I Share Hope: Chris Williams

Jim Mandelin was born in rural Alberta to a violent, alcoholic, Klu Klux Klan father and a teenage runaway, homeless kid who became Jim’s mother. His grandmother insisted on caring for him and he was taken from his parents to be raised on her farm from infancy until fifteen years of age. Jim never saw his mother again until adulthood. Though his grandmother did her best to care for him, she was confined to a wheelchair and his care became the primary responsibility of his father’s younger siblings.  This they did with great resentment and animosity.   Jim endured years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at home and severe bullying at school. At fifteen years old he ran away to the mean streets of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver British Columbia where he continued to be abused, selling drug for the gangs, ending up in prison and being recruited into a motorcycle gang. He became a debt collector for the gang and beat people. Life changed for Jim when at the age of twenty two he entered drug rehab where