Every Wednesday, Anthony and Daniel Enright bring their kid sister to Variety Village. They call it “Nancy Day.”
Nancy, her brothers in tow, blows in like a skinny hurricane through the sliding front doors of the Village. As regular readers know, this is an iconic Scarborough sports complex geared to kids, and kids grown up, with disabilities.
You have met its members through my Sun Christmas Fund — many of them bright, cute, cuddly, and plucky kids.
Nancy is none of those things.
Her particular passport to Variety Village is chromosome 10Q deletion, whose effects include developmental delays, behaviour issues, and distinctive facial characteristics. Nancy, 38, has all of those things. I doubt she’s 110 pounds in a driving rain, and her hair goes a different direction than the rest of her.
To her big brothers though, she’s Elizabeth Taylor, she’s beautiful. If you look carefully, you will see they are right.
On Nancy Days, Daniel, 44, and Anthony, 41, tag along as their sister bounds about the place, all 178,000 square feet of it. Variety staff, who have seen it all, smile and let her be. No parent frowns or complains. No security guard shushes her. No one stares.
On this Nancy Day, it is also Anthony’s birthday and I find the three siblings in the Village’s tiny coffee shop, celebrating with cupcakes.
There’s a fourth “person” with them, a shiny wheeled walker named Ali. A stuffed puppy, Bogie, is curled up on the table. It’s one of those toys that appears to breathe, which is a bit unsettling.
Ali and Bogie are part of the world Nancy has created at Variety. She imagines she’s a sort of nurse’s aide, leading her “patients” one at a time along Village halls, from the fieldhouse track through meeting rooms and workout areas to the Snoezelen room, a sensory oasis for the autistic. Ali, Bogie, a wheelchair named Charles, and another walker whose name I forget, each get Nancy’s tender, loving attention. There’s also a “guide dog,” a stuffed black lab named Winter outfitted with a harness, and a giant plush bear.
“Nancy assigns entire identities to them,” says Anthony, a bartender.
To make it official, Nancy wears a staff lanyard with her name on it.
Most of her “patients” are property of the Village. On this day, though, controversy strikes when Nancy tries to play nurse’s aide to a walker actually owned by a Variety kid. Nancy does not give up easily, or quietly. Luckily, elder brother Daniel, 44, is a lawyer.
“Everything is a negotiation with her,” he says, wryly. Nancy’s speech is difficult to grasp — for everyone but her brothers.
They’ve been in her corner forever. Growing up in Bloor West Village, they fought countless schoolyard battles on her behalf. Few kids dared say something cruel about Nancy Enright.
“Our whole lives, she’s just been our kid sister,” says Anthony. “She’s always been there, as perfect as she is. I’ve never thought of her as different, though I know she is.
“She’s the most important thing to Daniel and me.”
The siblings discovered Variety Village last summer, after COVID put the kibosh on their usual trips to places like the ROM or the zoo.
The brothers pick her up Wednesday mornings at her east-end Community Living home.
“What’s amazing here,” Daniel says, as his sister leads a “patient” around the Village track, “is that she’s given complete autonomy and the run of the place. She races around, she talks to people.
“Everywhere else, everyone’s telling her what to do. Here, they just let her go.”
Anthony adds, “It’s her ‘yes’ day. Nancy is part of this community. She really comes to life here.
“The experts say she’s like an eight-year-old, but I think it’s hard to measure. Her memory is incredible, her empathy is incredible.
“We all just enjoy each other’s company. That’s the thing.”
mikestrobel.ca
northchannelmike@gmail.com
How you can help?
So, have a happy Nancy Day, dear reader, and many more. If you’d like to help keep Variety Village as a haven for kids, and kids grown up, with disabilities, you can donate at sunchristmasfund.ca. There, or at mikestrobel.ca, you can also order my new book, Small Miracles: The Inspiring Kids of Variety Village. Every penny of proceeds goes to the Village.
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