In January 1993, Denise Davy met a woman whose brief acquaintance would shape the next two-and-a-half decades of her life. Davy, then a reporter for the
Hamilton Spectator, was spending the night at a shelter as part of her research for a story about homelessness in the city; it was a beat sheâd covered before, but she felt that the statistics and studies sheâd cited in previous articles needed a âface.â She found that and much more in Margaret Jacobson. Margaretâs story forms the backbone of Davyâs new book,
Her Name Was Margaret: Life and Death on the Streets. With access to extensive medical files from the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, interviews with family and friends, as well as some general journalistic sleuthing, Davy is able to create a fairly substantial timeline from Margaretâs birth in 1944 to her sudden death in 1995. As she details Margaretâs early life with strict evangelical Christian parents, her many encounters with var