A Year of Rejoicing — Welcome!

From a year of making a difference I learn to celebrate the difference.

Category Archives: Homelessness


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What’s It Gonna’ Take?

I got inspired yesterday. Really inspired.

I went with a couple of friends to  Onalea Gilbertson’s one woman play, Blanche: The bittersweet life of a wild prairie dame. Blanche is a one hour play Onalea wrote and produced as a tribute to her grandmother, Blanche Gilbertson who passed away shortly after Onalea completed her first draft. Performing Blanche as part of this year’s High Performance Rodeo (HPR)  is a dream come true for Onalea. In the five year’s I’ve known her, she’s always dreamt of bringing Blanche to the HPR stage. And now, after much hard work, commitment and perseverance, she’s done it. She’s shared the story of her grandmother here in her hometown. Through original songs she wrote, recordings of her interviews with Blanche, photos and video footage from her grandmother’s attic, Blanche came to life on the Rodeo stage. It was inspiring, entertaining and heart-warming.

And it was a reminder — That’s how dreams come true.

I first met Onalea when I worked at the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre. I’d started an art program and we were partnering with the City of Calgary in the This Is My City project. Onalea walked into my office one day and said, “I want to start a singing group.” It seemed reasonable. There’s a lot of unsung talent at a homeless shelter. Many clients play instruments, write music, sing. Creating space for music to happen was another opportunity to connect people to their creative core. And Onalea’s resume as an actor, singer, performer, writer, poet, unsung hero is pretty vast. Why not do whatever possible to help make it happen?

And happen it did. Over the next year, Onalea’s regular Monday night appearances would become the highlight of many people’s weeks. In the end, The DI Singers would become a weekly staple at the shelter. A place where anyone, from clients, staff and people from the community could come to sing and share in their love of music. Eventually, after a lot of hard work, organizing, begging, borrowing and pleading for the resources to make it all happen, Onalea and the DI Singers would perform the world premiere of   Two Bit Oper Eh! Shun as part of This Is My City and HPR 2010.

Two years later, after more hard work, commitment, perseverance and a whole lot of numbers juggling to make the finances work, Onalea would remount Two Bit as, Requiem for a Lost Girl at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in July 2012. Two clients from the DI would fly to New York along with other performers from the original production to be part of the off-broadway debut of the play.

That’s how dreams come true.

Yesterday, as I sat over a late lunch with Onalea after the performance, I was once again reminded of how special this one woman force of nature is. Beautiful. Talented. Heartfelt and heart-driven, Onalea does not give up. From scrambling to make ends meet on a show by show basis, to work-shopping every line and note of music, to making sure every performer on stage with her is paid fairly, Onalea never gives up on her dream of creating music, being a performer and igniting the imaginations of everyone she comes in contact with. It doesn’t matter how high the obstacle, how wide the gap, Onalea will do whatever it takes to get her over the next hurdle, get herself across the divide that separates her from her dream.

Because, that’s how dreams come true.

They don’t just appear, fully formed, all coloured in and ready to roll out upon the stage of life. Dreams are breathed into existence, moment by moment, step by step. They take care, nurturing, effort, blood, sweat and tears. They take vision and commitment, determination and perseverance. Making dreams come true takes heart.

And Onalea is a woman of great heart.

I was blessed yesterday. I got to see and hear and witness the story of Onalea’s 93 year-old grandmother told through the eyes of her granddaughter who loved her dearly. I got to hear the voice of Blanche recall tales of her life. I got to hear her laugh, see the photos and watch the home movies she’d taken long ago when she was young and life was an adventure waiting to unfold. Because of Onalea’s dream, I got to meet a woman I’ve never met, who, like her granddaughter was filled with a love of life bigger than a prairie sky.

And I got to be part of witnessing Onalea’s dream come true.

What a gift.

And in that gift is the reminder of what it takes to live the life of my dreams. It isn’t about wishin’ and hopin’. It’s all about living large, about taking risks, putting myself out there and living it up for all I’m worth.

I’ve got a dream. Do you? What’s it gonna take to make your dream come true?

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For Ticket Information on Blanche: The bittersweet life of a wild prairie dame please click HERE. Blanche runs until February 26 at the Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary.

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Today’s everyday poem is posted over at A Poetry Affair. Do drop in for a visit!  I’d love to see you there.


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Imagine what can be!

Someone asked me recently why it was I didn’t seem to get too flustered, upset or angry by ‘things’. Things being the inequities in the world, the suffering of others, the crisis that happen every day when working in the poverty/homeless sector.

See, I’m back in the sector that inspired the start of this blog. Not working for a front line agency this time, but for the Calgary Homeless Foundation. And I love it.

I’m on a three-day a week contract with the Foundation, and my heart isn’t heavy. It’s happy.

Go figure.

I missed the work. Which sounds somewhat bizarre — how can I miss working with those who have nothing?

Mostly, as I told the person who asked the question, because I don’t see ‘the nothing’. I see the amazing power of the human spirit, its will to survive, to wake up every morning and take a step and another, and another, no matter what.

We are born to live.

And in this sector, you see it everyday. No matter the circumstances of their lives, people will do whatever it takes to live.

It’s inspiring.

My work with CHF is primarily around community engagement. Connecting emergency responders, community associations, and agencies contracted by the Foundation to facilitate good relationship.

It’s work I love. It’s work I believe is vital in our quest to ‘end homelessness’, to change the direction of people streaming to the streets back home, to affect change in policy and discourse around this ‘thing’ few understand but have many opinions about why it should be kept in someone else’s neighbourhood.

Calgary has a 10 year plan to end homelessness. And yes, the ideal of ‘no more people being homeless on our streets’ is lofty. And yes, the likelihood of it happening is slim. In fact, since the first days of the plan where the vision painted was our streets free of those who had no place to call home, the goal has shifted to recognize that while we can’t prevent everyone from falling on the streets, we can ensure they don’t stay there too long. We can ensure we have the facilities and the resources to provide them a path back home — quickly — before the inequities and despair of being homeless settle into someone’s soul and tear away all hope of ever finding their way back home.

Because that’s the thing about homelessness. Just as the police can’t stop every crime from happening, before it happens, or accidents on our roadways from occurring, before they occur, they can put safeguards in to help prevent crime and accidents. And, should something go wrong, they can get to the scene quickly and ensure life flows onwards again without too much mayhem or angst ensuing from the events that occurred.

In homelessness, we can put safeguards in to plug people into the right resources and opportunities to prevent homelessness, but we can’t always stop their fall. And yet, should they fall, we need to get them out of shelters as quickly as we can.

Shelter life is hard. It’s not about ‘the shelter’. It’s about the life. it’s about the tearing away of your sense of worth, value, pride. It’s about losing your autonomy, independence, personal space.

Living in a community of impoverished people, no matter how nice the shelter is, drains you of your sense of understanding of who you are. We all want to believe we’re doing our best, and if our best has lead us to a shelter door, than really, what else can we do?

And so, we give up hope to find our balance in the crazy-upside down world called ‘homelessness’.

I’m back working in the sector I love. I am grateful.

Grateful there are so many people in this city committed to making a difference to ensure every Calgarian has the opportunity to plug into the resources they need, no matter where they’re at, to find their direction home.

I am grateful.

As I told the person who asked me why I didn’t seem to get upset,I like to focus on creating more of what I want in my life, more of what I want to see in the world. I want to live in a world of compassion and kindness. Getting upset by what is prevents me from seeing what can be when I let go of my judgements around why it is the way it is and breathe into the possibilities of what can be.

I believe miracles happen, everywhere, everyday. To create lasting change in the world, I must begin with with me, with changing my attitude, my judgements, criticisms and beliefs around what is ‘impossible’ to the limitless possibilities of what can be in this world when I become the change I want to see in the world.

Namaste.


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Give a little bit, or a lot, and make a difference

We all have something to give. To share. To bestow.

And still, we hesitate. We step back from the brink of stepping beyond our comfort zones and say, not my job. Not my responsibility. Not me.

I don’t have time. It’s too scary. I’ll be in the way. Nobody wants what I have to share.

And yet, no matter our excuses, our rationalizations, our inner conflict, we all have something to give.

Three years ago, a client at the shelter where I used to work was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had been a participant in the arts program I started and over the course of three years, had fallen in love with photography. “It’s my retirement plan,” he’d tell me when he excitedly showed me another one of his photos — and they really were spectacular.

James Bannerman had an eye. For composition. For colour. For angles. For light.

What he didn’t have was a lot of human connections. He tended to keep to himself. Seldom causing trouble. Always being on his own. He’d given up drinking years ago. “It caused me too much trouble,” he told me. But he never recovered from the other wounds, the deep soul pain he didn’t have words to express.

But he was happy. He was living a simple life, giving back whenever he could. Volunteering. Giving people his photos. Participating in our art shows. And then, James  received the diagnosis he never expected and everything changed. “I never thought it would be stomach cancer that got me,” he told me one day when I went to see him during his many hospitalizations after the diagnosis. An avid smoker, James thought if anything it would be lung cancer. “I can beat this,” he said. “I know I can.”

But he didn’t. Beat it. Less than nine months after the diagnosis James passed away quietly at a hospice.

I was sitting beside him, holding his hand. It was all I could do for this man who had wanted to live his life quietly, picking up bottles, working temp shovelling snow in winter, mowing lawns and tending gardens in summer and, at all times, using his camera to express the beauty he saw everywhere in the world around him.

James didn’t need words to express himself. He had his eyes and his capacity to capture magical moments everywhere.

I hadn’t meant to be there when he passed over. I had spent the final hours with him, waiting for the hospice van to come and get him. When he’d left I’d said my good-byes. It wasn’t until that evening, a cold, cold December night that I wondered, is anyone with him? Usually, in these instances, a frontline staff or member of the medical team from the homeless shelter where I worked would be with a client. I didn’t want to interfere, but, I was worried when I got home from work that possibly no one had been able to drive to the hospice they’d taken James to 45 minutes south of the city. So I called to check on him and when I found out he was alone and, as the nurse said on the phone, “wouldn’t last through the night”, I decided to drive out to the hospice and sit with him through the night. James was afraid of dying and I didn’t want him to go through it alone.

For four hours I sat quietly by his bedside, holding one of his thin, fragile hands. The cancer had taken its toll and this once strong man with weathered hands that worked tirelessly to lift and carry were too heavy for his arms to lift anymore. I chatted with the nurses when they came in to check on us and to ensure James was comfortable. He was mostly unconscious and laid quietly on the bed. I shared stories with them, of James and the shelter and his life as I knew it. And then, shortly after midnight on December 8, 2009, James took in his last rattling gasp of breath, and never let it out.

I sat for a few moments waiting for an exhalation, but it never came.

James was gone.

Sitting with James as he passed over was a profoundly privileged moment. It wasn’t something I expected to do. In my capacity as Director of PR and Volunteer Services at the shelter, it wasn’t something I ‘should’ have been doing.

But I could. And so I did. And in the giving, I was made different.

In the giving, my eyes opened to the sanctity and sacredness of life, every human life and the power we hold as individuals to connect, cherish and celebrate each other.

Give a little bit. Give a lot. Give what you can.

And always give.

In giving we receive.

I thought of this story of James when I saw this video on a friend’s Facebook wall.

Supertramp’s — Give a Little Bit.


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The difference when I stop, look and listen

I am standing by the Navel Orange bin, focused on picking just the right ones when I feel someone watching me. I look up and see a man, walking towards me, his eyes focused intently on my face. I recognize him as he approaches. Smile and give him a wave.

“I know you,” he says, the rubber stopper on the bottom of his multi-coloured metallic cane making a soft thump as he plants himself in beside me. “Why do I know you?”

I know him from the homeless shelter where I used to work.

In a public place like a grocery store, it’s not always caring of the other to tell them that.

“I was the spokesperson for the DI (the street name for the shelter where I used to work),” I tell him. “I was on television a lot. Maybe you recognize my face from there?”

He gives his head a quick shake from side to side. Then nods it up and down. “Yeah. That’s why I remember you. You were one of the nice ones.” He pauses, lifts his cane and thumps it on the ground. Not loudly. Just a gentle statement of fact to punctuate his words. “I didn’t like it there. Who could? Full of drunks and drug addicts. And the staff…”

He looks away.

“Glad I’m out of there now.” He finishes his statement and looks me in the eyes. “I’m gone you know.”

“So am I,” I tell him. “How are you doing?”

And he rushes into a story about an accident that broke his hip. A two month hospital stay. A landlord who ripped him off and a host of other sad events that have brought him down.

And  I listen. It is all I do. Listen. Deeply.

It is what he needs. Someone to listen to him. To give him space to give voice to his pain, his fears, his sorrow. And, his possibilities.

“I worked construction you know,” he tells me. “That’s over with now. But I can cook. Got a friend who’s got a friend who owns a restaurant that’s just opening up. Gonna go submit my resume. You could come visit if you want.” And he gives me the approximate location of the restaurant. “I can’t remember the name. But I’m sure you can’t miss it. It’s the pub right beside the gas station.”

I tell him that I’ll definitely drop by sometime over the next few weeks. Check if he got the job. See how he’s doing.

“What I really need is better housing,” he says. “Someplace where I’m not sharing space with others. I talked to Calgary Housing but their wait list is too long.”

“Have you spoken to the Homeless Foundation?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

And I explain about their housing programs and find a piece of paper and write down their number and pass it to him.

He’s excited. Another path to explore. Another possibility opening up.

And we part and I am grateful for our encounter. He has reminded me of the importance of seeing people. Of honouring the human being through creating space for story-telling to happen, of listening to the stories that are shared with an open mind and loving heart and a belief in the sacredness of the truths that are revealed when we take time to see and listen to the story-tellers.

Thank you John. You made a difference yesterday by giving me the gift of listening on purpose.

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