Canada - alcoholism / food poverty plausibility, and specific foods eaten

[doranwen]

I'm writing a story about a girl whose father was a cop in Toronto until his alcoholism took over and caused him to lose his job. I'm trying to confirm that the setup as I've got it is plausible, and also figure out some details of what they would eat

Comments

[doranwen]

Hmm... any chance her dad has any kind of automatic income for his years on the job that she'd be able to draw from if she gets to it first? I'm flexible regarding his age - hers is the only age set in stone. Assuming she's somewhere from 14 to 16 at the point they have to switch housing (because they're trying to stay off the radar of the people her dad worked with, so staying in the same house isn't really going to be an option - plus her mom left a few years before so any income from her went then, they'd have downsized as they could), that gives quite a range of ages for him.

I did some searching regarding pensions, and got this article, which refers to "full pensions" after 25 years... so if he was forced to "retire" early because of his addiction, would he have been able to get a partial pension that they're drawing on, maybe? I can see her finding ways to get at the money first, or to set up an automatic payment as soon as it's in the account, etc. (I don't have to go into any of this in the scenes I'm writing, as long as it's plausible in the back end of things.)