St. Barnabas invites St. Luke’s Table in out of the cold

BY LEIGH ANNE WILLIAMS

St. Luke’s Table has a new location for a Saturday program this winter in the parish hall of St. Barnabas Anglican Church in downtown Ottawa on Kent Street.

During the week, participants will continue to meet at the Bronson Centre, where the Anglican Community Ministry has reestablished itself until its facility in the basement of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, which was damaged in a fire in the church in October, can be restored. But the Bronson Centre space was not available on the weekends, so those who depend on St. Luke’s for meals and important social connections and support had to spend their days on the weekends elsewhere.

The Rev. Canon Stewart Murray, incumbent of St. Barnabas, told Crosstalk that he had originally called the Rev. Dr. Canon P.J. Hobbs after the St. Luke’s fire to offer the space in the St. Barnabas Parish Hall. The Bronson Centre location was closer to St. Luke’s, but when St. Luke’s Table received a grant for an additional Out of the Cold program for Saturdays, Hobbs contacted him.

Rachel Robinson, the executive director for Belong Ottawa (the new name for the merged Anglican day programs Centre 454, St. Luke’s

Table and the Well) said the team at St. Barnabas was very welcoming and that everyone was excited about the new program. It will offer breakfast and lunch as well as social recreation from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The program got started on Feb. 4, just in time before Ottawa’s daytime temperatures dropped to -30 C the following weekend.

Agencies come together to celebrate International Women’s Day

BY LEIGH ANNE WILLIAMS

Eight organizations that serve women in Ottawa are planning to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 together.

There will be food, entertainment and activities for the women and gender diverse people who use the organizations’ services at St. Joseph’s Church on Wilbrod St. at the event put on by Belong Ottawa at The Well, Cornerstone Housing for Women, (both Anglican Community Ministries) along with Dress for Success, Harmony House, Immigrant Women Services of Ottawa, Interval House of Ottawa, the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre, and St. Joe’s.

Sarah Davis, executive director of Cornerstone Housing for Women, told Crosstalk that this is the first time since the pandemic began that all of the organizations will host a joint event.

The pandemic deepened the agencies’ connections, said Davis. “As you can imagine, crisis brings people closer together. Those partnerships are really forged to the point where we have memorandums of understanding with our sister organizations and are doing much more collaborative work on the ground together,” she said. “I don’t think any of us would have made it through to “knock on wood” the other side [of the pandemic] without our sister agencies, so we’re really celebrating the collaboration and partnerships, lifting each other up as we supported each other through the last three years.”

It’s also an opportunity to highlight some of the gaps in services that still need attention, Davis said. “We’re always at maximum capacity. There was one day in December I believe when we turned away 22 phone calls, referrals to our shelter alone, and we’re just one service organization.” High inflation, near impossible rent increases and higher interest rates for mortgages are only increasing the number of people who are precariously housed, she added.

“The other organizations we’re working with do different work, but there are intersections where our service users, [including] gender diverse folks, walk across and we’re all at different parts of their journey, so we really couldn’t support folks to move on and to achieve their goals without one another,” said Davis. “It’s nice to be able to get together and celebrate.”