For 13 years, Stephen has sold street paper Megaphone in Vancouver, Canada. Nothing could get between him and his lifelong dream of travelling to our shores to meet a koala: not two comas and a devastating house fire, nor years of living on the street.

When I was a kid I had many stuffed animals, and I was fascinated with the koala bear. I spent a lot of time dreaming about holding a real koala.

In 2010, I turned 40. This was a real wake-up call for me. I said to myself, If I spent the first 40 years drunk and on drugs, let’s do the next 40 sober. That’s when everything started changing for me.

As soon as I began selling Megaphone, I was able to start saving money for Australia. It was too hard before, but getting clean, meeting Adam, the love of my life, and selling Megaphone meant I was able to make my dream come true.

I had a lot of things on my packing list. Only one jacket, though, and T-shirts, sunscreen. The most important thing was my camera. I needed to make sure I got a good picture holding a koala.

 

I’d lived in Vancouver on and off since 1991. The first time, I was living on the street. The second time, in 1994, I had a place to stay and opened my own cleaning business. But it was hard. A lot of people were doing drugs – crystal meth, cocaine, things like that. I was really losing my mind at that time.

In December 1999, I said to myself, I want to go to Montreal to celebrate the millennium with my family. I was driving my car, and that’s when I fell asleep at the wheel. The car went in a ditch, and I woke up two months after from a coma. With all the blood work they had to do, they found out I had HIV on top of that. It took me two years to get back on my feet.

In 2002, I was back in Vancouver. I decided to go snowboarding in Whistler. I got into another major accident and ended up in another coma for two months. They thought I was not going to make it. I went off a cliff and broke my hips, my ankles…bones were sticking out.

In 2004, I was diagnosed with permanent brain damage and a scan showed I also had a brain tumour. They told me I had maybe two months to live. I was out of money and waiting for some support. I didn’t want any treatment, and I decided that if I was going to die, I wanted to die in Vancouver.

So, in 2004, I returned to the West Coast. I was living on Granville Street on a piece of cardboard and asking for change to survive. Because of everything that had happened to me, I just wanted to forget. I was supposed to, you know, die. But I’m still alive!

I was really fortunate when a friend offered me housing, but when he found out about my drug addiction, he asked me to leave and helped me move to a hotel. From there I stayed in a string of single-room occupancies, each one worse than the last. I’d been on the British Columbia Housing list since 2005, but it wasn’t until 2011 that I finally got the housing I’m still grateful to have.

Then, in 2012, I reconnected with Adam. We met at a peer program after not seeing each other for 15 years, and he helped me get clean.

I started selling Megaphone and it really helped. You make a couple of dollars: it starts with that, but it grows, step by step. The most wonderful thing about it is having some customers to talk to. To me, my customers are like my family.

 

After five years of selling Megaphone, I said to myself, I want to make a sign that I’m five years clean, and tell everybody I’m raising money to go on my big trip to Australia. My goal was $15,000. After some years, I reached $12,000 – and that was all through selling Megaphone. We were supposed to go in 2020, but COVID-19 happened and everything got shut down. Then last year, we had a fire in my home and lost everything. Luckily, I was able to keep the money for Australia.

My brother Daniel, Adam and I flew from Vancouver to Auckland, New Zealand and spent New Year’s Eve on the plane. We went to the Hobbiton film set from The Lord of the Rings, which is near Hamilton, and then went on a 15-day cruise with eight stops, eventually reaching Brisbane.

The moment was coming and I could feel it getting closer. Oh my God, sometimes I couldn’t even sleep. I was too excited.

When we were on our way to the koala sanctuary, my brother spotted a lady selling The Big Issue across the street in Brisbane’s downtown district. Her name is Jenny. I introduced myself and told her about Megaphone magazine. I was so happy to see her, I bought two magazines and left a tip, including a $5 Canadian note. I exchanged information with her and am hoping we can stay in touch.

There were so many things to see at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, on the Gold Coast. It was so beautiful there. And when I finally held a koala, it was very sentimental for me, to experience that. It’s so hard to describe how koalas look: so adorable, so innocent. I saw one holding its baby inside its pouch. Oh, I think that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.

When they took the koala away from me, I started to cry. But they were tears of joy.

 

By Amy Roper Megaphone

Photos courtesy of Stephen Scott

Published in ed#734