It is close to eight o'clock on Christmas Eve, 1983. More than a hundred women and a dozen children are sitting in the immense living room of an old mansion in Toronto's red-light district. Before they begin caroling, they wait for Peggy Ann Walpole, the founder and director of Street Haven, an emergency shelter for homeless women. A fire spreads a warm glow through the room.

The door flings open and a slight, tousled-haired figure hurries in. In a hoarse voice, Peggy Ann calls out, "Merry Christmas to you all!" She starts singing "Silent Night," and a hundred voices join in. Peggy Ann is near exhaustion - for the past day and a half she has been busy roasting and carving four huge turkeys, peeling potatoes, slicing carrots and stirring gravy. As well, she and the 12 others who work with her have wrapped gifts for everyone who might come tonight - cosmetics for the teenagers, puzzles and games for the children, warm clothing for the "bag ladies."

Here, Peggy Ann gives her the encouragement to stay sober.

Despite the sparkle in her eyes, Peggy Ann looks wan. At five feet two inches tall, the 50-year-old woman weighs less than 90 pounds. Plagued by illness since childhood, she has endured 13 operations and dozens of painful tests and procedures. But health problems are forgotten now as Peggy Ann fondly scans the familiar faces around the room.

There's Gina, a 28-year-old alcoholic. She looks twice her age. Although she is separated from her husband, her face is bruised from his beatings. Gina goes to a couple of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a day. She visits Street Haven in between. Here, Peggy Ann gives her the encouragement to stay sober. Tracy is here too. When her parents discovered she was pregnant, she ran away from her northern Ontario home and rode a bus to Toronto. Seventeen and alone, she spent a terrified night on a bus-depot bench. Then a friendly prostitute told her about Peggy Ann. With two months to go before the baby was born, Tracy lived at the Haven, helping out with the chores.

Street Haven's rules are simple: no alcohol, no drugs.

Cathy has also come, even though she no longer needs the Haven. She first came here 19 years ago, a 20-year-old heroin addict with a newborn son. Now she returns every Christmas to thank Peggy Ann for straightening out her life. For the past 25 years, Peggy Ann has lavished on others all the love and understanding her frail body has to give. She asks nothing in return, for Street Haven is a flophouse with a difference.

Faith and strong ties kept Peggy, her mother and two sisters together.

The 15 beds upstairs are available to any woman without a place to sleep; the massive oak doors are always open to any woman needing a hot meal, warm clothing or just a friendly voice. There is a two-week limit to stays, but everyone is welcome to drop in. Each week some 135 women - prostitutes, battered wives, addicts, alcoholics and lonely souls - find help and support here. Yet, unlike most shelters, the staff asks no questions, take no case histories. Street Haven's rules are simple: no alcohol, no drugs. No one is asked to change. But many do - because of the example set by Peggy Ann and her co-workers, many of whom were once in trouble themselves.

Her Inspiration

Little in Peggy Ann's background prepared her for this life of service. Her parents - Frank, a mining consultant and Mary, a newspaper columnist - brought her up in middle-class Toronto. She went to private Catholic schools. Her father died when she was 12 and her brother was killed in a shooting accident 14 years later, but faith and strong ties kept Peggy, her mother and two sisters together. From the time she was 14, however, Peggy Ann was frequently in severe pain that could not be diagnosed.   She was advised to abandon her dream of nursing: the physical demands would be too much. But Peggy Ann was determined and at 18 entered St. Michael's Hospital School of Nursing.  St. Michael's is near Toronto's skid row and in the emergency room, Peggy Ann saw for the first time women with DTs and drug overdoses and badly beaten prostitutes. Most of these patients were given care for a few days and then discharged.

Where do they go? Peggy Ann wondered. Nobody seemed to know. In the 1950s, there were some hostels for destitute alcoholic men, but few places for desperate women. Peggy Ann began to think she could help, until illness cut short her plans.

By the early 1960s, Toronto's Yorkville was attracting young people from across Canada

She underwent surgery, which finally revealed the cause of her years of agony - a second, abnormal uterus partially attached to her normal womb. Doctors removed it and assured her the pain was over. Peggy Ann had graduated with her class in 1955 and nursed for 11 months when the pain started again. This time she was in hospital almost a year, undergoing five operations to separate the adhesions binding her abdominal organs together. Finally, she had a hysterectomy.

Back at work, the 21-year-old Peggy Ann plunged into nursing with vigor. Everywhere she turned, she saw women in trouble. By the early 1960s, Toronto's Yorkville was attracting young people from across Canada. Drugs were readily available and many girls turned to prostitution and crime to support their habits. At St. Michael's, Peggy Ann wiped their brows, held their hands and eased them through withdrawal. But she kept chiding herself, "I should be able to do more."

But as the months went by, they began to trust Peggy Ann and, slowly, to open their hearts to her.

She found out how when she chanced upon a book called The Junkie Priest, about Daniel Egan, who was working with female drug addicts in New York City streets. Inspired by his success stories, she excitedly called Father Egan to ask for advice. "Go to the people you want to help," he told her. "Meet them on their own grounds."

So Peggy Ann started nursing at night and spending days at Sancta Maria House, a halfway house for young women in trouble with society and the law. "But the more pain and unhappiness I saw, the more I realized that what these women needed was an escape from the streets," she says." I also realized that to reach them I had to meet them more than halfway."

So Peggy Ann started to frequent a local hangout, Norm's Restaurant. Night after night, she sat alone in a ripped vinyl booth, watching and listening to the pushers, prostitutes and addicts around her. For a long time the regulars were suspicious of this proper girl in the cardigans and plaid skirts. But as the months went by, they began to trust Peggy Ann and, slowly, to open their hearts to her.

In time, Nickie was helping Peggy Ann search the neighborhood for women who needed help.

One of them was Nickie McLeod. On the streets since she was abandoned by her mother at 14, Nickie, in her leather jacket and close-cropped hair, looked tough. But behind that facade, she was scared and vulnerable and until she met Peggy Ann at age 16, she was convinced no one cared about her. But Peggy Ann helped her kick her heroin habit by starting her on St. Michael's methadone treatment program. In time, Nickie was helping Peggy Ann search the neighborhood for women who needed help.

No Strings

To experience life on the "inside," Peggy Ann accepted a six-month job as a nurse at Toronto Jail. But the staff there discouraged her personal interest in the prisoners and she felt she was merely tending to their physical ills while their emotional problems festered.

Then at age 30, she fell ill again. Because of peptic ulcers, part of her stomach had to be removed. During her hospital stay, she drew up plans to realize her dream: a drop-in centre that would eventually expand into a live-in rehabilitation home. Though her friends and family feared for her safety, Peggy Ann in 1965 rented the beverage room of the old skid-row Atlanta Hotel complete with one table, four chairs, a thick layer of grime and the stench of stale beer.

The night after the local papers publicized her call for help, 100 volunteers and 20 street women showed up. To the volunteers Peggy Ann said bluntly, "Go sit in a bar or stand on a street corner. That is how you will learn what needs to be done." Hearing her, many volunteers backed out, but 40 stayed to work with Peggy Ann. And work they did. Within weeks, the new shelter, called Street Haven, was scrubbed and shining, furnished with donated couches, chairs and table.

It was open 24 hours a day and soon women started coming by for a coffee, a sandwich and a chat - no strings attached. Peggy Ann or a volunteer was always there to hold a hand during a medical appointment, to help set up a job interview, or just to listen.

Peggy Ann worried that there was not enough room at Street Haven for the counseling and job-training programs she wanted.

Soon Street Haven was registered as a charitable organization with a board of directors. But it was still a day-to-day struggle to keep Peggy Ann's dream alive. Volunteers dug deep into their pockets; for two years the United Church contributed a monthly $140; the Addiction Research Foundation gave $15,000. Gradually, donations grew as word about Peggy Ann's work spread.

The next year, Peggy Ann moved to larger quarters on Terauley Street and opened a ten-bed, crisis overnight-shelter nearby. By 1969 the Haven had 200 regulars. Of these, 50 women had found jobs or started job training, but Peggy Ann worried that there was not enough room at Street Haven for the counseling and job-training programs she wanted. Driving to work one day, she spotted a stately, ivy-covered brick mansion on Pembroke Street and soon convinced the owner to sell it to her for $65,000.

That house has become a symbol of hope for Toronto's downtrodden women, for Peggy Ann seems able to reach people that others cannot. "She does not come across as a flag-waving do-gooder," says Street Haven's 47-year-old manager, Sue Letang. " She lets you do things in your own good time." Sue had been mainlining heroin for 16  years when she realized she would soon end up in jail - or dead. She started visiting Street Haven, but reluctantly, returning Peggy Ann's smiling welcome with sullen scowls. Peggy Ann kept her distance.

But not all of Peggy Ann's encounters are success stories and her failures haunt her.

Then came the night when, out of heroin and out of money, Sue stood sweating and shaking on a street corner near the Haven. Peggy Ann brought her in and arranged for her to start a methadone program. Off drugs and with a new sense of self-worth, Sue started working at the Haven and now manages the shelter. But not all of Peggy Ann's encounters are success stories and her failures haunt her. Nickie McLeod had been one of the first addicts that Peggy Ann had helped to kick her habit. But life remained a struggle for Nickie. Peggy Ann knew that what Nickie and others like her really needed was a country retreat far from the bad influences of their former street life, so the two of them and Nickie's friend Renie Horton searched the countryside for a suitable house.

They found the perfect spot, a mansion with two hectares of land near Beaverton, Ontario. Street Haven's board, the provincial and federal governments guaranteed funding and Peggy Ann bought the house in 1976. But Nickie never saw it open.

One day that summer in Peggy Ann's apartment, all the hurt and rejection Nickie had faced in her 28 years welled up from deep inside her. "I am sorry, Peggy Ann," she sobbed. "I can not take it any more." Then, before Peggy Ann's horrified eyes, Nickie leaped from the balcony and fell five floors to her death. Peggy Ann named the Beaverton center Street Haven-Grant House in honor of her friend Judith Grant, the woman who had always been know by her alias of Nickie McLeod.

"Peggy Ann Walpole is an example to us all of what Christianity should mean."

Forced to return to hospital in 1980, Peggy Ann lost the rest of her stomach and more of her small intestine. Now she depended on intravenous feeding and was confined to bed. Overcoming depression, she soon turned her hospital room into an office. A couple of months later, Peggy Ann went home, but she could not eat normally.

Then in April 1981, another surgical technique linked her food pipe directly to her bowel. Despite all her illnesses, Peggy Ann has missed only one Christmas at Street Haven. On December 15, 1981, she collapsed in her apartment. The next morning her mother found her there, unconscious. After surgery for a strangulated bowel, Peggy Ann could hardly breathe. Doctors cut an opening in her throat and attached a respirator to her windpipe. Then her kidneys stopped functioning. When Sue paid a visit, the emaciated Peggy Ann had been in a coma for eight days. But Sue spoke to her friend as if she were awake and Peggy Ann's eyes slowly opened. It was the beginning of a long recovery.

Peggy Ann now hopes her medical problems are over, but this iron-willed wisp of a woman still races against time. "The more hardship I see, the more I want to do," she says. Her work has not gone unnoticed. She has been appointed a member of the Order of Canada and been awarded the Ontario Good Citizenship Medal. The city of Toronto named one of its shelters Peggy Ann Walpole House. She is proud of her awards, but says modestly, "I love what I do and I do it because I want to." In 1980, presenting Peggy Ann with the highest pontifical award given to women, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross, G. Emmett Cardinal Carter said, "Peggy Ann Walpole is an example to us all of what Christianity should mean."

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