The 'bishop' of Cabbagetown

Catholic New Times, Jan 4, 2004 by Kevin Spurgaitis

He calls it a "kick in the heart with a boot of love" when he found Jesus on a cold slab inside the Don Jail. He was just a short-timer, doing another 30-day stretch for fighting and drinking. Or was it for kicking in a church window? It didn't matter much; he was only an hapless, abrasive 17-year-old harbouring his own inner-city demons.

"I just got God in a simple way," the 64-year-old says smiling, his blue eyes bulging. "Fr. 'Pop' West, the Anglican chaplain had a lot to do with it," he says. He looks slightly disheveled, sporting a denim shirt with tattered collar and an unkempt comb-over under his cap.

Despite unsavoury monikers like Hopalong Caveney, welfare bum, the brawler and the bruiser, he has fought for respect and more apt titles--Kenny Caveney, Kenny, Ken, Duke, the Jesus Freak, K.C.--a friend of J.C ... best of all, the "bishop of Cabbagetown." The pugilist is a preacher-man. He'll "rap" about Jesus to just about anyone who cares to listen, especially the street children of Toronto--the prostitutes and the paupers. Caveney is one of them--a cabbage townie. He, too, has been two feet from the curb, squatting on park benches over night after virulent 'benders.'

Lacking savoir faire at times and with his language peppered with all kinds of jive and expletives, Kenny Caveney is one of Toronto's unlikely street-side saviours. "When you know you're loved, it's a special, special feeling. I talk about my Jesus friends all the time ... and Jesus friends are the ones who love you despite yourself."

Prostitutes often swagger up to him and ask, "Hey Bishop, can I get a hug." Caveney obliges. He talks to them straight. He forgoes their occasional advances, electing to rap about Jesus over coffee and turkey on rye in greasy spoons across the inner city. He teaches his street kids this: "It's okay to be lonely, but you're never alone." Caveney has encouraged hookers to get off the street and into post-secondary schools. "Hey, Jesus knew we were a bunch of assholes, but he died for us anyway."

Caveney spent 15 years of his life in refuges for young people and homes for wayward people. During the holidays, he still hoards baskets of food for the poor in his small one-bedroom apartment in the Esplanade. Working with the Little Trinity Anglican Church in Toronto, he also co-sponsors his friend John, a recovering coke addict and alcoholic, who "t'anks Caveney and Jesus" for making him sober and helping him to be back with family.

Blind to colour and wealth, Caveney was once active in the Just Society movement, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's vision of a multicultural, tolerant and caring society, where every citizen could both strive to achieve individual goals and be an important part of a collective Canadian identity. He has been on a first-name basis with people more recognized than himself, people such as Canadian humanitarian Jean Vanier, writer Henri Nouwen, as well as John Howard Griffin, the writer of Black Like Me. But he doesn't "name drop;" he's just proud of his so-called Jesus friends. An impetuous Caveney once forget himself when he faced Mother Teresa for the first time during a 1983 Toronto visit. "She looked at me with those beautiful eyes, eh, and I didn't know what the hell to say. I thought she was something else. I looked at her, gave her a hug, and told her she was the sweetest ol' broad I ever met in my life."

Also a poet of sorts, Caveney began penning urban compositions later in life. Words flow from the bishop's nib onto scrap pieces of paper. His seven books of poetry independently published in Toronto, are literally about Jesus and poverty--Jesus and loneliness. In his poem entitled, My Friend in Need, he writes: "Who is going to love me when I grow old, will I sit in my room alone and cold ... Where do we find this man of good will? Do we drink a beer? Do we swallow a pill ... Take me fast in my sleep, don't let me suffer in a real bad way."

The bishop of Cabbagetown doesn't just walk into your life, he crashes right into it.

Caveney is worthy of the name, according to his good friend, Father Terry Gallagher, of the Scarboro Foreign Missions. "You don't get these ecclesiastical titles unless you have been deeply immersed in the life of your people." Laughing, recounting one of many "amazing stories" about the bishop, Fr. Gallagher tells of the time when Caveney lived with a family for five days, to help with their troubled teenaged daughter. He unraveled all kinds of sufferings. He did a "tremendous job" counseling parents and the kid. A real healing occurred, according to Fr. Gallagher.

"He had a hard beginning, kept hitting bottom (drug culture and boxing) ... He knows what it is like to be nobody. He knows what it is to be broken. And he knows what it is like to be reached out to by caring, concerned people. Ken is breaking the barriers for us, and helping us to see Jesus is that squeegee kid, the guy sitting on the corner holding his hand out with a basket. As fragile and sometimes bold looking as Ken is, he embodies the Spirit like thousands of others in our cities, but we don't necessarily know them. We don't meet them."