By TONIA
KELLY Ken [last name withheld] credits The Ottawa Mission for giving him a chance when no one else would. A high school dropout, he had worked at menial jobs he hated, lived a transient life, and struggled with drug and alcohol addictions. “I’d take off for a few months, then sit on my ass, get high, have fun for a couple of months, but I had no real future.”
Ken was 29 when he came to the Mission. He was “at the bottom of the barrel” when his social worker, knowing that he loved to cook, told him about the Mission’s Food Service Training Program. After being carefully screened, he was accepted into the program in September 2005 and graduated at the top of his class six months later.
For the past century, men like Ken have walked through the Mission’s front doors. So this year, the Mission celebrates 100 years of making a difference in people’s lives. It has been at its present location at 35 Waller St. since 1912. Highrise buildings are crowding in but the old heritage building stands its ground, continuing to provide shelter for the homeless – men with lined faces and shabby clothes, worn down from having taken too many wrong directions in life.
On Oct. 4, the Mission celebrated its Centennial Dinner at the Westin Hotel in the company of approximately 440 of Ottawa’s corporate, community and government leaders who have supported the Mission over the years.
The Mission’s programs are keeping pace with modern demands of its new century.
The Home Hospice opened in July 2001 and since then, 85 people have died “in their own home” with care and companionship. Client Services teach life skills such as job searching, resume writing and computer skills. The Lifehouse is a six-month drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, providing follow-on support to graduates when they are back out in the world and are most vulnerable.
Rev. Terry Dempsey has been chaplain at the Ottawa Mission since June 2003. He remembers Ken. “It took great courage to face the risk and the challenge of doing something so new, moving on with his life.”
For Dempsey, serving the homeless, the hungry and the lost is the highest calling one can have as a minister. “When I think of this ministry I think that it follows in Jesus’ footsteps. It’s the calling that Jesus himself lived.”
He conducts daily chapel services at 11 a.m. and sings in a strong, confident voice as people call out the numbers of their favourite hymns.
Although some people go to the service only for the free lunch ticket, for others it offers words of comfort and transporting music. Singing ‘Morning Has Broken,’ away from turmoil, makes the world seem almost alright for just a few moments.
Dempsey is an ordained minister, happy and gregarious, whose unassuming nature belies the fact that he is an accomplished scholar – the holder of bachelor’s degrees in history, political science and education, and master’s degrees in history and divinity.
“There’s a lot of sadness in our work,” says Dempsey. “People didn’t make a career choice to be here, nobody went to high school and said ‘I want to live at the Mission.’”
“We think positively here about reasons why we can make something happen, not reasons why we can’t,” says Dempsey. “We can always put up roadblocks, but here we change the roadblocks into stepping stones.”
As chaplain at the Mission, Dempsey has seen some men start lives over, and others end lives with the dignity that had eluded them in their earlier life.
He tells the story of the jewel in the Mission’s crown – the hospice next door on Daly Avenue where individuals come in various stages of poor health to die with dignity. In one case a terminally ill man had promised his partner that before he died he would marry her. So he fulfilled his promise.
“Our marriages are not legal in the eyes of the Ontario government,” explains Dempsey, “but they are married in the eyes of God and we bless their relationship.”
The chapel was decorated with flowers and the man sat in his wheelchair during the music-filled ceremony. The couple exchanged vows and inexpensive rings from Giant Tiger, and afterwards they celebrated with a small reception.
“The man died less than twelve hours later,” says Dempsey, “but in his last twelve hours we made it possible for them to have that joy.”
But not all is joy and peace at the Mission. The frontline workers are as courteous and welcoming to visitors as in any fine hotel, but it’s no coincidence that they’re physically fit and very alert young men.
“They deal with some real behavioural problems at times,” says Dempsey. “They have patience, and great strength of character.”
The number of men seeking shelter at the Mission has increased as has Ottawa’s population, and the challenges of running a shelter in 2006 are vastly more complex than in 1906 when the Mission was founded – from privacy issues of their clients to the monitoring of media relations.
“The bad news is that we’re in a growth business,” says Paul McKechnie, an Ottawa chartered accountant and president of the Mission’s board of directors. “There’s the Shepherds [of Good Hope], the Salvation Army, and us, but there’s still people on the street.”
McKechnie began his service at the Mission 50 years ago when, as a child of nine, he accompanied his father, Donald McKechnie, in his duties as a board member and occasional piano player for the hymn singing.
In those days there was no chapel or chaplain, so community people, men from different walks of life, took turns performing that role, and the younger McKechnie sometimes played the trumpet at the services.
He concedes that there are some Mission clients who are happy on welfare, who panhandle for whatever they can get. “But most people don’t want to be there [at the Mission]. They want a better life.”
The Mission manages its hard-earned dollars carefully. For every dollar spent, 82 cents go to programs and services from which men like Ken can benefit.
Two years ago Ken walked through the doors of the Mission, a high school dropout needing its services. He graduated from the Mission’s program and returns now as an Algonquin College student, passing on to others the encouragement and support once given to him.
He is enrolled in the college’s two-year culinary management program, so he wore his Algonquin chef’s hat when he spoke to the Mission’s graduating class in food services.
“Now I’m finally doing something,” he says. Being admitted to Algonquin wasn’t easy though. He was weak in math and English.
“I went online for some grammar lessons, and I had my math transcript from the Mission,” recalls Ken. And eventually his OSAP application was approved.
“I feel a big responsibility to show that the [Mission] program works, that you can do something with it.” The program helped his self-esteem as well. “It’s not just hands-on food theory, you can learn to improve your whole life when you really accomplish something.”