The Irvings use my story but that's ok!!!!!

irving
Originally uploaded by Oldmaison.

At first, I didn’t really know how to take this one?

I attended the memorial held for Harry Havens this morning.





An individual approached me afterwards and told me the write up was great.

I thanked her.

She wasn’t talking about my blog. She told me it was in the Irving paper.

Was I confused? You darn right I was!!!

The woman told me the story I wrote in my blog was in the Irving paper?

I quickly said - You mean I made the Evil Irving newspaper????...lol

Hours later, I had a look and sure enough there it was.

The Irvings never asked me if they could used the story but that’s ok! If I would have never blogged the story? Nobody would have known and Harry’s death.

In the case? Harry just didn't became a stat!

The only part I had a problem with was the Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Activist.

I wish they would have just wrote the word- Blogger!!! That’s ok!

It’s nice the Irvings sometime use stories from this blog.

I hope this puts an end to the copyrights issue once and for all!!!


Here’s the story-

Homeless community to honour man who refused to give up at service today





TOOL HELP
By HEATHER MCLAUGHLIN
Published Tuesday April 10th, 2007
Appeared on page A3
His name was Harry Havens.

He was 59.

The name won't mean much to the average Frederictonian.

He wasn't a prominent citizen, business leader, scholar or educator.

At one time, the Woodstock-born Havens had an ordinary life. He was the father of three children, the grandparent of two and had two brothers.

He was a man that local street-outreach volunteer Mavis Doucette remembers with affection for his gritty determination and a sense of humour.

Today at 11 a.m. at Brunswick Street Baptist Church, the city's homeless community and Havens's friends from the community clinic and the community kitchen will have a chance to say goodbye.







Havens rented a single room at a Carleton Street rooming house. He had a mattress on the floor covered by a sleeping bag, a chair, a chest of drawers and a pet cat he snuck indoors.

He moved from Woodstock because he wanted to break free of his addiction to alcohol, Doucette said.

"I don't know how many times he was in and out of detox. He just couldn't seem to overcome it. He would go for months without drinking," Doucette said.

Then he'd fall back.

Doucette once asked Havens how his life spiralled out of control.

"Driving down the road with a steering wheel in one hand and a beer bottle in another," Doucette said he told her.

She met Havens while trolling the streets to check on street people. She told Havens about the services at the community clinic.

Havens asked Doucette if she wanted to go out to dinner.

"I'll see if I can get (former YMCA street-outreach worker) Mike Ryan to take us to the soup kitchen some night," Doucette recalled Havens saying in gentlemanly fashion.

"He just had a great sense of humour."

After Havens died of kidney failure at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital, his family took him back to Woodstock for burial. A memorial service was held April 7, but even bus fare to Woodstock is beyond the reach of many of Havens's friends in the city.






"There's no closure for street people who all knew him and loved him," Doucette said. "They die and you're just supposed to forget them and step on and keep on going."

So Doucette reached out to the community for help, hoping to find a meeting room where friends could get together and pay their last respects.

Brunswick Street Baptist Church offered to help and one of its pastors will lead the service today.

While Havens had a dark side, his humanity shone through, Doucette said.

"Havens really cared for people and that got him in trouble," she recalled.

He'd feel so sorry for someone else that he'd give away what money he had. He'd then try to find odd jobs - such as pushing a shopping cart to pick fiddleheads in the spring and sell them to a local store - to earn enough to hold himself together.

A year ago, four young people mugged him and took his wallet. He ended up with a black eye, bruises and wounds. Another time he got so sick, he could barely walk.

"He'd somehow fight his way back. He was determined and stubborn," Doucette said.







Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder activist Charles LeBlanc wrote about Havens on his website called Oldmaison recently.

Havens lived in a room next door to LeBlanc.

"I noticed a few weeks ago he was sitting in his chair with his head down while coughing. He had a cat across from him. The room was full of smoke and Harry was coughing a lot ... At night, you could hear him coughing very hard," LeBlanc wrote on his website.






"I bet he made many prayers for God to take him away from his misery. He was in very bad shape."

Within a day of Havens' death, his room was emptied of his few worldly goods, as was his mini-fridge. The food was shared with the rest of the residents.

"I had a sick feeling in my stomach of the way it happened," LeBlanc wrote. "The room was rented hours later ... The female caretaker really felt bad."

With the room bereft of any personal belongings and the door left wide open, there was little evidence of the person who had been there just days before.

"The only thing left as a memory of Harry are his shoes in the hallway," LeBlanc wrote.