Park Avenue, for many of us, was the highway of our growth and generation, so the uproar was broad and deep in the fall of 2006 when the city tried to rename it in honour of Robert Bourassa.

Remarkably, the turning point in rolling back this proposal came not from the politicians, talk-show hosts, or even the 30,000 who signed a petition: It came from a story by a freelance journalist who has sunk deep roots into this city’s cultural landscape after moving here from Ontario.

Propelled by her love of the city’s older neighbourhoods and her finely honed journalistic instincts, Marianne Ackerman, in late January 2007, booked an interview with the late premier’s mild-mannered son, jazz pianist François Bourassa, resulting in a devastating disavowal and embarrassment for renaming proponents. On February 3, The Gazette slapped the story on Page 1 under the headline Dad would cringe and three days later the idea was dropped.

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The children walk in the distance. From their chatter and the backpacks they are carrying, they appear to be headed to school.

Someone with a handheld video camera pursues them, the image jerking and shaky as the camera closes in, in the manner of the horror film The Blair Witch Project. But this time, the evil is real.

The children, appearing to be around 10 years old, are Hungarian Gypsies, or Roma, a group of people persecuted historically across Europe. The camera motion gets rougher as adult male voices are heard uttering threats as ominous as they are obscene.

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Come along with me: We’re going to visit with Mebbie Aikens. Hers is a story about those moments when we feel down and out, when life is beating us down.

It began after she and her husband, Eldie, a Presbyterian minister, had just celebrated 43 years of marriage and were entering retirement.

Mebbie returned home from a grocery-store run to find Eldie sprawled on the floor, a victim of a massive and fatal heart attack.

“That happened 19 years ago, and I found myself with no job and no husband,” says the 84-year-old.

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