Dorothy Bickerstaff is a hobo – and she couldn’t be happier.
Now 92, Bickerstaff fills her days with the things she loves – knitting, crocheting, sewing and binning. Two or more times a day, she ventures out to collect cans and bottles from recycling bins.
“I am not getting into dumpsters,” she says. “I don’t want to smell like a polecat all day.”
The West End resident has ventured as far as downtown New Westminster and Metrotown in search of empties, getting in her first run early in the day.
“You have to beat the crowd,” she smiles. “I go early in the morning on recycling day, but I also go the night before for people who put them out early. It’s an awful lot of mileage to cover.”
Bickerstaff began bottle collecting years ago, when she and a good friend started picking up empties they’d find on the side of road.
“We used to meet every morning at seven o’clock and head off for a three-mile walk. Along the way, she’d say, ‘look at that.’ Both of us began picking them up. It was whichever one of us could race to it,” she laughs. “We’d compete.”
While her friend gave the proceeds of her finds to her grandchildren for spending money, Bickerstaff decided to donate hers to charity.
“My favourite charities are animals, children and old people,” she says. “The reason I says children and old people is they have no choice. They are captive, they are stuck. They really deserve all the help they can get.”
The pastime fits in well with Bickerstaff’s love of solitude and the great outdoors, where’s she’s able to dream about the knitting and quilting projects she’s working on. Those too, are done for charity.
“I am a busy little beaver,” she says. “That’s why I like to be alone.”
Bickerstaff knits mittens, toques and other items to donate to schools and charities. A longtime quilter, Bickerstaff makes quilts by hand, donating the items to charity groups to raffle off as well as donating any profits she makes by selling them on the side.
Last year, Bickerstaff donated $1,200 to assorted charities, including about $600 from her “bottle business,” $150 from quilt sales and $300 of her own money. Whatever’s left from her monthly pension goes toward her charity fund.
Bickerstaff’s best year was when she was 90, when she got $900 from returning empties and donated nearly $1,800 to charity.
“I’m an entrepreneur,” she says.
No need for champagne and caviar
The youngest of seven children, Bickerstaff considers herself “lucky” for having survived the Great Depression and a childhood “that wasn’t horrible” but was less than ideal. She’d rather donate money to others than squander it on herself.
“I can live on my pension just fine,” she says. “If you can bring up two girls in the years that I did, you will find out you can manage on very little and do quite well. Not rich, or champagne and caviar – who wants it anyway?”
Bickerstaff’s spunky spirit carried her through excruciating hip pain that lasted for more than a year, after doctors finally found a hairline fracture that had been undetected because it was so small. She believes that pulling a heavy grocery cart, loaded with bottles and cans, up and down the city’s hills caused the fracture in her hip.
“It was horrible,” she says. “I was in such pain all the time.”
Despite the pain, Bickerstaff carried on with her daily walks to collect bottles and cans. Soon after undergoing a hip replacement, she was back on the streets, using a walker instead of a pull-along cart, to stash her bottles.
“I’m a hobo and I’m a happy one,” she smiles. “I just wander around looking in people’s bins.”
Getting out and about
Bickerstaff, who worked as a bookkeeper before retiring at 62, gets tremendous pleasure from exploring the city while on the hunt for cans and bottles. Her mother was agoraphobic and feared leaving the home, but Bickerstaff loves to get out and about on her own.
“I like to be outside,” she says. “I like to walk, I like to be alone and daydream about what I’m going to do next.”
Often, those daydreams relate to quilting and knitting projects that Bickerstaff is working on, plotting on fabrics to use, colours to include. When she’s not enjoying her daily forays into the lanes and streets of the Royal City, Bickerstaff is often found working on those projects while making tea or watching TV.
“I just love doing this,” she says.
“I won’t back down”
Bickerstaff isn’t worried about encounters with other bottle collectors, while clocking five miles, or more, each day.
“One cornered me one day, in the next lane down. He said, ‘You’re not allowed to do that, there’s a law against that,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t have to take orders from a little pipsqueak like you.’”
Another day, she beat a collector to a bag of empties in a lane. He was not amused.
“There was a bag and there were beer bottles and cans rolling down. I thought, oh whoopee,” she says. “I started putting them in and all of a sudden I got the last one in and I am standing up and this little twerp is coming down. He rushed up to me and said, ‘I was coming to get those.’ I said, ‘tough noogies, I got here first.’”
While some would be concerned about conflicts with binners on the hunt for empties, Bickerstaff is unfazed.
“After all these years, I should be intimidated?” she says. “It’s like they tell you on the video about hip replacements or knee replacements, don’t worry about it before it’s done. Don’t fret about it. Think happy thoughts.”
Bickerstaff, who proudly shows a stack of cards conveying charities’ gratitude for her contributions, has no plans on giving up her bottle business anytime soon.
“I’ll do it as long as I can. If I have to have a wheelchair, so be it. I’ll get a motorized one. Then I can do more,” she laughs. “It feels good to be able to do something for people like kids and old people.”
