COVID has shut a lot of our churches and social groups down, but you can’t keep a good group of women down. Here is a determined group of strong women who have adapted to the shutdown, so that they can keep on helping others. I asked their contact person Shirley if I could share their story, as encouragement to all the groups struggling out there, with advancing age, shrinking numbers, and now the pandemic.

Stay safe and keep healthy, until “normal” is back.  

Marni Crossley and Leslie Worden
acw@ottawa.anglican.ca

~~~

At St. Mary the Virgin, Blackburn, the ACW has a total of 10 active members. Prior to the restrictions necessitated by COVID, we met approximately eight times a year, either in members’ homes or at restaurants.

Normally, we raise funds though our annual craft and bake sale and through calendar sales. However, it was not possible to do so this year. As a result, our treasurer came up with the idea of asking our members to donate to our tea fee fund as a means to providing additional money for our various projects. We are delighted to report that our members contributed a total of $500, which will be used to support our December gift giving to our seniors and shut-ins and to our annual donations to Diocesan community ministries such as The Well, Centre 454 and Cornerstone.  

We have also made a contribution earlier this year to our overseas outreach project—the Day Spring Orphanage (now known as the Excellent Children) in Morogoro, Tanzania. We have provided annual donations to this project for the last 10 years. 

This year several members collected items for the Bales for the North, and we are holding on to them until we have more information about what will take place in 2021.  

We also enjoy the fellowship with our ACW members. 

Report by contact person,
Shirley Adams

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Kazabazua first emerged in the Mission of Aylwin, with the Rev. William Ross Brown holding services in 1870 in a log school. We are told that by 1870 a church awaited consecration.  Was that Saint Stephen’s? In 1894, a room was fitted up for Divine service in Kazabazua, and by 1895 the Saint Stephen’s congregation near Kazabazua was the third church in the Mission of Aylwin.

We learn, confusingly, that in 1898, Clarendon Deanery approved removing Saint Stephen’s, Kazabazua to a lot opposite the Aylwin parsonage. Whatever it means, we do not know whether or not it was ever acted upon. Certainly, it was not until 1900, the Saint Stephen’s Church we see here, at Kazabazua, was consecrated.

The entrance wing we see here seems not to have been added until the late 20th century.  As built, the worship space consisted of an auditory box, with the only concession to High Victorian Gothic Revival design being the narrow side windows. The pointed arches of those windows contrast with the rounded arches in the octagonal belfry. The eight sides of the belfry and the spire follow Christian tradition in alluding to the eighth (or first) day of the week when our Saviour rose from the dead. By contrast, a hexagonal structure such as a vault in a graveyard or a belfry on a jail alludes to death, as on the sixth day of the week our Saviour was crucified.   

The life of rural parishes can be challenging. In 1919, Aylwin, Alleyne & Cawood and River Desert missions were re-organized into the six-point parish of River Desert, worked by two priests. Area parishes, it would seem, are nothing new.  In 1921, River Desert was divided into two parishes: River Desert and Aylwin. Aylwin consisted of four churches: Saint John’s, Aylwin; Holy Trinity, Alleyne; Saint Peter’s, Cawood; and Saint Stehen’s, Kazabazua.

Saint Stephen’s, it turns out, is the original log school, later covered with asphalt siding, and now vinyl. By 1969, a team ministry was appointed to Aylwin-River Desert with one priest looking after Kazabazua and Danford Lake while the other looked after Maniwaki and Wright.  In 1983, Wakefield and Lascelles were added to Aylwin-River Desert. In 1986, Aylwin-River Desert was reorganized into a four-point parish under the care of a single priest. By 2001, the Parish of Wakefield-Chelsea-Lascelles consisted of churches at Chelsea, Kazabazua, Lascelles and Wakefield.

The Archives collects documents for parishes, including parish registers, vestry reports, service registers, minutes of groups and committees, financial documents, property records (including cemeteries), insurance records, letters, pew bulletins, photographs, scrapbooks and parish newsletters.  

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This cycle of the liturgical year has been a particular blessing this year, when so many other markers of time have been disrupted. Days and weeks have a way of blurring together without the rhythms of commutes and coffee shop runs, lunch dates and dinner parties, weekends away and summer vacations, choir rehearsals, sports practices, and so on. 

Through it all, the liturgical year has kept me grounded in time and focused on eternity.

Our worship and community life left our buildings in Lent 2020, which made it the last liturgical season that we didn’t plan with an eye to the pandemic. Our parish abandoned the interactive prayer stations we were using each Sunday. The Lenten Quiet Day and Holy Week service plans – all tossed out and reimagined in something of an adrenaline rush. In the midst of that madness, Lent continued.  Day by day and week by week, we were called to turn back to God; to remember that God is where all our strength and all our hope actually rests.  Our whole lives became something of a Lenten fast, whether we wanted them to or not.  

When Easter came, it felt like Lent had lasted twice its usual 40 days but that Easter couldn’t possibly come, either.  And yet, Easter came so we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus and declared death defeated even in the face of the pandemic…and we kept celebrating for 50 days, insisting on a truth that is bigger and more powerful than any force on earth.  

We rejoiced at the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost and observed the long growing Green season. We welcomed the promises of Advent and the joy of Christ’s birth at Christmas and the wonder of God’s self-revelation in Epiphany.  

And now we’re back (or we will be by the time you read this). A full liturgical cycle observed during a pandemic.  We learned that our needs – for repentance, sorrow, and resurrection; for peace and power and sustenance; for hope and expectation; for God-with-us and God-around-us – our needs don’t change and God’s faithfulness in meeting them doesn’t change.  

As much as I’m dreading the coming COVID anniversaries (and do be gentle with yourselves as those weeks approach), I can also feel the rhythm of faith drawing me towards a season of simplicity and self-reflection.  I am ready to be reminded that I am only human, a sinner in need of saving and a beloved child of God. I am ready to lay the mess that is me and the mess that is our world at the foot of the cross and pray: Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

The post Finding solace in the rhythm of faith and liturgy appeared first on Perspective.

In addition to resources for your Stewardship campaigns, they are offering three virtual trainings.  One has already taken place in January. The other free virtual trainings will be available in August and October. Please look for more information about these webinars and for online registration.  TENS is also offering additional consulting packages to enhance stewardship formation in the Diocese.   As well, they will offer four custom virtual consultations for stewardship leaders.  I am planning to take full advantage of these offerings so that all of our congregations have access to them.

The webinars topics include a choice of:

• Year-round Formation for Stewardship
• Crafting a Mid-Year Budget and Stewardship Review
• Recruiting, Training and Retaining Stewardship Leaders
• Creating Compelling Stewardship Case Materials

A TENS webinar consists of 60 minutes of content presented on a slide deck.  Included will be up to 30 minutes of an optional Q&A session.  Please contact me for login access at jane-scanlon@ottawa.anglican.ca and then go to www.tens.org to look at the resources available. Now is the perfect time to begin your Stewardship ministry planning for 2021.  These resources will be very helpful!

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Last fall, in the wake of the violent death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests, Crosstalk began publishing a series of articles on racism. At the time, Bishop Shane Parker wrote:

Systemic, intentional and gratuitous racism is a present and persistent reality in all our communities. Racism is both conscious and unconscious, and is always insidious, dehumanizing those who are targeted and those who perpetrate. 

Racism is utterly incompatible with the life and teachings of Jesus. We who seek to follow him must be unafraid to cross over the boundaries of denial and repression to hear how racism undermines the dignity of individuals and groups, and to understand our complicity in perpetuating racist structures, language and attitudes.

Albert Dumont, Indigenous Advisor to the Bishop, graciously agreed to share his experiences and thoughts with Crosstalk. The following is an excerpt from that conversation, focused on the destructive impact that colonialism had on Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Sir John A. Macdonald and the Indian Act

My spiritual beliefs tell me that nobody escapes justice, nobody…

I worked in a maximum security prison for a few years, and I told the Indigenous inmates that I worked with, “When Canada’s justice system tells you that you have served your time and you are free to leave the prison, that doesn’t mean you are good to go. If you have had a part in taking someone’s life or destroying someone emotionally, or whatever you have done to somebody, you still have to deal with that. It’s not Canada’s justice system that clears you of it. It’s something that you have to deal with between you and the person who suffered under you…..” 

The same could be said about Canada and the Indian Act they brought forward under Sir John A. Macdonald. If that was okay with Canadians, they didn’t get away with it. I don’t care what anybody might say. Anybody who was okay with oppressing the Indigenous Peoples of this country for so long, over so many generations, something was there waiting for them when they died because nobody escapes justice.

A few years ago [2012] … they renamed the [Ottawa River] Parkway, the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway. It was not that long ago, when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister. …. John Baird pushed for it and he won, and that’s how it got named the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway. I suggested to a contact I had at City Hall that it should be named Algonquin Parkway or Anishinabe Parkway, because the fact is that if it wasn’t for the Anishinabe, Canada wouldn’t even exist. It was the Anishinabe fighters who stood with the British to keep the Americans out during the war of 1812. Pierre Berton, a respected historian, often said that. Meanwhile, Sir John A. Macdonald produced the Indian Act and the Residential Schools and the pass system and denial of the vote and so on, and they put up statues for him as if he was a hero. …

“Free” land

I’m an activist for human rights but also for the environment and the water. A few years ago, we were trying to save some 300-year-old pines near Wakefield, [Que.]…We were at a fundraiser and there was a man sitting beside me whom I never knew before that night. We got talking, and it turned out that he was Philemon Wright’s great-great-grandson.  I said to him, “You know, [due to] the fact that Ottawa was a lumber town and because of the lumber and trees, it created work and an industry that brought a lot of settlers, I would like to see the City of Ottawa and Gatineau get together and agree to put one day aside to honour trees. If not for trees, Ottawa wouldn’t have become a big city.” Philemon Wright’s great-great-grandson replied, “No, no, it wasn’t the lumber industry that brought settlers here.”

 “What was it?” I asked.

 “It was the free land,” he answered. 

“How was it that the land was free?” I questioned. “Because the Algonquins never gave it up. We don’t have a treaty to this day with the Crown.” The land was free, but somebody was left short because of the settlements and that was the Indigenous Peoples. ….Sir John A. Macdonald’s government talked about ‘the Indian problem’. There was a problem and it was us. And that mind-frame stayed for many generations after Sir John A. Macdonald was dead and gone, right up … and into the present day. …

Speaking up

What I would ask of people is that the next time they hear someone condemning Indigenous Peoples for being tax burdens or for not serving any purpose or whatever, I would ask that a person who is hearing this to find the courage, if that’s what it takes, to tell that racist person, “I’d like to know where you would be if you had the oppression that the Indigenous Peoples experienced for many generations. Where would you be?” 

It is all about the resources of this great country, right? The land and the resources. I guess it would have burdened the consciences of the settler community to know that they were taking lands and resources away from people  whose lands had been theirs for thousands of years.

Editor’s notes:  

• The pass system prohibited many Indigenous people from leaving their reserves without the permission of an Indian agent.

• Corrections have been made to the online version of the first part of Crosstalk’s interview with Albert Dumont “I was the only one who wasn’t laughing” December 2020 p. 8, including his age at the time (12) and the name of his Grade 6 teacher, Sister Pauline.

The Poem

By Albert Dumont

In my view there are many things of this great planet we should acknowledge as being sacred. A purity much appreciated by Creator is alive within the trees, the birds, the fish, the animals and all other things experiencing the touch of the Good Spirit each and every day. Among human beings, it is only children, the youngest ones, who truly define what sacredness is. Yet it was them, the children from Indigenous bloodline, that Sir John A. Macdonald attacked and whose minds and souls he violated through his oppressive policies, all generated to “kill the Indian in the child.” Thousands of Indigenous children died because of the Indian Act (a creation of Macdonald). The thousands of children who died in his Residential Schools should never be forgotten. I know that I for one will never “get over it.” I wrote the poem ‘Sir John A. Macdonald’ to describe my view on Canada’s first prime minister.

Sir John A. Macdonald

by Albert Dumont ©

We, the Anishinabe, search the lifeless eyes
Of the many portraits proudly painted for Canada
To honour a man Canadians believe
Was an emblem for ‘decency, righteousness and vision’
“A hero” they say, “a Nation Builder”
But the First Peoples look upon the face
Of Sir John A. Macdonald
And see the curse, responsible
For the deaths of thousands of our children

We see in Macdonald, a man, who saw
In the whiteness of his skin, a human being equal to God
Who believed his soul
Would never be in need of cleansing
And that the goodness offered daily on Turtle Island
By the ever-present Good Spirit, who teaches us
That no human being is greater than any other
Were teachings Macdonald accepted as only created for people
Lesser than men such as himself

We look at the evil Macdonald placed into the ‘Indian Act’
And other oppressive actions perpetrated by him, against us
And ask ourselves when in meditation, if the wailing spirits
Of the thousands of Indigenous children
Who died in Macdonald’s Residential Schools
Held sacred council with him in the eternal sky
Where true justice sears the soul of the guilty
After the scalding breath of death stopped forevermore
The beating of Macdonald’s spiritually hollow heart

With ceremonial tobacco by our side, we ask
Did Macdonald’s tears flow like the spring waters of the ‘Ottawa’
When the children who died in his Residential Schools
Recounted to him the last torturous hours of their lives
Away from culture, family and the unconditional love
Of a caring human being who could hold their hand
At the moment their last breath silently took them
Back to the peaceful waters of their ancestral lands

For thousands of years
Since our creation story was first told
We called ourselves ‘The First People’
‘The People’ and ‘The Human Beings’
But to Macdonald’s parliament we were only savages
Not worthy of receiving their respect and honour

Sir John A. Macdonald, a hero to the royals of Britain
Sir John A. Macdonald, who sacrificed his soul
So that the people of Canada
Would see him always as the greatest of all men
Where does he find himself today
What words of contrition does he relay
In that empty place, where for him
The darkness of a stormy night
Will never yield to a calm and re-assuring dawn

Oh but what if it had been you
The peoples of European ancestry
Who were the first human beings of Turtle Island
And here, you lived and thrived for thousands of years
Until one day, bronze-skinned people
Arrived on your welcoming and generous shores

Oh but what if the newcomers brought with them
To your tranquil and sacred lands
Ancient wars from their former homeland
And laid before you, countless pandemics of vile disease
And through the power of generations of your oppression
Could control even your very thoughts making you believe
That the light of God was for them, always present
Even guiding their cruel deeds against you

Imagine now that today, a dark-skinned man
Was being praised for destroying all that Creator gave to you
With bronze-skinned people believing he was a noble leader
Who built a great and fair nation where yours once stood
Would you join in singing an honour song in his memory
Or would you fight with all the strength of the sun
To pull his portraits and statues down

The post A Conversation with Albert Dumont appeared first on Perspective.

“Typically what people do is use a small version or a printed version of that pattern and they trace it with their finger, calling it a finger labyrinth, but what we’re doing in our programming is trying to find different ways of getting to that same quiet meditative and community place,” Barbara Brown explained when five members of the guild met with Crosstalk for an online conversation. On Dec. 22, Brown and fellow guild member Caroline Balderston Parry led a virtual online gathering to mark the winter solstice, asking attendees to prepare a candle, an orange and four cloves (a symbol of the sun and four directions), and a handful of freshly gathered evergreens. We’re “trying to weave together a kind of experience that parallels what it is like to be in a group walking the labyrinth together,” she said.

But winter presents another opportunity. “We are about to do our first snow labyrinth program.

“On Feb. 22, the Cathedral Labyrinth Guild is creating a snow labyrinth in Britannia Park. Unlike our usual labyrinths, this one will allow for social distancing; it will have a oneway path that leads into the centre, and then continues out by a different path.  

“We will also host an online program on February 22 at 7 pm.” 

(See the Cathedral website or Facebook Events for details).

About Labyrinths

Labyrinths are ancient patterns found all over the world. Although the word labyrinth is used interchangeably with maze, they are not the same. The guild’s webpage explains that “Mazes are a kind of puzzle with multiple paths and decision points, and sometimes high walls. Labyrinths, by contrast, are unicursal: a single path twisting and turning through several concentric circles or circuits to arrive at a central goal, without walls or other obstructions to visibility. There are no ‘wrong turns’ in a labyrinth.”

“In the Middle Ages, monks started drawing iterations of the labyrinth that incorporated the cross, so the pattern became more complex,” Brown explains. “A labyrinth that people gravitate to is one that was laid in the floor in the year 1200 at [the Cathedral in] Chartres, France, just north of Paris. That pattern has the cruciform incorporated into it, and at the centre there is a large circle with a rose pattern, so there’s all kinds of symbology involved in the labyrinth.”

People who could not make pilgrimages sometimes walked labyrinth paths. The labyrinth at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa is same pattern that is in Chartres. 

“People come to the Cathedral from all sorts of spiritual [backgrounds] and cultures. …. It’s a great way for people to get drawn together,” Diane Perazzo said.

Brown describes the whole labyrinth guild program as an outreach program. “While it is housed and held within the Cathedral, both the people who are part of the guild and the people who come are beyond the Cathedral community.”

We asked each of the guild members taking part in the interview to describe some of their experiences with labyrinth walking.

Barbara Brown

I was first introduced to the labyrinth at the Lumiere festival here in Ottawa. Ruth Richardson had set up a candlelit labyrinth with paper bags on the baseball diamond in the evening. I was there with my children who were 6 and 9 at the time. I had never seen a labyrinth, didn’t know anything about it. …Ruth gave us the 30 second introduction and … walking the labyrinth, I found myself in a kind of other space, very quiet, very interior space. I came out of that experience, looked around and there were no less than 50 screaming children running the labyrinth. It really got my attention. …

My experience of a snow labyrinth is always an individual one because I am the maker. I’ve rarely stumbled on one out there in the world, but I go out with the intention of making one. I am a visual artist and my visual art practice really helps me and has given me the skills to make these labyrinths…. I’ll make a labyrinth in the snow for the aesthetic purpose of taking a photograph, so it’s that overlay of this very human pattern informed by nature but overlaid on the landscape. [My other intention] is to give over to the experience of finding your way, remembering the pattern and having that very personal interplay in a physical way with the landscape, with the weather, with the sun, with the trees, with the setting. I find labyrinth walking keeps your brain busy at a sort of perfunctory level that allows you to access a more liminal or less rational part of your brain, so that experience is always a welcome one.

Diane Perazzo

A few years ago, I lived in a home further south out of Ottawa where we had room in the back to make a labyrinth.  We would have people come [to a gathering in February to celebrate Candlemas] and we’d have lanterns and we would do this beautiful snow labyrinth and then we would have a campfire in the woods. Oh my goodness, for me it was such a combination of community, spirituality, an opportunity to be outside during the cold months.

…Apparently, …when you walk a labyrinth, it’s a brain-balancing activity because you always turn yourself equally, as many times as you do the in and the out of the labyrinth. … I get such a sense of well-being when I have walked a labyrinth, one that’s designed in a geometrically proper way. 

… My involvement with the guild is fairly recent.. Caroline happened to invite me to a self-care gathering. I think it was about two months after my dad [an Anglican minister] passed way, and I had such a release of emotion at that time. I had no idea how much I bottled up inside of me. It was incredible. I’ve never had an experience like that since, but it was such a complete letting go of so much that I had been carrying.

Caroline Balderston Parry

Somewhere along the way, I got the idea of pausing on each of the petals of the flower shape in the middle of the Chartres model and listening for some kind of guidance or message, so now I’ve really ritualized that. I walk in a sunwise-clockwise direction. I pause on each of the petals. I do a little turnaround 360 degrees and listen to see if I have a message. I remember that and go to the next petal, so that I will get a series of affirmations of different kinds. When I am in my garden, I just turn to the four directions, so this morning I literally got “All is well” and then I went to the song, so the second direction was “Safely rest” and the third was “God is nigh” and I think the last message was “All Shall Be Well.” 

…There is definitely a balancing thing that goes on. Particularly in the big 11 circuits, you lose track of where you are. You are sort of close to the centre. You can’t quite tell how long it is going to take you. You are without bearings and yet you trust that this is a single path…. You can’t get lost…. So you just trust and then you find “Oh, here am I entering the centre” and then going out the same thing “Here am I leaving.” 

And in between … it’s a kind of shorthand of three or four Rs – As you stand at the mouth of the labyrinth, the gate in as it were, you remember your connection to all of creation and to whatever your spiritual orientation might be (and that comes from Matthew Fox in Creation Spirituality). When you feel like you’ve made that connection, then as you walk in you are doing the other three Rs. You are releasing anything that’s on your mind or a concern. You might be saying a prayer for a particular person, so you are thinking about them and releasing them into the circle. Or you might just be letting go of the shopping list or whatever. And when you get to the centre, you receive, you are listening for that message. So it is remember at the mouth, then release, receive, and then as you are returning … you are thinking about how you can respond to that message. What does it carry for you in the next hours or days? It is a very useful set of guideposts. 

Chris Hume
(Carleton Place Community Labyrinth)

I’ve just been on an amazing and interesting journey. …

Trusting the path is kind of saying that came to me early on with one of the books that I was given about labyrinths and it is something that I just keep close to my heart… Back in 2012 walking the labyrinth up at Burnstown, I was going into it, being open-minded. Was there anything that was going to be presented to me on my walk that day? Two phrases occurred to me: Take time for creativity and… make time for creativity. It was so strong that message, I thought “Okay I will.” Shortly thereafter, I was in Montreal and I stumbled upon a mosaic artist who was teaching courses, and I started going to those courses. I am now in my dining room, which is like a mosaic studio. I have created mosaics with an ancient labyrinth in them. I have also gone into the labyrinth just asking for a visual or an image when I am in the centre and come out and done a series of sketches of mandalas that have become different forms of art. So for me, there’s a real creative process tied in with it all.

Elspeth MacEwan

I find the labyrinth powerful when it comes to grief. There are times when you are crying on the labyrinth and there are times when you are laughing and it is just so exuberant with joy, so it is the full range of emotional experiences. And there’s a child part of me when I am out doing the winter labyrinth, I am like a kid in my snow pants, but then I might be listening to Hildegard von Bingen spiritual music, so I am this old woman, an elder, and I am a child at the same time on the same path.

Winter labyrinth at Gracefield

Mystery…
a liminal space, a magical time
Walking in darkness, subtle light, the moon…
An ancient path, alive with the spirits of all who have walked here before,
and all who walk with us.

At Gracefield Camp, in the January chill, a dozen of us don our parkas and snow pants, light our hurricane lanterns, and venture out into the night, while others cozy up to the fire with their knitting and sip hot chocolate. We make our way along the edge of the forest, silent but for the sound of boots on crisp snow; it’s a familiar path, yet stark and strange. Nestled in the forest, this labyrinth is usually snow-covered during the winter months; in the summer months, it is an exquisite garden path, always delighting walkers with new blossoms and surprising visions. In the dead of winter, a map, a pair of snowshoes and an hour or so of purposeful wandering in the waning afternoon sun unveils it. To a winter labyrinth keeper, this is a spiritual exercise, a pleasant time of preparation.

Stillness now, then a cold breath of wind.
Ann was with us the last time we made this journey. We carry her light too, remember her singing, her voice thin as she was approaching that veil…

Heaviness of grief.
blanket of snow
Warmth of community,
well-worn paths of friendship.

— Elspeth MacEwan
Cathedral Labyrinth Guild

The post Walking and talking about labyrinths appeared first on Perspective.

The year “has flown by so quickly with an amazing amount of learning,” Seguin told Crosstalk in a telephone interview. “I’d never spoken to a health unit or half the people we’ve had the chance to work with, so it’s been fun. But now I don’t know what it would be like not in the pandemic.” He added that everyone has learned to be adaptable and hopes that willingness to try new things will outlast the COVID-19 crisis.

The pandemic increased demand for the services Centre 105 provides — breakfast three days a week— as well as a caring community. Seguin says that in the fall the number of people coming for meals rose to about 60 to 70 people a day, and occasionally peaked at nearly 80. “Those are the days that are a bit scary because you think, ‘Oh my God, why is there so much need all of a sudden?’” Fortunately, he said, the other food agencies in Cornwall, such as the Agape Centre, which operates a soup kitchen, food bank and thrift store, were also adapting, and the agencies collaborated more closely to meet people’s needs. A Walmart distribution centre in Cornwall would donate crates of products to the Agape Centre, which shared goods with Centre 105, for example.  “With all of us communicating a bit more and swapping supplies, it’s been really nice, and I think 2021 will bring even more of that collaborative mindset.”

Seguin said he and the staff were pleased when the local health unit gave the centre permission to serve food inside the hall at Trinity Anglican Church in November and December when the region was in a yellow risk category. People still had to wear masks and social distance at small individual tables, but it was a welcome shift from participants just having to pick up their food at a window from outside. 

“We ask people all the time ‘What do you find the hardest?’ and it is the isolation. The lonely factor is really starting to eat away at people,” Seguin said. 

The challenges Centre 105’s clientele face daily, such as a lack of access to public washrooms, are coming to light, he added. “We noticed, ‘Wow, a lot of people are asking to use our washroom,’ more than normal. It is a tough call because letting people in the building [requires] sanitizing afterwards and stuff like that, but it is directly linked to the fact that [public washrooms are] not accessible or available.”

Seguin is often asked if there is a homeless population in Cornwall. There definitely is, he said, but it is more of a hidden problem than it might be in large cities. “We have a lot of people who couch surf and a lot of people who live in rooming houses. People who live in rooming houses are often the ones looking for a washroom in the middle of the day. In a lot of cases, the rooming house is a bed and somewhere they hang their hat at night,” but it is not a place where people stay during the day.

Centre 105 was able to continue serving food inside until Christmas. Participants enjoyed a Christmas meal on Dec. 23, but once the second lockdown in Ontario was announced, staff and participants had to adjust to using the improvised take-out window again.

During the pandemic, Seguin and the staff noticed that the types people they were serving were changing. “Some of our older participants have stopped coming because of the danger of the virus. As those regulars started to not show up, we wondered why our numbers were staying the same or increasing, but it was a [new] population of people who had never accessed food agencies before. [They were people] who were in their mid-20s and had just lost a job, so those people really boosted our numbers.” 

The centre tries to welcome this young adult population, Seguin said. “We really try to provide that comfortable, warm, atmosphere, non-judgemental. The staff and the volunteers are awesome. It feels like home, that’s the vibe that we are trying to give off, so after they come a few times most people feel pretty comfortable.” He noted that they are also seeing more women coming to the centre. Participants used to be about 75% middle-aged men, but now Seguin estimates it is almost 50% women. 

There have been many blessings to help Centre 105 keep up with these increasing needs, Seguin said. “We were expecting to have a terrible year both financially and with in-kind donations of food and supplies, but it was the opposite.” They received so many donations from restaurants, they were overwhelmed with the supplies and by people’s generosity.

 “There’s a small local diner in Cornwall, called The Village Diner…. They donate 30 loaves of bread a week, which is phenomenal, and they’ve been doing that since the beginning of the pandemic.” And that restaurant is not alone. A lot of restaurants and a lot of service clubs reach out and donate. The centre also benefitted from the unfortunate closure of another restaurant whose owners donated a lot of supplies and equipment. Centre 105 received those gifts “with mixed emotions because it is great that we were able to get new equipment and upgrade our operation but sad to see someone else put their passion to rest,” Seguin said.

“We can hardly keep up with who is giving what,” said Seguin, adding gratefully that 2020 expenses for food and programming are a lot lower than anticipated as a result. They were similarly blessed with a flood of people calling to volunteer, but due to COVID restrictions they’ve had to limit the number of volunteers, to focus on students who need volunteer hours to complete their high school community hours.

The centre does have some growing pains. Until now, breakfasts have been cooked on electric griddles, but the griddles really aren’t big enough to serve the larger numbers of participants now, so the centre has to find a way to purchase and install a commercial-sized grill and hood. 

“We’re so lucky to have the cook we have, Lorraine Kouwenberg, because she is one of those people who can make something out of three ingredients on a countertop. It’s amazing what she can pull off with the supplies that we give her. I’m excited to see what we could do with great equipment.”

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An award for her leadership in a ministry of restorative justice was recently presented to Patricia Love during a virtual ceremony drawing together friends, family, and colleagues from across the country. The ceremony was chaired by Kathryn Bliss, executive director of Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) Canada, which makes the yearly award. The Award of Distinction was given to Patricia Love in recognition of her work in establishing COSA Ottawa at St John the Evangelist, Elgin Street, in Ottawa. 

COSA Ottawa was founded in 1998 to implement a model of released prisoner rehabilitation begun by Harry Nigh, a Mennonite minister in 1994. The motto of COSA is ‘No more Victims’ as it works to assist offenders to turn away from their victimizing criminal behaviour. COSA Ottawa, which now has 14 Circles of Support with trained volunteers working with high-risk offenders (usually sex offenders).  A core group forms  around each offender, the Core Member, and meets with him regularly, usually weekly at the beginning, to assist with re-integrating safely into society and facing the many personal and social challenges that he must overcome. 

This model of rehabilitation has proven so successful that it is now emulated in many countries throughout the world and across Canada. 

Patricia Love, working with myself when I was the rector of St. John’s, secured initial infrastructure funding from Correction Services Canada once the initiative became too large to be managed by volunteers. St John’s Church provided the space for Core Group Meetings, office space, and many volunteers. Today, volunteers are draw from across Ottawa as well as from the parish of St John’s. 

With funding, Susan Love was hired to coordinate the work, train volunteers, recruit and screen Core Members from correctional institutions, and work with the national committee of which she is a founding member.

Several participants in the awards ceremony spoke of Pat’s work with COSC and the congregation of St John’s Church as the ministry began. Pat herself sat as a member on several circles over the past 22 years. In my remarks at the virtual evening, I described Pat’s leadership in organizing COSA as well as her involvement in outreach ministry at the St Johns, in affordable housing and homelessness. Notably in 2001, Pat aged 76, walked from Ottawa to Peterborough to raise awareness about these issues. 

 Today, COSA Ottawa is playing a key role in the expansion of this model of restorative justice throughout Canada and the world.

Patricia Love, now 94, was not able to attend the award ceremony. Her daughter, Susan, received the award on her behalf. In presenting the award, Eileen Henderson, Chairperson of COSA Canada, noted how the award sculpture was made out of broken pieces of glass and pottery found on the ground, thus a powerful symbol of the restoration work which Pat pioneered.   

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St. Helen’s fine art fair was off to a fantastic start last year with 18 local artists about ready to display and sell over 140 pieces of fine art when the COVID crisis closed everything down. But the art fair is going online this year to shine a light on art by local artists.

All artists active in Orleans or east Ottawa are welcome to exhibit in the art fair. Those who are looking for new and exciting fine art can visit our website to view all of the artists’ work. 

The online art fair (sthelensartfair.ca) will remain open for new art and sales until May 24. Details for sellers and consumers can be found on St. Helen’s Art Fair website or our Facebook page sthelensartfair.

As a fundraiser for its ministry, St. Helen’s Anglican Church welcomes this opportunity to invest in the local artistic community.

For further information you may contact us at sthelensartfair@gmail.com

—Brian Glenn, Art Fair coordinator  

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