Gemma Hickey - Almost Feral

Youre that dyke from television!

He was wearing a fluorescent-orange truckers cap that sat smugly over his brown mullet. A white T-shirt covered his swollen belly that ballooned like a blister on top of his faded blue jeans, their wrinkled hems bunched over a pair of worn-out cowboy boots. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.

For a second there, I thought about asking him if he was confusing me with Ellen DeGeneres, but I quickly realized this was no joke.

Two hours earlier, my mother and I arrived at J.T. Cheeseman Provincial Park located approximately ten kilometers outside the town of Port aux Basques. Wed spent the night at the Mount Peyton Hotel in Grand Falls to break up the nine-hour drive from St. Johns. And as we made our way toward Port aux Basques that morning, I hardly said a word in the truck. My throat was sore, and I wanted to save my voice for the speech I had to give the following day. I felt a cold coming on, and it worried me because of the massive challenge that lay ahead. I distracted myself by putting my seat all the way back. The sky was a deep blue, eclipsed by tiny clouds. Sometimes, Id look out the window to my right and attempt to visualize what I was about to do. Even the drive to Port aux Basques felt long. No matter how hard I tried, I dont think I was able to fully comprehend what it was going to take to get back to St. Johns on foot.

I had transformed my body over the previous ten months. Working closely with five trainers, I lost eighty pounds. My diet was as regimented as my exercise routine. The purpose of the walk was to raise funds and awareness for The Pathways Foundation, an organization I founded in 2013 for people, like me, who have suffered abuse at the hands of clergy. I called it Hope Walk.

Hope Walk began in Port aux Basques on July 2, 2015, and ended on August 2 at the Mount Cashel Memorial in St. Johns. Mount Cashel was an orphanage for boys run by Christian Brothers. A supermarket was built where the orphanage once stood, but across the street from the parking lot, the two original gateposts of the orphanage remain. Each one branded with a solitary cross. They remind me of headstones. By ending my walk at that site, Id be paying respects to the many boys, now men, who made a tragic journey from their homes to the orphanage.

As a seasoned activist, I frequented television, radio, and print media to raise support for the walk. I leveraged my public profile to draw attention to this cause because of how it was neglected. And I knew if I was going to expect people to go back in time and revisit one of the darkest chapters in this provinces recent history, I had to be prepared to do the same in terms of my own life. But, looking back, no amount of training could prepare me for what came next.

My uncle John followed us down the Trans-Canada Highway in a white pickup truck donated by Hickman Motors, one of the best-known car dealerships in St. Johns. In tow was a fifteen-foot trailermy home on the road for the next month. My mother asked her brother to join us because he was a retired mechanic. While he and my mother set up camp, I pulled out my cellphone and ordered some food in Port aux Basques and decided to drive my mothers truck into town to pick it up. I was thrilled to finally have some time to myself. The sun was blaring like a beacon in a sea of sky. I turned my iPod to Springsteens Thunder Road and pushed repeat. I rolled the window down all the way and hung my arm out. Once I hit pavement, I slammed that pedal hard, driving with one hand on the steering wheel the whole way.

As I approached the town, I saw a gazebo in the distance and headed towards it. When I got out of the truck, I noticed a small group of children playing close by. Their laughter was like music. I walked to the middle of the gazebo, and with their laughter as my soundtrack, I actually threw my arms out at my sides and started spinning around like a kid. Waltzing with myself reminded me of how, when I was little, I would twirl around in the middle of our quiet street until I felt dizzy. But when youre euphoric and spinning, everything around you is blurred and you cant see it for what it really is.