Copy of article by John Campbell, Editor
Canadian Biker, June 1998

"To make a contribution and enjoy the ride"

Bob Graham doesn’t waste any time getting right to the pitch. "The objective here is to make a network of guys who can throw $100 in the pot. Now, I’ve never met a biker yet who doesn’t have a big heart and I’ve never met one who doesn’t have $100 in his pocket," says the 55-year-old Torontonian.

The "pot" Graham is hoping to fill belongs to Toronto’s 100-year-old Yonge Street Mission, a non-profit organization that has been fighting an often losing front lines battle against inner city despair. The victims of the urban wars aided by the Mission are street kids, the poor, the substance-dependent, and others who exist only on the periphery of society.

The "network" he envisions is the Los Silverados – a loose association of corporate executives, bikers and in-the-trench social workers working together in support of the Mission. Graham founded Los Silverados last August and since then membership has grown to 210.
"Somewhat of a Los Silverado vision might be this: Suppose we were able to become 5,000 Silverados strong. People with silver in their hair, silver in their jeans and passionate enough to be still looking for the cloud with the silver lining. Can you imagine the positive change we could make for the need?" asks Graham.

Each member pays $100 to join, and most of the current membership is from the business community. This is good news for the Mission because the club is well placed to provide not only financial support, but corporate contacts as well.

The value of corporate help is not lost on Yonge Street Mission executive director Rick Tobias who says, "the Mission had been unsuccessful in the past in getting the business community to come in.," to help offset the $3 million yearly cost of running YSM’s health, education, employment and meals programs.

On a typical day at the Mission-which is located in a poverty-stricken inner city area referred to as "Canada’s Calcutta"-120-150 street kids will arrive looking for something to eat or a dry pair of socks. Most of them are between the ages of 16 and 18-some as young as eight or nine-"Almost 80 per cent were sexually abused at home before they hit the streets" says Tobias.

Los Silverados’ contacts have been instrumental in bringing to the Mission items the average person might take for granted but are badly needed at the street level. Items such as socks. For example one member donated 20,000 pairs to the Mission and clean, dry socks can be a mighty uplifting commodity for someone who lives on icy streets.

The Silverados have recently staged fundraisers at the Mission’s Evergreen drop-in centre, but Graham’s vision for the Silverados’ potential is expansive. He hopes charter clubs will spring up throughout North America, with individual clubs working to better their respective communities. He sees international conventions of the motorcycle-based charitable organization working toward ending the cycle of poverty.

"Let’s say we were going to have a gathering in Memphis in May-some of us showing up on bikes and some in Buicks-for the BBQ world championships. Let’s say the fee was $500, for which you got a great silk jacket as well as a super banquet. How much would half of that money be?"

So what exactly is a Silverado? "A Silverado is a person (male or female) who is a biker at heart. A Silverado also is a person who looks after his brother man as best he can within his or her capabilities," says Graham.

"The only real rule that Los Silverados has is that at least 50% of the price of whatever we do-whether it be jackets, shirts, decals, mugs or fun should go to charity," he adds.

Tobias feels the Silverados are coming into the right place at the right time because the Mission is now only plugging a small hole in the dike of a society that is badly hemorrhaging. "We’re losing ground as a society. Every year we see greater numbers of homeless people and every year the youth on the street are getting younger, " he says. "When I started here at the Mission 13 years ago, street youth would typically be 19 – 25. Now they’re 16-18."

Getting kids off the street, away from the drugs and prostitution scene that is so often attendant to street life, becomes more difficult the longer a child is out there. "One year on the streets equals a 10-year process getting them off the street," says Tobias. "At 15, you can’t get a legal job, your sole means of support is through begging or criminal activities and this is something to which you become acculturated. Their chances of ever re-entering the mainstream become remote because, technically the world is moving so rapidly. You have to keep up or you become unmarketable."

However, through Los Silverado-brokered donations of computers, the Mission is now able to provide computer literacy programs to inner city youth. "It’s the new literacy that no one can get along without," says Tobias.

Massive cuts by governments of social programs such as subsidized housing, plus sexual abuse, rampant unemployment and dysfunctional family lives have contributed to the groundswell of numbers of people now making their homes on the streets of Canadian cities. Canada now faces its worst homeless crisis since the depression of the 1930’s and United Way studies indicate that the majority of homeless are children.

The 60 full-time staff who work for the Mission are hard pressed to keep up with the growing crisis. The burnout rate is high and they often require counseling themselves just to keep up with the demands of their work.

Not only do they see people shell-shocked and empty from life on the street, they are asked daily to deal with the unpredictable. "The staff are compassionate people but there’s always the potential for violence, every time you open the door. Every day you live with that fear and staff do well to do this work for three to four years," says Tobias.

Victories are few and far between and cannot be easily identified by mainstream dwellers who use different score cards than those kept by Mission workers. Tobias counts it as a victory if someone remains even marginally employed through the Mission’s help. And he refers to a particularly bittersweet "victory" in which a young street woman was raped nearly to death by a group of men who were trying to force her into prostitution. The woman contracted AIDS through the ordeal but spent her remaining years lecturing school children about the rigors of streetlife and the need for individuals to take control of their lives in a positive way. "A lot of kid won’t come onto the streets because of her," says Tobias.

But, Bob Graham wants more than consolation prizes for the Mission; he wants change and hope for the thousands of homeless and poor now stumbling along big city streets. If, in conversation, he comes right to the point and how and why everyone should become a Silverado, then it’s not difficult to understand where his motivation lies.