‘I may end up in tears telling my story’: How a former MPP and Toronto city councillor found himself living in a homeless shelter

Tonight, he will have his bag searched. He will take his shoes off and have them inspected for weapons and drugs. He will sleep in a room with 23 other people.

“I may end up in tears telling my story,” Berardinetti said recently from the public library he uses as an office. 

“It’s been really hard. Really hard.”

Most people Berardinetti used to govern Ontario with — or sit on council beside, or practise law with — don’t know he became homeless last year. He said he agreed to an interview with the Star to share his tale of how he wound up where he is to remind them that luck is the only real insulation from hardship. 

“People will start laughing at me, saying, ‘What an idiot, he should have saved his money,’” he said. “But anyone can end up homeless. Unfortunately, I got sick, and it’s taken a long time to recover.”

Marla Walters, executive director of the Ajax shelter Berardinetti lives in, knows he’s right. A veteran politician showing up needing a bed isn’t remarkable to someone who works to help homeless people: Berardinetti sleeps next to doctors, nurses and other lawyers some nights. 

“Life can change suddenly for people,” she said. “People from all walks of life end up in shelters. We’re not as far away from their situation as we think we are.”

Berardinetti won his first elections early. As student council president in high school, he used to meet with kids individually to “make sure they were happy.”

He took that micro-level method to adult politics. A longtime supporter of his, Doris Ward, 85, was quoted in a 2011 Toronto Observer article characterizing him as “a person who listens to people.” He, in return, was recorded eulogizing her in the online guest book attached to her 2021 obituary as “one of the most beautiful people that I have ever met in my life.”

At 26 years old, Berardinetti both passed the bar and got voted onto Scarborough council. As he tells it, his aim then and throughout his career, was to “be honest, to serve with good intentions and to help people.” 

Berardinetti’s life had always hewed close to that of his older cousin, politician Mike Colle. They grew up together in the same home in downtown Toronto.

“He was really a very sweet little boy,” said Colle, who is 16 years older. “It’s hard to believe that from one family, one house, we both ended up where we did. I was in city politics, then he got into city politics. We were in the legislature together. Our paths have been intertwined.”

Both cousins were voted out in the provincial election in 2018. Colle says there is a depressive “black hole” at the end of a political career — he doesn’t think Berardinetti ever made it out.

“People have no idea the psychological impact it has, especially if you lose your seat,” he said. “How do you adjust? There’s no one to help you. And once you’re out, nobody wants anything to do with you. They won’t hire you.”

Colle wasn’t in the abyss long. Just weeks later, he won the Eglinton-Lawrence seat on council after the front-runner — his son, Josh — quit the race and retired. Last year, Colle was elevated to deputy mayor. Berardinetti hasn’t found work since.

“Lorenzo was a lawyer, he certainly had the credentials,” said Colle. “But if you’re a defeated politician, no one wants to give you an opportunity. There’s always an excuse. I’ve seen it happen with so many people over the years.”

Berardinetti tried running in the 2022 municipal election but was badly beaten.

“That was a huge mistake,” he said. “I wasn’t getting donations, I wasn’t getting volunteers. But I needed a job. I was running out of money. I had to sell my car to pay my rent.”

Only four years removed from his three-decade career in politics, Berardinetti was already destitute. He says now the membrane separating a secure life from one on the street is thinner than anyone with means is comfortable imagining. As Berardinetti tells his story, rips formed when he lost his job, but it tore open when he had his first seizure.

He said it happened when he was nearly 60 years old. “I just got divorced and I was all alone,” he said. “I don’t remember calling my brother. But he told me I did. I said, ‘I don’t feel well, something weird is going on.’ He called the ambulance.”

Berardinetti woke up a month later. The nurse changing his IV bag told him he had been seizing uncontrollably. He had to be ferried from Scarborough to a specialist at Toronto Western Hospital to be put in a coma.

The cause, he was told, was an over-prescription of Trileptal, a medication for epilepsy sometimes used to treat bipolar disorder.

Berardinetti said his psychiatrist prescribed him the drug in combination with a sleeping pill and a tranquilizer. He said he is neither bipolar nor epileptic, but instead believed he had been given Trileptal to manage side effects from his other prescriptions.

“I couldn’t do anything for a while after the coma,” said Berardinetti. “The doctors told me I needed to rest for a couple years to get my brain back.”

Meanwhile, his savings were ebbing away. After Berardinetti’s failed return to city council, he couldn’t make rent, and his landlord in Scarborough kicked him out. He moved to Ajax to live with his brother but ended up leaving, with nowhere else to go, after what he said was a dispute over finances. 

Berardinetti’s sister called Colle for help shortly after.

“He called me back and said, ‘I can’t help you, there are no shelter beds in Toronto,’” said Berardinetti. “I said, ‘I’m OK, I’m going to be starting my law practice soon.’”

Colle said it was regrettable, not being able to find his cousin a bed in Toronto. He said it’s been months since the two last spoke. 

“He was in a coma, so there’s no income coming in, but you’ve still got to pay your bills, you’ve still got to pay your rent,” said Colle. “You know, it gets to a point where your own relatives and friends, they don’t have the wherewithal to help you get out of the financial hole.”

Leaving Queen’s Park in 2018, Berardinetti had about a year’s salary saved up. Base pay for an MPP has been frozen at $116,000 since 2009 — $12,000 less per year than a city councillor. He used to own a home with his wife, former councillor Michelle Holland, but moved out when they divorced. 

After Berardinetti transitioned to provincial politics, he says he cashed out his municipal employee pension, worth about $200,000, to pay off a chunk of his and Holland’s mortgage.

“I should have kept the money in the account, I guess,” he said. Holland declined an interview request. 

Life would be easier, Berardinetti said, if it wasn’t for the Mike Harris government, which got rid of the lifetime pension plan for MPPs in 1995 in an effort to win back public trust in government. Councillors and MPs still get pensions, and Berardinetti said that his lack of one has forced him, at 63 to try to reignite his legal career so he can afford to move out of the shelter.

“I’m not saying I should be getting more than other people,” said Berardinetti. “But I could have had a successful law career. I put it on hold to serve the community. Now I’m surviving on $830 a month from my Canada pension.” 

Berardinetti said he wished the two Liberal leaders after Harris weren’t “too afraid” of blowback from the media and public to reinstate the pension. 

Kathleen Wynne said she was “tormented” by the pension issue when she was premier. She said she knew some MPPs who only stayed in office because they couldn’t afford to retire, but there was no “public permission” to help them out, she said.  

“It’s very hard, once you’ve taken something away from politicians, to give it back,” Wynne told the Star. “It looks like you’re feeding fat cats. People think politicians are at the trough. They think that we’re all crooks.”

A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford’s office told the Star his government will not be reinstating the pension plan either. 

“That’s easy for Doug Ford to say,” said Berardinetti. “He’s from a rich family. It’s not the same for him. My father worked at a lumber mill.”

Money can create emotional distance — even Berardinetti had trouble empathizing once. As a rookie councillor, he fiercely opposed a new youth shelter in his ward.

“Having been through the system, my perspective is totally different,” he said. “People see me, see homeless people as dangerous. I walk into the shops around here and get asked to leave. But we just need compassion.”  

Berardinetti has taken a professional interest in filling that void of compassion. 

He said he wants to work for Legal Aid Ontario to represent low-income newcomers and refugees. There must be a purpose behind all his misfortune, he said — maybe it was meeting other vulnerable people he could help. 

He’s also been processing his pain into literature. Last year, he self-published a book called “The Owl and the Dove.” Chapter one opens with a meditation on his crisis of faith in the wake of his coma.

“How could God allow me to go through this terrible experience?” he wrote. “Why does God allow terrible things to happen?”

The birds, which represent rationality and spirituality, respectively, talk him through his anguish. He feels relief when the dove tells him he, like everyone, is tethered to God. The owl reminds him he is not the only person to have suffered seizures. In that moment, he writes, they make him feel as though a life of “joy, abundance and love” is still possible. 

Over the summer, around the third anniversary of the coma, Berardinetti said his neurologist gave him the green light to work again.

By early December, he’d regained the licence to practise law he let lapse when he was elected to the legislature. 

For now, Lorenzo Berardinetti Barristers & Solicitors only exists on paper, registered in the same building as the shelter he lives in. 

But he’s working to bring it to life. Just like he did with the megacity all those years ago. As administration committee chair, he helped appoint this city’s inaugural treasurer and fire chief, weighed in on its flag and coat of arms, too. He knows how to build a place up. 

“It’s hard to start a law practice at this age,” he admitted. “I have friends my age who are retired. But I have to do it. I have no pension. I can’t survive.”