TONY
“A lady I know, her father died so she brought me down his coat to see if it would fit me. Nice, eh.”
Beige existence
December 22, 2007Not badly hung
December 20, 2007
TONY
“Did I tell you I hung a door for Mike last night?”
PHILIP
“Isn’t that a hard thing to do?”
TONY
“Yup, sure is but I got that door installed so it clears the top and bottom, but the latch doesn’t click, so I’ve got some more to do.”
John gets a home
December 18, 2007 
PHILIP
“Where did you sleep last night?”
TONY
“Right now, I’m sleeping down in the basement at my friend Mike’s. I’ve been doing some work for him on and off. He needs a john in his place and I found one the other day that someone was throwing out — right there on the sidewalk not far from here. The whole toilet was there, no cracks or anything. So I hauled it over to Mike’s and I’m installing it for him.”
The dependency dilemma
December 13, 2007 
TONY
“Hey Phil, check this out. It’s my pigeon from the other day. I told him not to get too dependent on me.”
The Kleinian revelation
December 10, 2007
PHILIP
“Hey Tony, guess which web site comes up #1 on Google when you search for ‘homeless man’ ?”
TONY
“All right!”
Snow blind
December 9, 2007 
TONY
“I found my glasses.”
PHILIP
“Where were they?”
TONY
“In the snow bank I slept in last night. I thought for sure I’d never find’em.”
It’s Tony’s lucky break
December 5, 2007
PHILIP
“You look like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come — what happened to you?”
TONY
“I went ass over tea kettle on the ice. Always happens to me when I put my hands in my pockets, I just got too cocky.”
PHILIP
“Where did you hurt yourself?”
TONY
“Here on my side here. I’m lucky I already have that broken collar bone. Otherwise I would have for sure pushed that bone would be sticking right out my shoulder. I’m telling you, it hurts like hell; I hit it the ground pretty hard. Serves me right though, I should keep my hands out of my pockets on the ice.”
Pizza and wings
December 3, 2007 
TONY
“See that pigeon over there, hobbling around. He flew smack straight into the corner edge of that building right over there. I went over to him — I didn’t think he was going to live; he’d tore up his left chest bad. I’ve been nursing him a little, even got him to eat a little bit of pizza. If you ask me, that’s a pretty tough bird.”
Tony and Phil — The Video
November 30, 2007
thestar.com/videosearch?q=homeless&OrderBy=sReleaseDate%20DESC.
…………….
Thanks to Neil Sanderson at The Toronto Star.
Cough-22
November 28, 2007
PHILIP
“You’re coughing again.”
TONY
“You’re telling me! It’s pushing my gut through my stomach muscles now.”
PHILIP
“Why don’t you go down to St. Joe’s and see a doctor?”
TONY
“No point.”
PHILIP
“What?”
TONY
“They’ll just write me up a prescription, but how’m I going to pay for it?”
PHILIP
“Come on, Tony, there’s got to be a government drug payment scheme for people in your situation.”
TONY
“Yeah, I’m working on that.”
If you wanna get down, down on the ground — cocaine
November 27, 2007 
PHILIP
“You are really looking pale and tired this morning.”
TONY
“Yeah well I couldn’t sleep all night. Couldn’t stop coughing so I just laid there. I’m coaching a friend of mine.”
PHILIP
“What do you mean by ‘coaching’ ?”
TONY
“He’s got himself hooked so I’m trying to help him. I think I can help this guy.”
À la recherche du temps perdu
November 25, 2007
PHILIP
“Tony, when’s the last time you took a vacation?”
TONY
“Ten years ago maybe. I don’t really remember.”
Has anybody seen my sweet sister Rose?
November 22, 2007
TONY
“You won’t believe this. I saw my sister Rose. It was a total fluke. I’d been getting these feelings that I should go to up the bingo hall, you know, up on Lansdowne. So two nights ago, I went up there. Just as I’m getting up there, the place is having a smoke break, and people are coming out to light up. And there comes my older sister in the middle of the crowd, and she looks at me and I look at her and we just stand there looking at each other. It was a total fluke. Finally I say to her: ‘Where’s my hug?’ and she comes up and gives me one.”
Remembering to say thank-you
November 21, 2007 
TONY
“I know everybody thinks Bush has lost it upstairs but also you know, I meet a lot of Yanks and most of them are nice and decent people when you get to talk to them. And they’re spittin’ mad — same as us about Vietnam — I mean Iraq — and they can’t stand Bush just like we Canadians can’t.”
PHILIP
“And your point is …?”
TONY
“Well, someone just reminded me that it was American Thanksgiving on Thursday. It just made me think we should be giving thanks for having Americans as neighbours, even if their government’s run by a bunch of cocaine addicts. You gotta remember that America saved our ass a few times in history.”
Walking since daybreak
November 20, 2007 
TONY
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been trudging along for years but I haven’t gotten anywhere.
“You get tired after a while.”
Somewhere only we know
November 19, 2007 
TONY
“Hey Phil, do you have two bucks? My pneumonia is killing me; I need to lie down somewhere.”
Subway map of the soul
November 15, 2007 
TONY
“You remember about the key for that submarine sandwich place just up the street, you know, the Subway’s there?”
PHILIP
“Dimly.”
TONY
“Well the store owner finally found out what happened.”
PHILIP
“Which was what?”
TONY
“You know, that I’d found their main front-door key just sitting there, right next to their front door in the middle of the night. So now the owner knows what happened back then, he’s been really decent to me plus now I get a foot-long sub every week, or I can have two six-inch ones on two different days if I prefer.”
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends
November 13, 2007 
TONY
“Phil, you should hear what happened to me Saturday night:
I was paying my respects to Silvio, the homeless guy who got killed in September down at King and Ronces, the guy I told you about and we wrote in the blog. So I got on my bike and I start coughing and coughing and coughing, you know, because of my pneumonia. Anyway, I was riding down King Street while I was coughing my ass off — guess who comes around the corner down near Dufferin? I’ll tell you who came around the corner. It was that same fire truck from 426 Division, you know the one that saved me from being run over last winter and it’s also the same one that ran over my friend a few months back. So I nearly hit this truck — but I don’t — but there’s this car behind the truck and this car is totally new, shined up and everything. Plus, believe it or not, it’s a new Porsche 911. I’m not kidding you. So I try to miss hitting the Porsche but I wiped out, into into the back quarter panel. So, of course, the guy gets out of the car, of course he’s pissed at me, and I’m telling you, he’s six-foot-something and he’s got biceps that could crack walnuts. So he looks at down me and says: ‘I know you. You’re homelessmanspeaks.com.’ So he’s was pretty nice to me considering but now I owe him $100.”
Homeless Man Speaks 