By Irek Kusmeirczyk
In need of a miracle, members of the Bronson Centre’s non-profit organizations have turned to their nuns.
The Bronson Centre — formerly Immaculata high school — is owned by the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, who also appoint its board of directors.
On Nov. 8, a task force organized by several members of the Bronson Centre sent 150 letters to individual Grey Sisters and their superior general asking them to dissolve the centre’s board of directors and allow the members to form a new board.
Hoppy Roy, spokesperson for the task force, says the current managerial structure isn’t working and needs drastic change. The members want a say in the operation of the centre, she says, but they aren’t represented on the board and the board has no accountability to the members.
“We’ve had absolutely no contact with the board at all,” says Roy. “The people who this building is supposed to serve are totally out of the loop.”
Members of the task force say the centre’s sense of community is deteriorating into a formal tenant-landlord relationship with a faceless board at the helm. They say only two formal meetings have been held between the board and members in the centre’s four-year history.
“Why would 13 perfect strangers make for the best representatives?” asks Keenan Wellar, of the Bronson Centre’s Special Needs Network. “We were stupid not to require more involvement in the past.”
The task force is also asking the sisters to stop the Bronson Centre from being incorporated this fall, a move that would place control of the centre squarely in the hands of the board and relieve the sisters of any liability for day-to-day operations.
“We know we are up against something really big, really old, and rigid,” says Roy. “It’s a miracle we need.”
The task force wants the sisters to stop the board from hiring a new executive director without the members’ approval.
“The time is critical,” she says. “Soon it will be set in stone.”
Kae McColl, co-ordinator for People, Words & Change in the centre, says members still feel betrayed by the board’s decision Sept. 21 to fire executive director Maureen Moloughney without a proper explanation.
“There’s a hideous injustice, a canker, at the centre of it, but we’re moving on,” she says.
She says Moloughney created a spirit of community within the Bronson Centre.
The eight members who make up the task force have been meeting every week since the firing to plan their course of action.
“Our initial reaction was ‘we can’t stay here, let’s find another building,’” says Roy.
Wellar says he investigated some buildings, watched the recent school closure decisions with interest and called the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board to assess the feasibility of relocating the centre to an abandoned school.
He quickly decided it didn’t make sense at the time.
“I could have found a place for my group, but the problem is I want to work with the other members,” he says.
“It would also mean moving everything already here at once into a new building.”
The members initially wanted a representative on the board.
However, they decided any position within the current board structure would only be a token representation.
Robert Read, director of English Language Tutoring of Ottawa-Carleton, says he doesn’t think the nuns will bypass the board and grant the members a meeting.
“I doubt that they can find the humility to undermine their own board,” says Read. “The sisters bought into the board structure and accept the power structure.”
He says the group faces a moment of truth.
“If we fail here, we revert back to the status of tenant with the extra insecurity of not knowing our future,” says Read.
Roy says the organizations may have to move, but admits that’s a scary thought.