Right, Left and Centre: The Politics of Some Canadians by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Twenty. Part Two of "A Farm Woman's Odyssey.

    A Farm Woman's Odyssey. Part Two.
    


     When Moira met Stanley, Stanley urged Moira to go to a community college like he was doing. This was a good idea and Moira may have followed his advice. Yet later she insisted that she met Stanley at a community college where she and he were both studying. Whatever the truth, Moira and Stalely took classes together. Here Sherrington discovered her love of literature, the visual arts and women's rights.
    Yet Stanley had one flaw. "He was a cash addict," Sherrington said later. "He'd spend all his money." Also Moira learned that Stanley couldn't hold down a job. Soon she was working and keeping both Stanley and herself. Still, Stanley did teach Moira many useful things. He turned her on to unorthodox therapies and soon Sherrington was delving into her past. She realized that she was full of anger against her mother. She also suspected that her father had molested her.
    Stanley also taught Moira how to get on welfare. She started to live on welfare when she couldn't find a job. She also learned a lot about Stanley's politics as he told her about how the world was set up. His politics sat firmly on the left.  He was an anarchist. He believed that only a revolution could turn Canada into a decent country.Yet he had no time for communists or most social; democrats like the N.D.P.
   "The communists have just build a bureaucratic tyrannies in the Soviet Union and China," he said. "And the social democrats don't believe in real social change. They'll just make a few reforms and then do no more than that." Stanley read the works of the anarchist writer Murray Bookchin where he got many of his ideas. Soon Moira embraced Many of Stan's politics. When she worked she kept these ideas to herself. Yet for a time she too believed in an anarchist revolution. She realized that she had been insulted and injured by society and had been exploited on many of the jobs she's worked at.
     Still, Moira didn't embrace all of Stanley's politics. She admired women who succeeded in Canada like the politician and media star Carole Taylor. She also read magazines about the celebrities and liked the movie star Mia Farrow.
      Yet then things started changing both for her and Stanley. In the 1990's Canada swung to the right. The federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his finance minister Paul Martin, made deep cuts to social programs and transfer payments to the provinces. So it became much harder for people to get on the welfare rolls  as the financially strapped government of British Columbia cut back its social services.
   By about 1999, Moira had been on and off welfare for five years. She'd broken off any contact with Stanley who'd started up a business that went bankrupt. Moira had put money into the business and she'd had to declare personal bankruptcy too, just like Stanley had. then Stanley took more money from Moira and then vanished forever. These were bad moments for Moira and she vowed to straighten out her life. She never forgave Stanley for the trouble he had caused her.