Corry Frost Survived the Streets

It’s a familiar sight to the girls who make their living on the streets of some of Edmonton’s most notorious neighbourhoods. The Salvation Army outreach van offers a refuge on wheels, an invitation for a warm place to sit, a cup of hot coffee, something to eat and a chance to talk. Driving the initiative is Corrine Frost, who once worked the streets like the girls she now tries to help.

“When you’re out on the street, you think you’re nothing,” says Corrine, or Corry as everyone knows her.  “You think you’re no good and that people will look at you bad.  We let them know they’re loved. That’s what the van does. It’s my dream. If somebody was out there when I was out there, I would’ve liked that. ”

Frost has endured a rough life. Growing up in the small town of Bon Accord, she was teased at school, started hanging out with older kids and was experimenting with drugs by the time she was 11 years old. With a mother who worked long hours, she rebelled against the responsibility of looking after her younger brothers. She says a man gave her money for sexual favours. At 14, she ran away from home.  Her life became about prostitution, drugs, drinking, partying and at 15, she got pregnant. By the time she was 23, she had four children.  

“I was labeled a bad, uncontrollable person,” says Frost.  “I was involved in alcohol, speed, heroin, throughout all my pregnancies.”

She eventually settled in Edmonton, got married and stayed clean for 18 years to raise her children. But her husband was abusive, her self-esteem was low and her children were raised in an environment of fear and anger. When her husband was taken away by police for beating her one last time with a pipe, Frost became a single mother with bills to pay.  She turned once again to prostitution, got addicted to meth and crack cocaine, and her life took a downward spiral. Thirteen years later, in December 2002, she was arrested for trafficking drugs.  

“When I ended up going to jail, I was at the end of my rope.  I think I would have been dead in another six months,” says Frost.  “The night before I went to jail, I bought a gun.  People owed me money and I would have killed somebody, along with the many people I might have killed anyway by selling drugs.  I was a scary, baseball bat-carrying person who didn’t care about anything.  I’m thankful that they put me in jail that night.”

Over the next two and a half years, she spent her time at the Edmonton Institution for Women. She took 19 programs in relapse prevention, anger management, family violence, communication and life skills. When she was released at the age of 50, Frost went back to school to upgrade her Grade 9 education and completed a diploma in alcohol and drug counseling at Norquest College in Fort Saskatchewan.  

Frost has since founded a company called CODE, which stands for Community Drug Outreach Education, and developed a 12-step program relapse prevention program.  She does one-on-one drug counseling and is a support line operator at Chrysalis, an anti-human trafficking network.  She also runs the Salvation Army drop-in centre at Edmonton Crossroads Community Church for the homeless and those at risk of homelessness.  Many of the people she now helps are people she spent time with on the streets.

But Frost is most passionate about the work she now does in schools, speaking to students about her life story and the traps of the drug culture.  She talks openly about how she influenced her younger brother to commit crime and taught her son how to deal drugs.  She talks about the dirty conditions of meth labs, and how the drugs depleted the calcium in her body and caused all but three of her teeth to fall out.  She talks about her three-page criminal record.

“It’s just as healing for me as it is for everyone else,” says the 58-year-old.  “I get so many kids years after and coming saying ‘Do you remember me?  I was at such-and-such school, you did a talk there and I haven’t done drugs ever since.’”

Her biggest regret is the effect her lifestyle had on her children. She shakes her head when she talks about one of her grandsons, who spent his first Christmas in the federal penitentiary visiting her.

“Now it’s my turn to teach my grandchildren healthy things in life,” says the great grandmother.  “I want them to grow up in a different lifestyle than my kids grew up in, to have self-respect and feel loved.”

Frost says when she was at her lowest points involving drugs and prostitution, that it was like walking down a dark tunnel not knowing how to fight her way out to the light.  No matter what she did, she couldn’t get out and was trapped with people from who she couldn’t get away. Now what motivates her is getting that one kid off drugs, that one girl off the streets, and making her own children proud.

“I never say ‘Why do I do this?’” says Frost.  “Because my heart’s right in the centre of that girl standing on the street.”  

Lesley MacDonald is the producer and host of the Global Woman of Vision series.  Stories can be seen the first Monday of every month in the News Hour at 6 p.m. on Global Edmonton and online at GlobalTVEdmonton.com