Art of the streets

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This article was published 31/03/2018 (3034 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Jets 2017-18 National Hockey League campaign has had its share of intriguing storylines, chief among them sophomore sensation Patrik Laine gunning for the league lead in goals, captain Blake Wheeler chasing the assists crown and Connor Hellebuyck setting a new franchise record for wins by a goaltender.

All outstanding performances, to be sure, but perhaps the most incredible achievement in Jetsville this season occurred Nov. 15 at a luncheon at the Fairmont hotel, when Dale Hawerchuk was introduced as the fourth member of the club’s hall of fame. During the induction ceremony, team owner Mark Chipman took a moment to reveal a commissioned portrait of Hawerchuk, the first overall pick in the 1981 NHL Entry Draft. What most people in the room didn’t realize was the likeness was painted by Jamie Hogaboam, a Winnipeg artist who, almost three years to the day of the unveiling, was preparing to spend his first night on the street, as a homeless person.

“I remember lying on a vent behind the Boyd Building, watching an NFL game through the window of an Ethiopian restaurant,” Hogaboam says, seated in a Corydon Avenue coffee shop, sipping on a large triple-triple. “I specifically recall the Rams were playing the 49ers, and that I was petrified as hell. On my third night there, some drunk guy woke me up, scaring the crap out of me. On my fifth night, a garbage truck just missed running me over. That’s when I told myself, ‘That’s it.’ The next morning, I went to Siloam Mission, a decision that probably saved my life.”

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Hogaboam, 53, was born in La Mesa, Calif. He was 11 months old when his father suffered a stroke. Because his parents didn’t have health insurance, they moved back to Winnipeg, where they had lived previously. Hogaboam’s father died shortly thereafter, and “that’s where this story starts.”

“I grew up on Winterton (Avenue), the only kid on the block without a dad. My mother was very over-protective and because I was dealing with feelings of abandonment related to my father I started putting on weight,” Hogaboam says, noting when your surname begins H-O-G, it doesn’t help when you tip the scales at 120 pounds at eight years of age. “The abuse and teasing I got at school was unbelievable. My mom would recite that poem about sticks and stones breaking your bones but names never hurting you, but you know what? It’s the exact opposite. You can chuck a rock at my head and it’s not going to sting, 40 years later.”

A straight-A student, Hogaboam discovered he had an artistic side during his senior year at Miles Macdonell Collegiate. He was a big fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and often mimicked what he saw on the sketch comedy show through his paintings and sketches. After graduating, he spent one semester at the University of Winnipeg studying computer science, and another at Red River College, taking an electronic technology course. Neither pursuit worked out, however, so he went to work as a courier driver.

Hogaboam was 26 when the woman he was seeing broke up with him, complaining he was never going to amount to much delivering packages for a living. Spurred on by her slight, he asked himself what he was most interested in, career-wise, the answer being sports.

“That day, I made up my mind to go into sports journalism. And because I was a huge (Calgary) Flames fan I moved to Alberta where I got into a broadcast journalism course at Lethbridge College.”

Hogaboam landed a few industry-related jobs after completing the two-year program. For a while, he worked at a country radio station in Estevan, Sask. Later, after moving back to Lethbridge, he and a few college buddies published a weekly newsletter, covering the southern Alberta city’s sports scene. But because they couldn’t sell enough ads to make their venture viable, he returned to Winnipeg, and his old courier position, in 1996.

His life began spiralling out of control a short time later, following the death of his mother. Describing himself as “an impulsive gambler, not a compulsive one,” he dealt with her passing by tossing away thousands of dollars — money he “borrowed” from credit cards — at slot machines. Things got so bad, the day he turned 40, after a long evening of boozing and VLTs, he headed home figuring he’d “end it all” by swallowing a handful of morphine pills his mother had left behind. Except when he tried to get out of bed to fetch them from the bathroom, “it felt like somebody was sitting on top of me, and God’s honest truth, I couldn’t move,” he says wide-eyed.

The next morning, he got in touch with a crisis centre. After speaking with a counsellor, and mentioning what he’d most like to do with his life is paint, he was told about Artbeat Studio, a non-profit organization that provides workspace for people living with mental illness. (Hogaboam says it didn’t take the person he spoke to long to ascertain he was suffering from borderline personality disorder and depression, conditions that have since been professionally diagnosed.)

Soon, Hogaboam, who by then had switched careers and was driving a cab, was spending three days a week holed up at Artbeat, painting everything from landscapes to pictures of his hockey heroes. Unfortunately, gambling remained a problem. First he lost the house he inherited from his mother. A few years later, when he was unable to keep up with the rent on his apartment in St. Boniface, he found himself on that heating vent, watching four-down football through a dirt-stained window.

Once he made the difficult decision to check into Siloam Mission three-and-a-half years ago (“Originally I thought it was full of punks and gangsters, so I didn’t want to go there”), Hogaboam became more and more involved with Artbeat Studio. He also spent time at Grand Beach every summer, working odd jobs and painting scenes of Lake Winnipeg; that is, when he wasn’t on Portage Avenue, selling his paintings for $5 a pop, to passers-by who took notice of his cardboard sign reading, “Homeless artist living with mental illness.” (He was forced to halt that practice in September 2016, after a Winnipeg police officer ticketed him for loitering, telling him he would have to apply for a permit to sell his artwork to the general public.)

Last summer, he mailed a handwritten letter to Mark Chipman, inviting the True North Sports & Entertainment chairman to drop by Artbeat’s Exchange District studio. Included in the envelope was a gift — a postcard-size painting of legendary NHL netminder Terry Sawchuk, a person whom, like Hogaboam, also battled mental illness much of his adult life.

Chipman not only accepted the invitation but at the tail-end of his visit, made Hogaboam an offer he couldn’t refuse: how would he like to paint Hawerchuk’s portrait for the 2017 hall of fame ceremony?

“He requested the painting in August, which gave me a few months to get it done,” Hogaboam says, noting True North paid for his time and supplies, and Chipman chose the photo of Hawerchuk he wanted him to emulate. “The whole time I was thinking I have to do this, I have to nail this, but because I struggle with faces, it took me right up until the day before it was due to get the nose just right.

“It was surreal sitting there at the luncheon,” he continues. “Part of the goings-on was (Sportsnet hockey host) Scott Oake interviewing Hawerchuk about his career, the amusing thing being Scott Oake regularly volunteers at Siloam, and had checked me into bed on numerous occasions. So here’s this great sportscaster who has checked me in at the mission, sitting next to one of the greatest NHL players of all time. And in between them is my painting.”

Hogaboam can’t predict what the future holds. For the time-being he’s staying in an acquaintance’s basement but that accommodation runs out at the end of April, at which point he figures he’ll probably return to Siloam. In the meantime, he can’t say enough good things about Chipman and the Jets for whom, down the line, he hopes to paint portraits of the team’s other three hall of fame members, Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg and Bobby Hull.

“I think Mr. Chipman believes in me, I think he understands mental-health issues and even though I’m technically still on the street and it might look bad for the organization to be associated with somebody like me, I can’t thank him enough. He’s an awesome guy.

“They don’t need the other paintings till 2020, I’ve been told, so we’ll see. I’ve also been asked to do a painting of Joe Daley that would hang at Bronx Park Community Centre, where he played growing up. But even if none of that works out, my plan is to still get up every morning, eat breakfast and have a great day painting.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca