By Yonatan Lew
A proposed centre for Ottawa’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning community won’t be a reality for at least three years — and organizers say they aren’t in a hurry to make it one.
With a virtual community centre up and running in cyberspace, members of the GLBTQ community say some progress has been made.
Pink Triangle Services, which oversees the centre initiative, has been providing services for the GLBTQ community for more than 20 years.
Kanata City Coun. Alex Munter says the city increased its funding for PTS to $79,000 from $28,000 annually because the demand for GLBTQ services in Ottawa has grown.
PTS is now looking to hire an executive director to move things along within the organization.
This will put PTS in a better position to provide services to the GLBT community, which includes the community centre initiative.
Stephanie Power is a former member of the PTS board as well as former co-chair of the community centre development committee.
She says there’s no rush to open up a facility.
“When we do achieve a building which is a community centre, [we want to make sure] it’s healthy and it’s sustainable and it’s used and it’s everything that it should be because we didn’t rush into it or do it foolishly or incompletely,” says Power.
Munter says the city raised its regular cash infusion to PTS to help the group expand and improve its services, not just to spearhead the community centre project.
The centre will be built when the time is right, he adds.
“In Montreal, which has a much bigger GLBT community than here, they’ve just put together all the funding after 10 years of working on it,” says Munter.
“They need to take small but important and consistent steps towards the goal and I think the virtual community centre helps build towards the goal.”
PTS and its partners launched the Ottawa GLBTQ Community Centre Initiative site in July.
The site, which can be found at www.ottawaglbtqcentre.com, offers a wealth of information.
There are links to many groups, stores and services to assist the gay community as well as a calendar of events for everything from sports to support groups.
Power says the site will offer GLBTQ organizations a greater sense of togetherness and co-operation.
“[The site will help] to identify the services that already exist in our community and to identify the services that don’t yet exist, but for which there is a need,” says Power.
Although volunteers have run the initiative so far, Keith Duncanson, the vice president of PTS, says the project needs permanent staff to oversee the project.
The constant time pressures have forced the resignation of numerous chairs, the latest being Power in August.
“It’s a very large commitment of time, and people are finding it a bit of a strain in their own personal resources,” says Duncanson.
Many organizations applaud the move towards a centre, however slow.
Carleton University’s GLBT Centre, for one, says they would benefit from having one place for all GLBTQ services to come together.
“It makes our partnership programs with other organizations a lot easier,” says Felix Ng, Carleton’s GLBT representative.
“[The centre] makes it a lot simpler to get information for us to give out to our members.”
Gilles Marchildon, executive director for EGALE Canada, says having a community sooner, rather than later, would obviously be a great step.
However, he adds, he doesn’t want that step to be taken prematurely
“I’d like to see a physical centre, but only if it’s feasible to open the doors,” says Marchildon.