The Anglican Diocese of Ottawa (ADO) has a long history of helping refugees from around the world and all faiths come to Canada. As a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH) under the Canadian government’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees program, the Refugee Ministry Office partners with constituent groups who want to sponsor refugees. Those constituent groups include Anglican parishes and groups of other faith-based or community-based groups and can include people seeking to sponsor their family members.

As we mark World Refugee Day in 2026, Perspective shares one family’s story.

Murtaza Ishraq was a well-known television broadcaster and commentator in Afghanistan. He was also a key spokesperson for a stability and convergence team in the 2019 presidential election. His wife, Masuma, was a law professor and writer on women’s rights.

So, when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August of 2021, their lives changed overnight. Masuma had to leave the university and stay home, and they were immediately threatened. An American non-governmental organization (NGO) helped them escape to Pakistan.

That got them out of immediate danger, but their situation in Pakistan was not good. Overwhelmed with people coming across the border from Afghanistan, the Pakistani government was not issuing work permits or documents that would allow the refugees to stay in the country. That meant that the couple had to pay high-priced rent for a place to stay in Islamabad out of the money they brought with them with no way to earn money. The water was bad, and their baby couldn’t drink it, so they eventually moved to a smaller city where the rent was less expensive, but they were still stuck in a bad situation with nowhere to go and no way to make a living.

Fortunately, that’s where Patricia Wilson and the non-profit Ottawa Centre Refugee Action (OCRA), came in. OCRA was founded in 2015 to help bring Syrian refugees to Canada and had begun to focus on Afghan people. “I was reaching out to sponsorship agreement holders in Ontario, particularly in Ottawa in 2021 and 2022,” Wilson said. “We had been contacted by people trying to bring various Afghans out. Most of them had fled to Pakistan, and we were looking for help at the sponsorship agreement, holder level.

“I remember sitting here in the summer of 2022. I didn’t think anyone would get back to us,” Wilson said. And then she got a call from the Refugee Ministry Office, letting her know that the Diocese had accepted OCRA as a constituent group, allowing them to sponsor refugees.

Since then, ORCA has bought eight groups — 37 people, including sponsoring Murtaza and Masuma and their son, who arrived in 2023.

It’s not easy starting over in a new country, but Masuma told Perspective that  she is happy to be safe in Canada and to be able to work. Murtaza is working as an Uber Eats driver in afternoons and evenings, so that he can take an English course during the day. Masuma was working as an early childhood educator until their second child was born nine months ago. Later, she hopes to return to university and study Canadian law.

After sharing their story with Perspective, Masuma wrote to says she would “like to sincerely thank the Anglican Church for helping our family reach Canada and find a safe place to live. We will certainly never forget their kindness and support.”

Special thanks to the Refugee Ministry Office’s devoted case managers Reem Abu-Afieh and Ishita Ghose for all of the work they do to make stories like this happen.

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It all needed to be fixed before the newly hired incumbent, the Rev. Robert Camara, who was moving to Perth from Montreal with his partner in December, could live in the house.

The parish considered selling or demolishing the house, but it had a heritage designation, so that limited their choices. They decided to do the renovations, which were expected to cost $100,000.

Fortunately, parishioners Ray and Elaine Hook stepped up to the challenge of raising funds as a labour of love and a way of thanking the people in the parish who cared for them when Elaine was seriously injured in a car accident. They donated $10,000 to get the fund started and used $5,000 to match donations over $100.

Parishioner Christine Erdos is a designer who offered to redesign the kitchen as a donation to the church.

At first, the Hooks hoped to raise $25,000, but as Ray kept the congregation updated on their efforts, donations kept coming, and they set new targets of $50,000 amd then $75,000. Eventually, they had raised $102,500 through donations that mostly came from within the congregation. “Our donors collectively from the church family. have just amazed us with their generosity and their support,” said Ray, adding that they are working on creating plaque with all of the donor names (aside from those who want to remain anonymous) that will be placed on a wall in the rectory.

The Rev. Robert Camara added that he and his partner were very grateful for the beautiful renovation work that has made the rectory so much more comfortable and for the warm welcome from the parish.

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He and parishioners at St. Albans, where he is the incumbent priest, were inspired to create some pilot projects on campus serving meals to students over the last few years. They began by serving meals at one of the student residences where students who didn’t have meal plans lived.

Throughout this past academic year, St. Albans teamed up with the student union, which has its own food insecurity initiative “Fed up.” They moved their program to a central hub area on the main campus and served three lunches and a dinner each semester. The meals were cooked by St. Albans’ parishioners with student volunteers on campus, and to encourage students to cook nutritious and low-cost meals for themselves, the team handed out recipes for the dishes they were serving.

Not surprisingly, the free meals have been a big hit with the students. Garner reports that they served a burrito dinner for their last meal of the semester in mid-April to 385 students. The students are grateful, and Garner says the volunteers often hear that the meal is the only one some students will eat that day.

Students have enjoyed the opportunities for social connections the meals create. Encouraged to sit down and eat and talk together, students offered feedback that the project has had a positive effect on their health. Aside from the food, they benefited from the social connections and a greater sense of belonging.

St. Albans volunteers also made efforts to take a break and sit down to eat and talk with students. Garner was pleased to hear that the students appreciated the opportunities to connect with the adults from the parish. Although, he expected that it would be most appealing to have student peers serving the food, feedback from the student union included comments that the students valued opportunities to have conversations with the adult volunteers from the parish. They appreciated having an adult ask how they were doing, how their day or semester was going, and the sense that these adults cared about them.

The St. Albans group has sought and welcomed partners from other parishes, denominations and faith groups to bolster their efforts in whatever capacity they can contribute. Even if a group can’t take on providing a whole meal, contributing to part of a meal is a valuable way to get involved and support the project. For example, Garner said, a number of United Churches got together and offered to donate dessert for the final meal of the term in April. Initially, they estimated they could provide about 150 servings. However, their bakers participated enthusiastically, and they ended up bringing more than 500 servings. “It was this overwhelming amount of food. That just created such joy…. It was great,” he recalled.

“My hope is next year to continue to cultivate relationships with churches and other groups who can provide supplemental things, like baking biscuits when we were doing soup and that sort of thing. I’m looking for all sorts of ways to lower the barrier to entry to churches and other groups,” he said, suggesting that sometimes people feel overwhelmed by a big problem like student food insecurity and feel that they can’t do anything. “I think the real power of this is that there are smaller ways to …come and be involved.”

Garner acknowledges that the meals can’t solve the problem of food insecurity on campus, but he was pleased to see that highlighting the problem and advocacy work seems to be spurring some action on the issue. The president of the university created an initiative to write an action plan for food security for the whole campus. Garner served on the committee with one of the deans in medicine and St. Albans was included as an external partner.

Pilot project aims to counter students’ social isolation

The Rev. Michael Garner has seen that students at the University of Ottawa, like many people in the broader society, have more communication tools at their fingertips than humans have ever had, but many are socially isolated. He says that loneliness is sometimes described as an epidemic in our digitally connected society where people need more time and real connection with other people in person.

Garner has worked closely with the U of O Student Union on issues of food insecurity, and one day ran into Meredith Kerr, the executive director, in Costco. “What are we going to do about loneliness on campus?” she asked him.

He says his first thought was “I have no idea.” But it was immediately followed by, “I know exactly what we are going to do.” Peg Herbert, a parishioner at St. Albans had come to mind.

“She’s a remarkable woman,” he said. Among the many cool things she has done is starting an organization called Chosen Grandma, which pairs retired women who don’t have grandchildren, or don’t have grandchildren in the city, with single moms, single parent families, creating this connectedness. The idea has caught on and Chosen Grandma has been featured on the CBC news. Garner noted that Herbert is developing this charity even though there are additional legal challenges because there are minors involved, but the point is to give children a “chosen grandma.” He realized that Herbert had all that valuable experience creating connections in a safe way.

So, while standing there in Costco, he thought, “‘We’ll just take Peg’s idea and apply it on campus.’ And that’s what we’re doing,” he told Perspective.

Room Enough is a pilot project will match 10 students with 10 families or households in the next academic year. “It’s really about facilitating the need of students, the desire of these households to connect … and support each other and learn from each other,’ he said. The pilot for this academic year will be a test run to see how this works, see what doesn’t work. They will track participants’ feedback on their mental health, the connection between the students and their matched households. “If we have a positive outcome and we have some data, we’ll go to the university to look at scaling it up for more people to participate in the next year.

The diocesan Future Fund awarded the project a grant of $10,000, which Garner says will help hire a student to be a part-time co-ordinator for the program.

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The initiative had a diverse group of participants last year — parishioners from Christ Church Bells Corners as well as other Anglican parishes, other denominations, and one person who said he had never attended any kind of a worship service before, said Archdeacon Monique Stone, who leads the contemplative walks and outdoor worship service.

Those who drove to the Beaver Trail for the first walk of this year were rewarded by many early spring beauties — delicate trillium flowers and other tiny blossoms lined the trails, ferns were unfurling. Bird songs provided the music for a service of readings, prayer, contemplation and sharing the Eucharist.

Each service is adapted to the abilities of those who attend.

Forest church services are planned for the first and third Tuesday of each month until Oct. 6. A full schedule with the changing locations and other details is posted on the Christ Church Bells Corners website. 

Please note services will be cancelled if The Weather Network (weathernetwork.com) has a Red Weather Alert message on the top of the screen for ‘Bells Corners’ as of noon on the day of the service due to rain, lightening, thunder storm, extreme heat OR if there is lightening at the time of the service starting.

Related  article:

Creating church in the forest 

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On Sunday, May 3, more than 200 guests enjoyed butter chicken and nan bread and many other culinary delights with ice cream for dessert. Not surprisingly, the dinners are a hit. Incumbent Archdeacon Monique Stone says more than 300 attended a dinner before Christmas last December.

The meals are an ecumenical and interfaith effort. Parishioners from Christ Church Bells Corners work together with volunteers from Bells Corners United Church, First United, Saint Martin des Porres Parish, and the Jami Omar Mosque to invite everyone and transport people from two nearby emergency shelters to the dinners using a rented school bus.

Alison Bridgewater, a volunteer from Bells Corners United, told Perspective that they sometimes say that they should rename Old Richmond Road as the ‘Road to Heaven’ because there are so many places of worship along it.

And they have more partners in the effort from South Nepean Community Health Centre and the City of Ottawa.

Another important partner is FAMSAC, the community food cupboard that operates on the ground floor of Hollyer House, an affordable housing project spearheaded by Christ Church Bells Corners and built on part of the church’s property where the church rectory formerly stood.

There is also a full commercial kitchen, so Stone says they can cook all the food there, which helps keeps the costs of the meals lower.

And in one more happy bit of symbiosis, guests were greeted at in the church hall by Joan Wright, president of the community gardens, and Cathy Séguin who helps run the program, which provides fresh vegetables to FAMSAC in the summer months. Cathy and Joan were handing out packets of seeds and small pots of soil, so guests could enjoy getting flowers or vegetables growing at home.

Christ Church Bells Corners is collaborating with their neighbours on three more community events:

June 13 (10 am to 1 pm) — Indigenous Month Community Celebration — Mādahòkì Farm Dancer Performance (10:30 to 11 am), Reconciliation Rock Paint Station and collaborative art project

Oct. 25 (3 pm to 5 pm) — Trunk or Treat — Costumes optional, free treats for all 

Dec. 20 (4 pm to 7 pm) — Holiday Meal — Free dinner for all — Halal, Kosher, gluten free

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Belong’s Centre 454 location has operated in the lower level of St. Albans Church for decades, providing basic services such as meals, shower and laundry facilities, as well as equally essential social connection and care.

The Rev. Michael Garner, incumbent of St. Albans, welcomed everyone into the church. He said the staff and volunteers are “an inspiration to me personally and to this congregation. I just really want to thank you for all you do. It is not easy work. We see that…. The way that you show up with passion and love and understanding for people who really need it in this moment is amazing.”

The Rev. Victoria Scott, the director general of Anglican Community Ministries, added her own thanks to the staff and volunteers for “the ways that you all make this a place of dignity and hope and connection. For me, it is absolutely at the centre of the Gospel to walk in solidarity with those who are experiencing vulnerability and marginalization. And there’s tremendous opportunity in places like this for connection in the midst of the disconnection in our world and for a way to find hope even in the darkest times. And so just know that I personally am so grateful for each and every one of you…. and really recognize the transformative work that you do.”

Shauna-marie Young, executive director of Belong Ottawa, thanked St. Albans and Garner for hosting the celebration in the church and for the parish’s hospitality and support of Belong Ottawa’s work.

She also thanked Paul Weber for providing music for the celebration as well as for the concert he and his band performed at St. Albans in February with all the proceeds benefitting Belong Ottawa.

 “Belong Ottawa is truly fortunate to have 31 dedicated volunteers…. You offer your time, your energy, your compassion, and in many cases, your personal resources in support of our mission. You contribute in so many meaningful ways — serving meals, offering companionship, supporting programs, trimming hair, mending clothes, gifting donations,” Young said. “Everything you do helps Belong Ottawa create safety and belonging for every person who walks through our doors.”

Volunteers’ commitment has made it possible for Belong Ottawa to serve 162 ,000 meals since June 2025, she said. “That number …represents far more than food. It represents dignity, stability and community for those who need it most…. From the bottom of our Belong hearts, thank you for your generosity, your spirit, your unwavering dedication. Each of you make a difference, and that’s why we wanted to honour you today.”

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After the evening ordination service, Bishop Alexander Pryor graciously made time for a few questions from Perspective.

When asked about the size of the Diocese of the Arctic, he opened up a folded road map of Canada. Dotted across the Arctic from the Yukon-Northwest Territory border all the way east to the border of Northern Quebec and Labrador and north almost to the edge of the map were marked 49 communities scattered through the vast territory.

“Everything is so much more expensive in the north than it is in the south. Travel is infinitely more difficult. Going for a confirmation is normally a four-or-five-day trek, and if you hit a blizzard, it becomes a week…. These are all fly-in communities, so it’s a lot of time spent in airplanes…Many of these communities just have one flight a day. Some will have one flight every other day.

So that’s what brought you all to Ottawa?

It’s often easier and certainly much cheaper for us to meet anywhere in the South, really. We did our Synod last year in Edmonton, and that was wonderful, and half of the cost that it would have been. I mean, our diocesan Synod cost us almost half a million dollars. That’s what it costs to do Synod. And that’s doing it in the South and staying at a monastery. Had we done it within the boundaries of our own diocese, it would be at least three quarters of a million dollars if not more.

Can you meet online sometimes?

On the older Internet technology, you really couldn’t have a stable video call work, but now since Starlink has spread out across the North, we’re able to do a whole lot by Zoom. There are real limitations though, especially when you’re working across languages and dialects and just with the different styles of storytelling, depending on people’s cultures. Zoom works very well for a very linear sort of business meeting, but when we need to discuss and go back and forth and reach consensus and really check in to see if what’s being communicated and what’s being interpreted is what’s being understood, that doesn’t happen as well. Many times, we’re using interpreters.

That’s why meeting together like this and being able to read the room and take the breaks when we need to and stretch our legs and sing a hymn and do what we need to do to make sure that we’re all moving forward in the same direction and hearing each other. … We’ve never done something like this before, where we’ve gathered for three intense days. Our diocesan synods are usually a week to 10 days long, because we only do it once every three years….

Is the Church growing in the Arctic?

Yes, though not everywhere. We have some communities that are struggling as many churches in the south are, but we are seeing a new generation coming into leadership. It’s really a fascinating … sort of thing, where they have elders in their late 70s and 80s who have been running churches, hoping that their children would step up and be called to take those places. They’ve been praying faithfully, and now they’re seeing their grandchildren called into leadership, which is just really, really cool.

There’s one community that I visited earlier this spring where after years of the elders praying that the next generation would step up, now they have a group of people in their 20s, who said, ‘We want to be on the vestry. And they voted in a vestry where the average age is under 30. And they called and said, somebody come and train us what it means to run a church. It is just so exciting to have young people who are on fire for the Lord.”

In many ways, we’re running to keep up with what the Lord is doing, which is just a lot of fun. We recently replanted the church in Inuvik. It had been closed for five years. It was one of our parishes that didn’t survive COVID. They had their last service in December of 2020 and then locked the doors and the church closed down after years of the sort of decline that is typical in many churches. Thanks be to God, we were able to hold on to that building. There was no pressure to sell it.

After five years of being closed and people praying, ‘Do we need a church in our community?’ In the span of one week, there were three phone calls from different people who hadn’t been speaking to each other from different parts of the country saying, ‘I think the Lord wants the church reopened in Inuvik…’[including a woman who had previously worked with another organization doing youth ministry in Arviat and in Rankin Inlet.

She was considering giving up her job down south and going full-time into youth ministry in the North and had been praying about it. She came across an article Bishop Pryor had written saying we’ve closed the church down but we’re praying for a church planter to come and till the soil.]

So, I called my wife and said, Christine, I’m buying a ticket to Inuvik to see what the Lord is doing and flew up the next day …. The church had been closed and freezing and thawing for five years, and the power and heat were turned off.  But by the grace of God, we managed with a little bit of help from someone at the power corporation … to get the power reconnected for the weekend. And with some help from those in the community reopened the church on Saturday to have a meeting and just talk about what we wanted to do. We had a service that Sunday, and 45 people showed up. At the end of that service, they said, ‘This was great. What happens next week?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. That’s up to you.’ They said, ‘Well, we want to have church. … And they’ve had church every Sunday since that Sunday 13 months ago.”

They’ve got four or five now who take turns preaching and who take turns leading the service. And that woman who called, saying she was interested, I installed her in February as a full -time minister, lay minister, in charge of church planting that congregation in that place. … Just amazing stuff going on.”

The post Clergy from across the Diocese of the Arctic gather at St. Margaret’s church in Vanier appeared first on Perspective.

The day began with Elder Larry Langlois offering a smudge and prayers outside the church.

Then everyone moved into the parish hall where Belle Bailey and Charmaine Leonard, who came to the event from Mādahòkì Farm, demonstrated two beautiful traditional dances. Bailey performed a Fancy Shawl Dance, and Leonard performed a Jingle Dress Dance. Afterward, they spoke and offered some insights from their Indigenous cultures and advice on how non-Indigenous people can learn more and work to contribute to reconciliation.

Everyone attending was invited to participate in a collaborative art project, adding their own designs to rocks that had been painted red, white, yellow and black. Then all the rocks were carried out into the parish garden to be arranged into the four quadrants of a medicine wheel, an important symbol in many First Nations cultures, which represents the interconnectedness of all life, the cycles of nature, and a path to personal balance.

The parish offered bannock with strawberry jam and strawberry water as refreshments for all.

The post Celebrating Indigenous History Month at Christ Church Bells Corners appeared first on Perspective.

About 530 people gathered for the morning Eucharist service to support and pray for the new bishop and to celebrate the beginning of her new ministry.

Lt. Col. the Rev. Mike Gibbons of the Military Ordinariate, who was Otley’s clergy colleague when she was incumbent in the Parish of Christ Church Bells Corners, offered the homily.

“Being the shepherd of a community in which people ask to have God revealed to them is no small task, especially when there is also the never-ending list of tasks that must be accomplished, future planning that must be attended to, as well as the human element. How much more so for a bishop whose responsibilities stretch over 46,000 sq. kilometres?” he asked.

But he said he had chosen to highlight only one of the many tasks that bishops do.

“As a military chaplain, I have worked for many leaders over the years, and each of them has had their own philosophies and approaches to command and leadership. And any good military section of a bookstore will have copious volumes on leadership, sometimes with one approach being diametrically opposed to another approach. It’s all a bit like dieting,” he quipped. “What differentiates great leaders from those who simply occupy leadership positions, and there is a difference, is their ability to inspire their people to locate their personal stories within the wider story of the community,” he said….

“Leaders tell the story of the community they serve. They engage the stories of the people who make up the community, and they tie it together. Kathryn,” he said, “you are now our chief storyteller….You are now tasked with taking the gospel and helping us to understand who we are as followers of Christ in the Church of God, and how we are to live out our Christian response, and I know that you are up to the task. Your whole ministry has brought you to this place. You have been chosen by your people and your clergy, and that call has been confirmed by the Holy Spirit. You are a pastor, a teacher, a priest, and a strong leader, and today you become a bishop in the Church of God.”

Referring back to the Gospel reading for the day from John 14: 8-11, he added: “You join an apostolic succession, ensuring the mission and witness of the Church. You represent Philip’s courage and audacity seeking to see the Father and then seeing God at work in Christ in the world.” And reflecting on the fact that the service was also a commemoration of the saint Julian of Norwich, Gibbons suggested that the bishop also represents “Julian’s defiant, faithful optimism that despite all the ills in the world, the suffering, the injustices and the cruelty to which we bear witness, that God is at work, and all shall be well.”

During the consecration, bishops and archbishops from Ottawa and many other dioceses surrounded the bishop-elect to pray for her. Archbishop Anne Germond, the Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario, anointed the bishop’s hands and forehead with Chrism and presented her with a Bible.

Archbishop Shane Parker, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, presented her with a crozier, a pastoral staff.

The bishop’s family helped her vest and don the regalia of the office. Helplng her with the stole were sons, Derek and Benjamin, and friend Colleen McCluskey-Douse, standing in for her daughter Heather who could not attend. Her brothers Gerald, Anthony and John placed the diocesan cope on her shoulders. Her mother, Carolyn Otley, presented her with an episcopal ring, a gift from her family.

Dean Beth Bretzlaff and diocesan Chancellor Canon Henry Schultz installed the bishop in the Cathedra, the official seat of the bishop in the Cathedral. Otley is the first woman to serve as bishop in the diocese of Ottawa.

Archbishop Germond presented Bishop Kathryn to the congregation. The bishop thanked all those who had gathered — family, friends, clergy colleagues from Anglican parishes and dioceses, ecumenical and interfaith friends, as well as those watching the service online.

Addressing the congregation and all of the assembled clergy, Bishop Otley said: “This is such a great honour, and I am filled with gratitude, and I know that I have been surrounded by your prayers….The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit holds us all.”

Responding to Lt. Col. Gibbons’ homily, she added, “I want us to tell the story together. I will lead and tell the story that we live in a time of abundance and … that we are established and rooted in faith… and the hope that is given in the good news that we have heard, that we know, and that we believe.

“And so, I am honored again to lead our diocese, to be part of leading in our ecclesiastical province of Ontario, our province of Canada, and throughout the Communion as we journey together, on a journey of welcoming, of reconciliation, of serving and loving. And we do all this in the joy of God, in the power of the Spirit, to the glory of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Following the Eucharist, the clergy processed out with loud applause of welcome for the new bishop from the crowd attending. All were invited to a festive reception in the Cathedral’s Great Hall.

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