By 1987, Reggie was living in Toronto and trying to establish a life for himself.

His own year-by-year account of this period was characteristically brief. For 1986, he wrote:

“Moved to Toronto. Worked at several meaningless jobs. Took acid a lot.”

And for 1987:

“Another year in Toronto. More acid.”

My memories of those years were somewhat different because, for a time, I was able to see his life much more closely.

Living in Toronto

I moved to Toronto in September 1987. Reggie lived only about a 15- or 20-minute walk from my apartment, so I was able to see him fairly often.

He had a single room in a boarding house with a shared kitchen. Looking back, I wouldn’t describe the conditions as particularly good, and his lifestyle was certainly modest. But he was supporting himself and seemed to be making a go of it.

At one point, Reggie worked for Broy Engineering in Etobicoke, assembling and testing electronic components. His commute by public transit could take an hour or more, and he was also continuing his education.

He studied Technical Writing at Ryerson College and later attended the Trebas Institute of Recording Arts as a part-time student. A Trebas academic record dated February 25, 1988, confirms that he was still enrolled there during the winter of 1988.

Balancing work, a long commute and school couldn’t have been easy, but he stuck with it. That impressed me.

What I Didn’t See

At the time, I assumed Reggie’s drug use wasn’t particularly serious. I knew he smoked marijuana and hash and had used LSD, but I also saw him working, living independently and continuing his education.

Years later, Reggie’s own account changed my understanding of what I had been seeing.

His descriptions of those years—“Took acid a lot” and “More acid”—told me something I hadn’t known while I was living only a short walk away.

It was an early example of something our family would encounter repeatedly with Reggie: what we could see from the outside wasn’t necessarily the whole story.

When I think back to him in Toronto in 1987, however, I still remember someone who was working, studying and trying to find a direction for his life.

There were things I didn’t see, but the effort I did see was real.