St Luke’s Table has a new temporary home

BY DAVID HUMPHREYS

The fire that severely damaged St Luke’s Church in October was a major blow to the diocese’s three Ottawa day programs. St. Luke’s Table was most directly affected. It was displaced from its place in the church basement but is now operating from a new temporary location.

“It felt like another blow on top of everything else,” says Rachel Robinson, executive director of the day programs. Everything else was the three years of innovation, increased need and stress to staff and clients during the pandemic.

It didn’t help that the fire came at a time when the staff were coping with another challenge — illness from COVID, the flu and various respiratory ailments that swept through front-line workers who are routinely exposed to viruses.

“It makes we want to cry when I think about what we’ve been through in the last three years,” Robinson says. She set about to maintain continuity as much as possible for the community that had come to rely on the Table for food, laundry, hygiene and counsel.

“We absolutely were not going to close down the program.” Staff and resources were deployed on the day of the fire to locations at The Well and Centre 454. The food delivery van that played such an important outreach role during the pandemic was pressed into service to supply breakfasts prepared at The Well. By late November space had been rented in the basement of Bronson Centre, four blocks from St Luke’s at 211 Bronson Ave., that will be a temporary home for at least a year.