO — Every morning, Philip Stern strolls into his favourite High Park coffee shop, sips a fair-trade blend and scans the newspaper. Then the entrepreneur with the Harvard MBA heads downtown to work, as a consultant for technology companies
Outside Alternative Grounds, another man sets up shop. Tony, bundled against the chill in a coat stained from rough living, plops down a cardboard sign and delivers his pitch to the pedestrians of Roncesvalles Avenue.
"G'day, dear," he says. Or "Hey, big guy. Could you spare some change?"
For five years, the pair's relationship grew on a diet of morning chitchat and the occasional bacon-and-eggs breakfast, paid for by the 47-year-old entrepreneur.
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A few months ago, they morphed into Tony and Philip: the homeless man with the words and the fortunate man who gave him a voice.
Tony's voice is hardened by seven years on the streets. So are his hands, now bruised from a recent scrap, he says, with a man who stole his bike. He has slept under picnic tables, in doorways and, one awful night, in an outhouse. "When it's snowin' and the wind's a-blowin', you got to get yourself out of the wind," he says.
Tony, 57, loves to talk. And many in this trendy west-end neighbourhood enjoy listening to his take on life -- especially Philip. "He's easily the brightest homeless person that I've met," says Philip, who has a 15-year-old son and three daughters aged 7, 5 and 3.
Philip, a Montreal native who teaches a computer-science course at the University of Toronto, calls himself a "small-l liberal." He believes left-leaning ideas need practical action plans.
One morning in early October, Philip devised a plan to introduce Tony to the world.
"This lightning bolt struck my head. I said, 'That's it! I'm going to ask Tony if we can do a blog.' " He sped over to Alternative Grounds and found Tony sitting, as usual, on two piled-up milk crates.
"Come on in, I got something to ask you," Philip said. Tony ordered a hot chocolate, Philip a coffee, and they grabbed a metal table near the front window.
Philip explained his idea: They would do a blog together, but the words would come from Tony. Philip would just post them online.
"Me, I'm still trying to think what the hell a blog is," Tony says. He had never used the Internet. He still has trouble switching on a computer.
Sitting there in the coffee shop, however, the choice was easy because he had faith in Philip.
"Well, just go ahead," Tony said.
And that's how they became the co-creators of Homeless Man Speaks.
On Oct. 26, after doing his own quick study of blog technology, Philip posted the first entry, titled Introducing Tony.
That post, and the many that followed, reveal a little about Tony in his own words, such as how long he's been homeless (seven years), how many children he has (two), his last job (a limo driver) and his biggest wish: "I'd have my wife back." (She died seven years ago.) Others give Tony's raw take on life on the street, including why he'd rather sleep outside than in a city-run shelter: "I've seen a man take 32 stitches for a pillow."
The entries are all Tony's words, transcribed by Philip from their morning banter. "He's laugh-your-ass-off funny sometimes," Philip says.
His voice occasionally appears, too, but only to give context to Tony's statements, such as this entry from Nov. 17: Tony: "Hey Phil, what's a 'latte'?"
Philip: "You don't know what a 'latte' is?"
Tony: "Well I know it's a coffee drink. Now, earlier this morning a lady comes up to me and asks me if I was spending all my money on lattes. I told her that I didn't know what a latte was and she told me about it. So I'm asking you, do you know what a 'latte' is?"
These days, Tony carries a few hard copies of his latest entry in his black backpack, and hands them to interested passersby. Philip makes the printouts. Sometimes, he scrawls the domain name, homelessmanspeaks.com, on his cardboard sign.
Most reactions are positive. A few people just don't get it. Once, a woman ranted about the injustice of Tony owning a computer when she did not. "I said, 'Oh, this is all I need,' " Tony says. "She just wouldn't listen."
Another time, a man who drove a Mercedes-Benz accused Tony of paying a writer. Finally, after his protests fell on deaf ears, Tony asked the man for his business card so the "writer" could give him a call.
"Idiot," Philip says.
These days, the blog gets about 125 hits a day, up from 10 at the beginning. Philip dreams it will rocket to 10,000.
"We're selling a message about human respect, or something like that," he says.
He plans to take Tony to the library and give him a crash course on navigating the Internet.
Tony just likes the fact that now local kids give him the thumbs-up. For him, the best part of having the blog is "being noticed."
For three hours on a recent sunny afternoon, Tony has been winning laughs from regulars like Flo Safran who has come to drop off applesauce, the Purolator man, Kevin Walters, co-owner of Alternative Grounds, and a man named Ed who gives him $10 once a week.
Only once was Tony lost for words. He was asked how he hoped his blog will influence people.
He tried to answer, but the words got stuck in his throat. "Basically . . ."
Then he recovered, his voice husky. "What I would like to see happen? I would like to educate the children. To teach them before it happens [to them]. I feel bad when I talk about this. Really badly. Because probably I didn't teach mine."
Just then, a woman came hurrying down the sidewalk, and Tony tossed his head as if to shake away the tears.
"G'day, dear," he said, and tried to smile.
The gospel of Tony
"Fake" panhandlers: "Homeless folks need to keep up their reputations or otherwise no one ain't getting nothing from nobody."
Smoking cigarette butts: "Cut off half the filter and that gets rid of the germs."
Breakfast, versus a bed for the night: "If I knew how cold it was going to be, I wouldn't have had breakfast."
How to iron trousers: "You just got to have a dish towel and some brown paper. You fold the brown paper tight where the crease is and then you wet down the dish towel a bit. Then you put the towel over the paper and iron it and the pants come out perfect." From homelessmanspeaks.com
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