Victoria woman's appearance in Netflix series after experiencing addiction and homelessness inspires hope
When Carey Oakes embraced her first guitar, she couldn’t have imagined how dynamic the soundtrack to her life would become.
“I’m plucking away at it like it’s a stand-up bass,” Carey smiles about the picture of her as a little girl holding a big guitar.
“It’s much too large for me.”
By the time it would have been the right size, Carey had experienced too many wrong things.
When she was 12, instead of finding comfort in playing guitar, a friend suggested she find solace in doing heroin.
“She said, ‘This will make all of the scary things go away and if it doesn’t it will make it so you don’t care about it anymore,” Carey recalls. “It worked for a lot of years.”
By the time Carey realized it wasn’t working, she’d endured more than a decade of addiction and homelessness.
“This used to be my home for many years,” Carey says, gesturing to a shopping cart full of garbage bags.
“It was piled high.”
After Carey experienced her lowest low, she says her friends forced her to detox.
“They also handed me a guitar,” she says. “That’s how I learned my first three chords.”
Carey says she survived by busking and dumpster diving. After living in a tent along a busy street, she was offered a room in a temporary housing.
“I turned that into an opportunity,” she says. “Rather than a slum.”
The stability allowed Carey to focus on writing songs and finding work, including a job as an extra on the filmed-in-Victoria series Maid. The Netflix drama struck a real-life chord.
“The scene got to me a little bit emotionally.”
Carey says the raw reaction prompted a real offer for more screen time.
“I said, ‘Let’s go make some TV,’” Carey smiles. “They were so impressed by that they offered me a full actor’s contract.”
Although she earned a close-up and an apprentice membership with the actors union (which will make her eligible for more professional work), Carey says the best part of appearing on the series was the feedback from her family.
“It was nice to have my family see me do something (and be proud),” Carey says, fighting back tears.
“It’s been a while.”
Carey says she followed-up her “Maid” appearance with her first speaking role in a short film.
It’s part of a personal transformation that now includes supporting other members of her community to find creative work and rewrite a more hopeful soundtrack for their lives, too.
“Why not just continue (and) lift them up?” she says, smiling. “Then at least you have a ladder to climb up, right?”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
From outer space? Sask. farmers baffled after discovering strange wreckage in field
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
NEW Iconic Canadian song turns 50
Andy Kim's 'Rock Me Gently' is marking a major milestone, as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Oprah Winfrey: I set an unrealistic standard for dieting
Oprah Winfrey said on Thursday evening that she has long played a role in promoting unhealthy and unrealistic diets.
Prince Harry, Meghan arrive in Nigeria to champion the Invictus Games and meet with wounded soldiers
Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, arrived in Nigeria on Friday to champion the Invictus Games, which he founded to aid the rehabilitation of wounded and sick servicemembers and veterans, among them Nigerian soldiers fighting a 14-year war against Islamic extremists.
Countries struggle to draft 'pandemic treaty' to avoid mistakes made during COVID
After the coronavirus pandemic triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions, leaders at the World Health Organization and worldwide vowed to do better in the future. Years later, countries are still struggling to come up with an agreed-upon plan for how the world might respond to the next global outbreak.
Toronto police called to Drake's Bridle Path mansion for another alleged intruder on Thursday
Toronto police say a man who allegedly attempted to access Drake’s Bridle Path property was taken to hospital on Thursday after an altercation with security guards.
Ontario family receives massive hospital bill as part of LTC law, refuses to pay
A southwestern Ontario woman has received an $8,400 bill from a hospital in Windsor, Ont., after she refused to put her mother in a nursing home she hated -- and she says she has no intention of paying it.
Flat tire on a highway? Here's why you shouldn't try to fix it
If you're cruising down a highway and realize you have a flat tire, you may want to think twice before stopping to fix it on the side of the road.
Storm-battered U.S. South is again under threat. A boy swept into a drain fights for his life
Dangerous storms crashed over parts of the U.S. South on Thursday even as the region cleaned up from earlier severe weather that spawned tornadoes, killed at least three people, and gravely injured a boy who was swept into a storm drain as he played in a flooded street.