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
BREAKING Federal employees will be required to spend 3 days a week in the office
Starting in September, public servants in the core public administration will be required to work in the office a minimum of three days a week. The Treasury Board Secretariat says executives will need to be in the office four days per week.
Concerns about plexiglass prompt inspections at some Loblaws locations in Ottawa
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall plexiglass barriers.
OPP officer said 'someone's going to get hurt' before wrong-way Hwy. 401 crash
As multiple Durham police cruisers were chasing a robbery suspect on the wrong side of Highway 401 Monday night, an Ontario Provincial Police officer shared his concerns, telling a dispatcher, "Someone's going to get hurt."
Canada's most wanted fugitive arrested in P.E.I. in connection with Toronto homicide
A suspect in a fatal shooting in Toronto’s east end last summer has been arrested in Charlottetown, just one week after he topped a list of Canada’s most wanted fugitives.
Poilievre returns to House unrepentant for calling Trudeau 'wacko,' Speaker not resigning
An unrepentant Pierre Poilievre returned to the House of Commons on Wednesday to pepper the prime minister about his drug decriminalization policies after being booted the day prior for refusing to take back calling Justin Trudeau 'wacko' over his approach to the issue.
Five human skeletons, missing hands and feet, found outside house of Nazi leader Hermann Göring
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Toddler of Phoenix first responder dies after bounce house goes airborne
A two-year-old child died after a strong gust of wind sent the bounce house he was in airborne and into a neighbouring lot in central Arizona, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office said.
Plane overshoots runway at airport in St. John's, N.L., no injuries reported
Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada are headed to St. John's, N.L., after a plane overshot a runway at the city's airport this afternoon.
A teen was found buried in a basement in New York. An engraved ring helped police learn her identity two decades later
For more than two decades, the unknown victim was nicknamed "Midtown Jane Doe" because she was found in the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York City. But this week, investigators finally revealed her identity.