Real estate sales rep Carolyn Swinson has experienced the knock on the door that everyone fears.
In 1993, Swinson’s 27-year-old son Robert was killed by a driver with a blood alcohol level that was two-and-a-half times the legal limit. The night had been like any other, Swinson recalls; right up until the moment a police officer came to the door to break the terrible news.
Rob was the eldest of Swinson’s three children. Recently he’d moved into a house with friends. It turned out he’d been on his way that night to buy his girlfriend a Valentine’s Day gift.
Swinson recalls that the ride to the hospital in the back of the police car seemed never-ending. The entire way she was hoping and praying that there had been a mistake. By a tragic coincidence, in a separate incident 12 years earlier, Swinson’s father was also killed by a driver who’d had too much to drink.
Inconceivably, Swinson’s family has been victimized twice by impaired drivers.
Carolyn Swinson
After her son’s death, Swinson turned to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for support. A national, volunteer-driven charitable organization whose mandates include lobbying for changes to impaired driving legislation, supporting victims and raising awareness, MADD helped Swinson and her family through the trial (and the subsequent acquittal on a technicality) of the woman whose car had killed Robert.
Swinson soon became a victim services volunteer and advocate for MADD. Eventually she served as the organization’s national president (1999-2001) and as chair of the national board (2007-2009).
Now, besides being director of victim services for MADD’s Toronto chapter as well as MADD’s regional director for Ontario East, Swinson remains on the organization’s national board and is a spokesperson who, as she puts it, “does a lot of stuff with the media.”
Swinson has been in the real estate business for over 30 years and says that most of the time she manages to juggle her MADD volunteering with her job as a sales rep for Forest Hill Signature Real Estate in Toronto.
“I try to keep the two things separate,” she says. Although she doesn’t advertise to clients what she does with MADD, most of them know about it. Her brokerage has always been “incredibly supportive,” she says. She makes it clear to the MADD contingent that there are occasions when she will be unavailable due to work pressures.
Clearly she has a lot on her plate…so much so that her husband tells her MADD should employ her, she says, laughing.
“I don’t like having down time,” she says. “I function better having too much to do rather than too little.”
Her real estate workload is eased by the fact she has a foundation of long-standing, loyal clients on whom she relies.
“Most of the work I do now is with them,” she says. “I don’t hustle for business like I used to when I was younger.”
As for her volunteer work with MADD, “it’s difficult to do but it’s been very cathartic,” she says. “I guess it puts some meaning to losing a child; something good has to come of it…Doing this, listening to people who have lost loved ones, having gone through it, I do know what happens to people and how they react. People appreciate that.”
Swinson wears many hats with MADD. For starters, “I spend a lot of time in court,” she says. (As a support, she helps impaired driving victims and/or their families write victim impact statements and navigate the legal system.)
As a MADD spokesperson, Swinson tells her story to everyone from students to impaired driving offenders. In the case of the latter, attending MADD presentations is generally a component of sentencing and rehabilitation.
With a big part of MADD’s mandate being lobbying for changes in the laws around drinking and driving, Swinson has had to learn that “it’s hard to get the federal government to change things.”
In 2012 after marching on Parliament Hill with other mothers, Swinson met and spoke with the federal Minister of Justice. Currently she and other MADD advocates regularly lobby MPs to put in place such proven deterrents to impaired driving as mandatory post-crash alcohol testing/drug screening for all drivers involved in serious traffic crashes; and random testing, which entails roadside breath-screening with every passing driver being breathalysed rather than only those who appear impaired. (In countries where this has been done, alcohol-related deaths have gone way down, says Swinson.)
Alcohol levels can be detected by breathalyser, “but there is no equivalent testing for drugs currently,” Swinson says.
However, “the RCMP says they have devices that work,” she says. “The federal government needs to give police the authority to use these devices.”
This is timely now that all signs point to marijuana soon being legalized in Canada.
“MADD will be involved in that discussion,” she says.
Her work with MADD has earned her many prestigious awards over the years, among them the Governor General’s Caring Canadian award; awards from the City of Toronto and the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and two Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Medals.
Over a decade ago, Swinson’s volunteer work with MADD led to her becoming an early recipient of the Toronto Real Estate Board’s Special Community Service Recognition Award. This earned her a spot on an “honoured volunteers” plaque in the board offices.
Swinson says she is disturbed by the number of impaired drivers who continue to get off on technicalities, often managing to have breathalyzer results thrown out in court.
“Nobody should get off on a technicality,” she says. “As real estate agents we spend a lot of time in cars,” she adds. “That’s something I’m conscious of. Everyone deserves to be on roads knowing that we are sharing them with people who aren’t impaired.”
Susan Doran is a Toronto-based freelance writer who has been contributing to REM since its very first issue.
