Program Location: ROOM 1 on the 2ND FLOOR, at NORTH YORK CENTRAL LIBRARY

Margaret Jacobson was a sweet-natured young girl who played the accordion and had dreams of becoming a teacher until she had a psychotic break in her teens, which sent her down a much darker path. Her Name Was Margaret traces Margaret's life from her childhood to her death as a homeless woman on the streets of Hamilton, Ontario. With meticulous research and deep compassion author Denise Davy analyzed over eight hundred pages of medical records and conducted interviews with Margaret's friends and family, as well as those who worked in psychiatric care, to create this compelling portrait of a woman abandoned by society. Through the revolving door of psychiatric admissions to discharges to rundown boarding homes, Davy shows us the grim impact of deinstutionalization: patients spiraled inexorably toward homelessness and death as psychiatric beds were closed and patients were left to fend for themselves on the streets of cities across North America. Today there are more 235,000 people in Canada who are counted among the homeless annually and 35,000 who are homeless on any given night. Most of them are struggling with mental health issues. Margaret's story is a heartbreaking illustration of what happens in our society to our most vulnerable and should serve as a wake-up call to politicians and leaders in cities across Canada

Denise Davy is a nationally recognized award winning journalist and author of Her Name Was Margaret: Life and Death on the Streets. She worked at the Hamilton Spectator for 26 years where she won numerous awards, including a National Newspaper Award. She was twice named Journalist of the Year by the Ontario Newspaper Association and has been the recipient of national journalism fellowships.

READ MORE: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/denise-davy-her-name-was-margaret-1.6069095