I am a 38 year old South Asian woman that is second generation Canadian. I was born in my father’s small hometown of Port Alberni, BC on Vancouver Island and my family moved to Surrey, BC, when I was 4 years old. I spent the majority of my childhood and young adult years living and working in the lower mainland. I first moved to the city of Vancouver when I was 18 as a second year undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia’s beautiful Point Grey campus. I would go on to spend most of my 20’s living in a city that I once cherished and took such joy in, which has since permanently eroded my trust in its people and the entirety of its law enforcement.

Throughout my childhood I was faced with many challenges which encompassed the gamut of racial abuse and discrimination from young white classmates, both male and female, serious intergenerational trauma, and the drawbacks of having two parents that were forced into an outdated tradition of arranged marriage. Much of this manifested within me as a shy and introverted nature, and a secret, painful, decade long eating disorder. Throughout that entire time, I was always reading with my nose in a book, exploring new worlds, and using my imagination to dream of a better future. However, it was writing, whether through personal blogs, or the hey-day of social media with Myspace and Tumblr, that truly helped me connect and find a community to which I belonged.

At 27, while working in the restaurant industry and a very misogynistic environment, I was drugged and raped back to back, one day after the other, by two separate acquaintances. One whom I thought was a friend and a “good guy” that had just had a relationship end… and decided I would be his consolation prize. The other was also a bartender and unfortunately part of a bar group that had a history of their male staff spiking customer’s drinks with GHB while on shift, and then later raping them (as disclosed to me by a prominent women’s organizations, and regrettably, by one of my case workers who shared her story at the time and shouldn’t have).

As a direct result of that case worker’s reckless disclosure, I became hellbent on suing my perpetrator and his employer where part of the assault took place. In hindsight, I wish she had never told me because it was the first perpetrator and that bar which I should have sued. Trauma, however, has no neat ending. The brain will protect you however it can, until or unless you’re actually able to face the truth. And the truth is that following the morning of waking up face-down, naked, splayed on my bed… and raped; I woke up permanently changed, with deep internal injuries, and went to a work event by an after-work bar that I then entered to ask my “friend’s” roommate where he had been the previous night.

But his roommate wasn’t working that day. So I sat down, and the acquaintance who would become my second perpetrator joined me for a drink.

One trauma, hammering itself in directly on top of the other. This lead to the first, and worst one, being somewhat buried for some of those hard civil case years. But I’m jumping ahead. In between that time, I made a sudden trip to Toronto to see friends and quite frankly, just run away. This was after going to Vancouver General Hospital to access Sexual Assault Services. And about a month later, with assistance from a different women’s organization that I went to first, we called the Vancouver Police Department to report. Rather than waiting for the Sex Crimes Unit to properly take my statement, I went along with the chipper male officer that said we should go into the station to do the videotaped interview immediately. Rather than his female partner conducting the interview, he decided to give her a break because she was burnt out, and to disregard the law about allowing my support worker in with me. Later, when participating in the Globe & Mail’s 18-month investigative series entitled Unfounded which exposed police services across the country for bias and perpetuation of rape myths, as well as investigative failures, the Vancouver Police Department would violate my legal right to obtain a copy of that interview video through a Freedom of Information Request, so as to protect that male officer from humiliation and repercussions instead.

As one of the 54 participants in the Globe & Mail’s award-winning Unfounded series by Robyn Doolittle, the only survivor of colour to participate, and the only one to always be willing to have my face and name attached from the onset, I was able to find some small modicum of peace and pride and accomplishment in pushing for police accountability and change, even if it wasn’t the legal justice that my heart so yearns for and still desires.

I am fortunate to have worked with Robyn and the Globe on that series and will forever be proud to have been a part of it. Regrettably, while our work was at least eight months before #metoo, it would be desecrated and misused for its cultural impact in February of 2021 and the cancellation of Canadian musician Matthew Good. More on that later.

For now, I can share that while well-intentioned, Robyn Doolittle’s keynote speech at the annual Ontario Library Association’s conference in 2019 caused ripples in my career at that time which I am still grappling with to this day; though I an incident from that day and our personal exchange is mentioned in her follow-up book “What’s Fair in the Age of MeToo?”

I am also the victim inspiration in Matthew Good’s song “A Momentary Truth” on his Moving Walls album. A confession, and the stuff of nightmares, contrasted with a stupid upbeat melody.

Gaps obviously exist in this story. Throughout those years, I moved back and forth between Toronto and Vancouver. I grew. I grieved. I lost my brother and only sibling to a car accident at the very start of the COVID pandemic in March of 2020.

I also returned to Toronto to finally earn my master’s degree. And some ten odd years later, I am still grieving. That beautiful young woman at 27 who had finally started to come into her own. Who was young and thin and beautiful and full of life. Who believed in love and romanticized her life. Who absolutely whole-heartedly loved her city. And who trusted her friend who asked her spur-of-the-moment to come have a drink around the corner at the bar by her apartment.

This is my story but it is not my only story. There are still years and hopefully decades left to live. To live out my values, and my purpose. And to experience wonder, and awe, and joy.

Throughout my healing, which is forever on-going, I have learnt the importance of who stays, and how even the longest friendships are sometimes transitory. The limits of other people. Justified or not. The lack of compassion or boundaries. And constant devaluation and dehumanization.

I have seen and met all sorts of figures in the law. I know how corrupt and untrustworthy the Vancouver Police Department are, and that there is no safety net. Not for me, and other women like me. Survivors of sexual and misogynistic violence and white supremacy. Survivors and women of colour who they have a long-standing history of re-traumatizing and abusing.

And still, I believe that change and progress are possible. The work is slow and arduous and it mostly certainly is work. It requires the right allies and collaborators and teammates and helpers. It requires those that would put courage and conviction first and who know the road isn’t easy, but that it is worth doing.

Toronto is my home of choice and where my future and community lies. But Vancouver, for better and mostly worse, is the city and its specific lack of community that has shaped me.