And, I mean, woe betide you if you suggested she wasn't reading. She was four or five at the time, and everybody else in the house could, and it irked her that she was the youngest and in some senses the least powerful persons, I guess. She attended Queen Mary elementary school on Vancouver's west side. She took up horseback riding. She was a very alive person.
Nobody can really say what went wrong, or when.
Sarah was nine when her parents split. So in that, in the process of the emotional turmoil that both of us were in, and older kids were in, I guess her needs were neglected. She was also a black girl in a white family in West Point Grey. By the time she was 12 or 13, Sarah began running away to the Downtown Eastside. She would return home for periods of time, occasionally in police custody.