When Jeffrey Stephen was cast as Jean Valjean in Victoria Operatic Society’s production of Les Miserables, he didn’t realize how much he had come to appreciate a classic showbiz axiom.
“The show must go on,” said Stephen, quoting it a week after a Saanich water main broke, with nine million litres of water gushing down Belgrave Road, flooding his home and several others.
The low-lying home he had been restoring for five years was destroyed, along with tools, building materials, family heirlooms and four motorcycles not covered by house insurance.
Stephen and his neighbours have since learned their insurance policies don’t cover everything as the lengthy cleanups begin, compounding the trauma.
While the Camosun College mechanical engineering instructor has often been centre stage in local musical-theatre productions, this is one time he says he’d rather not be in the limelight.
“I’ve become the poster child for this event,” said Stephen, whose home was hardest hit. “I want people to realize just because I’m getting attention doesn’t mean I’m the only one who needs help.”
A young woman “just upstream of me” lost everything, he said: “I’m assuming her world has been turned upside down.”
In a strange way, it prompts memories of Miss Saigon, another VOS musical Stephen starred in as American GI Sgt. Chris Scott.
“That was a life experience,” recalled Stephen, 38. “There was all that emotion, characters going from ecstasy to pure devastation.”
The disaster that caused “my world to be re-set” will likely intensify his passion playing the paroled convict in Les Miserables when it hits the stage next spring, he said.
“I almost feel more connected to that character,” said Stephen, who has been practising Bring Him Home with renewed vigour.
Friends suggested they change the title of the moving ballad in which Valjean begs God to bring Marius home to Bring Jeff Home, he said.
“He’s singing about family, sacrifice and belonging. I get that now,” said Stephen, who made his musical theatre debut here as a squire in Camelot, studying actor Paul Terry’s every move as King Arthur from the wings. His other credits include performing on the cruise-ship circuit, and playing Lt. Joseph Cable in Chemainus Theatre’s South Pacific, and the Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
One of the saddest things about the flood was “my family history has all but disappeared,” said Stephen, relieved he managed to retrieve some Playbills from the 1960s his late mother collected.
Margaret Stephen was a singer who won a recording contract in a CBC talent competition akin to Canadian Idol, he said.
“She turned it down because that was back when married women didn’t follow their own pursuits,” he recalled. “It kind of haunted her through my adolescence.”
Finding such memorabilia was revelatory, he said. It reinforced why his mother lived vicariously through his stage work, even occasionally appearing alongside him.
“I used to joke that she should do more research at my place,” he said, recalling her appearance as his character Archibald Craven’s housekeeper in The Secret Garden.
“I never knew she saved all these old Playbills,” he said. “I have boxes of mementos I’d never gone through until they floated by me.”
His waterlogged find included news clippings about his Brampton-raised mother’s CBC win, said Stephen, who lost his own collection of autographed Playbills.
“Finding those made me realize this is the right path to be on,” he said. “It’s really pushed me forward to say: ‘Now I’ve got to keep going.’ Hardships like this … I’ll use it somehow.”
One dramatic real-life subplot was when Stephen chose to forgive someone caught stealing tools and building supplies from him after the flood.
“I’d been cleared out of tools once already, so I was mad,” said Stephen, who vented on Facebook. “Now I’m down and getting kicked, but everyone’s got a story, and I found he also had a story.”
Although he prefers not to reveal the miscreant’s name, he requested supporters remove “shaming” posts from Facebook.
“I found out we have some things in common, and I wanted to connect with him and encourage him to use this to better himself,” he said.
Meanwhile, Stephen, temporarily living in a hotel, is making some changes in his own life with lessons learned.
“I don’t need more stuff. I’m going minimalistic,” he said. “When it’s gone it’s not the stuff that we accumulate we miss. It’s the people we accumulate. That’s so much more important.”
A fundraising Facebook page Belgrave Recovery Project has been established to aid flood victims.