​Green Wood: Missy, you’ve said you want to be out of a job next year because you don’t want the warming rooms to exist. Can you explain?

Missy McLean: The rooms addressed an immediate need. People needed to be able to come in out of the cold, from the frigid Canadian winter, or they would have been at grave risk. I don’t want  the warming rooms to exist next winter because I’d rather see our relatively small number of unsheltered community members find housing. We’ve kept a good number of people out of the cold and reduced the harm they could have faced. But the warming rooms do not end homelessness and poverty; they only offer a temporary respite, and that's why they're not the solution we need to these issues in our community. 

GW: Before we talk about solutions, would you paint a picture of who used the warming rooms, what their stories are?

MM: Our guest are people who have experienced trauma, who have experienced and continue to experience stigma, oppression, marginalization. They're people made vulnerable by failed systems and bad policy. These are our neighbours, community members, and some found themselves in homelessness for the first time in their lives this winter.
 
GW: Can you talk more about that?

​MM: The breakdown of a marriage or, suddenly, the loss of a job, an illness. I don't think people appreciate how many of us could be on the precipice of finding ourselves in a similar situation if it were not for six degrees of circumstances. The guests we’ve served share the same needs, wants, aspirations as any of us, and they’re deserving of the same things as any of us. But they find themselves on the margins because, in my opinion, they have been failed, repeatedly, by systems, policy and society. 

​GW: What do you mean by failed systems and oppression?

MM: We're talking about failures of the social welfare system of Canada, programs that actually serve to keep people in poverty rather than help them escape it. In terms of oppression, it’s just the receiving of power by one person at the expense of another. We don't have a fundamental agreement across society that everyone is deserving of equal rights, whether they be economic, political or social.
 
GW: What are the solutions? 

MM:  Housing needs to be a priority and acknowledged and treated as the universal human right the United Nations and everyone else has identified it as being. And it's about a guaranteed livable income. We don't need programs that keep people in poverty under the guise of helping them get out of poverty. We know a guaranteed livable income means health. It means engagement. It means dignity for people. 

GW: How do we get there?

MM: Power comes from organizing and knowledge sharing and listening to the community members we're supporting at the warming rooms. They know best what they need to have health, be engaged and live a life that is dignified and meaningful. They know what's helpful, and they know what's harmful. They know what works, and they know what isn’t working. This is what Green Wood does so beautifully, understanding that it’s the people on the margin who know what's keeping them there. Our job, as their fellow community members, is to listen and clear the way to let their voices be heard, not to speak for them, but to make space so they can speak for themselves, and to stand alongside them to amplify their voices. 

GW: Amplify their voices?

MM: It's not a simple answer, but I would say it means engagement. People want to support the warming room; they want to make a contribution. They want to give. And so it's just a matter of shifting that energy to giving what will be most helpful in this moment. And what’s most helpful is people taking the time -- it sounds so basic, but it’s not -- to write an email to their MPP, MP and town council and tell them this warming room served its purpose, but we don’t want to see it again. What we want to see are tangible solutions that will address homelessness, poverty, health care. I realize it’s not as comfortable for people as, say, making a lasagna, because I know how to make a lasagna; I can see the instant impact that serving that lasagna has to my fellow community members. But if I'm writing an email to my MPP or MP, I don't see the immediate results, and that can be discouraging. So it takes a shift. But what people have to keep in mind is the email to the MPP, the MP or town council, that's the long game. And that is really what's going to change things.

GW: You come at this as a professional, but you also have a personal stake in the game. Could you share a bit about that?

MM: This is a second career for me. I had a lengthy career in communications. And at the same time I was going through my first university experience and all through my first career, I was also walking alongside my brother who lives with concurrent bipolar disorder and substance use disorder. Working with him, as an advocate, and having the perspective of caregiver and family member, and bumping up against the mental health and the social welfare systems, I got to a point where I felt I didn't want to just be frustrated and angry, I wanted to do something more. So as I got more involved in advocacy and activism, I decided I needed to be inside the system and come at it from both outside and inside. I went back to school to study to become a Social Worker.

GW: You are a mother, full-time student, supervisor of the warming rooms and advocate for your brother. It seems like a lot.

MM: We talk a lot in the caring professions and health professions about burnout and how we're responsible for caring for ourselves. But from what I've come to understand about burnout is that it’s not the caring for my brother that burned me out, it's not the navigating things with my brother, it's the continual slamming up against the system, it's the continuous pain of being met with insufficient services. Burnout is not about the work; burnout is about the systems.

GW: What do you want to leave with people?

MM: I believe people in Northumberland County want to see an end to homelessness and poverty, but it's hard to zoom out from helping with immediate needs to see, not only how that goal will be achieved, but what each individual's role can be in achieving it. We have to be optimistic. We have to be resolute in keeping our eye on the prize, the long game. This broken system took decades to get to this point, and it's not going to be resolved overnight, but we know there are solutions.

The times I feel the most pain in the work is when I have this feeling that what I can bring is inadequate to the need in front of me, when I'm sitting with a guest who has endured such incredible trauma, is living in survival mode. The people we serve are not asking us to fix things for them. They don't need saving. They're just asking to be given access and opportunity to the means, the same as anyone else, to create the life that is going to be meaningful for them.

So this is what I want to leave with people: write the letter. You don't even have to write a new letter every week. Photocopy the same letter and send it, and then send a follow-up email asking for the response. Be persistent and be clear about what you expect from our representatives.

GW: Thank you so much for your work, insights and generosity in sharing them with us.
​

​Join us for a Virtual Book Club featuring 'How to Lose Everything', Christa Couture's new book. An awarding-wining musician, performer, writer and broadcaster, Christa's on-stage talk at Imaginate 2017 in Port Hope included early pages of what would become this much talked about memoir. We look forward to her returning for a Community 101 event on March 11 at 7 PM to talk about her story, her music and this book. 

'How to Lose Everything' delves into the heart of loss. Couture bears witness to the shift in perspective that comes with loss, and how it can deepen compassion for others, expand understanding, inspire a letting go of little things and plant a deeper feeling for what matters. At the same time, Couture's writing evokes the joy and lightness that both precede and eventually follow grief, as well as the hope and resilience that grow from connections with others.

To register and receive a link to the online gathering, send email to [email protected] with 'Christa' as the subject.

Copies of the hardcover book may be purchased from Let's Talk Books, King St., Cobourg, ON. Mention the Virtual Book Club for a 15% discount!

"How to Lose Everything is a thoughtful, spirited, even-handed, good-humoured, and unflinchingly honest anatomy of grief, forbearance, hope, and healing. Expect the miraculous, because here you will find it."
-Bill Richardson

 With Coldest Night of the Year coming up in a few weeks (February 20), the national walk-a-thon is shifting all 149 of its walks to “virtual” events, That means that participants will still walk in the cold, but individually or in small, COVID-safe groups.

"While this year is definitely different," says Northumberland Event Director, Phil Redford, "I have a strong sense that people understand the depth of the need. They see the important work Green Wood is doing in our community and they want to support it.”

Coldest Night of the Year funds local charities that help individuals who are hungry, homeless and hurting. Money raised in Northumberland County stays here, enabling Green Wood Coalition’s street-level support and programs for individuals who struggle with poverty, homelessness, mental health and addiction.

​In the spirit of capturing some of the traditional event-day excitement, a virtual kick-off party will take place on February 20 at 2:00 PM, the day the walk would have taken place. Redford hopes some of the teams will plan their walk around this online celebration. To learn more or sign up visit: Coldest Night of the Year Northumberland

Big thanks to every person who has been a part of our story through this particularly challenging year. We look forward to continued evolving and adapting, through lessons learned and insights gained during these times. Thanks to the Good Lovelies for premiering this video during their recent Christmas Tour.

Green Wood: During a recent conversation, David Sweanor shared his thoughts on getting to a more equitable, healthier world. David, how do we start this conversation in the midst of a global pandemic?

David: When we’re hit with an emergency like COVID, one of the problems is we say we’re all in this together, but we don’t act that way. We end up with some people who are left out. We get messages like ‘Just stay home,’ but the fact is, there are people without a home, or a safe home, or a home that’s more likely to cause transmission because it’s crowded with people at risk. It’s not dealing with their lived experience. What happens to one of us affects all of us because we’re all interrelated, and diseases that can spread through a marginalized part of a community can lead to everyone else. And we’re related in terms of basic humanity, which we see in small towns the way people sometimes don’t in big cities. Because you know the people you went to school with, or you see them around town. They’re not invisible to you. 

Green Wood: You feel we have a better chance of seeing one another’s humanity in a small town? 

David: You don’t grow up in a place like Port Hope and Cobourg and only know people from a background similar to yours. There are lessons we can learn and take action at a local level, at a very human level, dealing with people with needs we can recognize. Many people simply don’t see the suffering other people are going through because they live a completely separate existence. You drive your SUV to an office where you park and go to an office where other people are very much like you, you go to your social clubs interacting with other people like you, and if someone says, ‘These people who are not working or who are using drugs are just bad, they need to get their act together,’ it’s easy to miss the context of their lives.  

Green Wood: Is it possible to change that way of thinking?

David: One of the things that really changes people is when they can see the real person, when people can say, yes, I know the family they came from, I understand what the problem is, I know the person has mental health challenges. It’s much more real, not an abstract thing. I think we have chance of getting past that knee-jerk morality to a deeper morality to say, ‘If we have the ability to reduce suffering and death, and we don’t do it, isn’t that immoral?’

​
Green Wood: How big a part does morality play in resistance to harm reduction approaches like safe injection sites and needle exchange programs?

David: There’s a constant tension between people who have a rational, scientific approach and those who see things in moralistic ways. If you see something as a solvable problem, but I see your solution as being immoral, because I see the activity as being a sin, it’s very hard to get us to have a meeting of minds. Over time we tend to change our views so there is no longer strong moralistic opposition. It’s happened with gay marriage, interracial relationships and interfaith relationships, including when my parents got married, a Protestant marrying a Catholic. It’s helpful to know we have found ways forward on these issues. It takes time, often for individuals, it takes a particular experience, meeting someone, knowing someone who has these problems.

Green Wood: Locally, we’ve seen these kinds of objections. How do we get past them? 

David: I think we’re getting to that point. When you look worldwide, the whole war on drugs approach is seen as a failure, and people of all political persuasions are saying, ‘This doesn’t work, the criminal law approach isn’t working. It’s costing a tremendous amount of money and costing an awful lot of lives.’ We need to see this as a public health issue, not a criminal law issue.

Green Wood: And for those whose fears feel real and justified?

David: The same as we say we want people to understand the lived experience of those who are using drugs and why, we need to understand the lived experience of those who are outraged by it and concerned that it’s in their neighbourhood. This requires a discussion, and I think it does come back to issues of compassion, of trying to understand why there are some people who would be using a drug and why other people are very upset about that. How do we try to understand where each is coming from and what we can do to come to an option that reduces the death and disease, the suffering as much as much as we can, while minimizing any harm or objections within the community? 

​Green Wood: You began by saying we’re all interconnected, yet our differences sometimes seem easier to see.

David: When my kids were little I would talk to them about these things. My son was car crazy as a little boy, and he was keen on us getting a luxury car. At the time, there was a Vitamin A project in Cambodia I was interested in funding, and I said we could buy the car or I could put it into this Vitamin A. Now Vitamin A prevents children from going blind and some of them from dying, and it works out to about $20 per life saved. And so we could buy the fancier car or we could put the money into doing something like that. He sort of pauses and says, ‘Why would anybody spend it on a car?’ It’s the idea that we truly are all in this together. It’s a matter of saying, ‘What sort of world do you want, and if you have the ability to help get to that world, why wouldn’t you do it?’

Green Wood: You’ve pledged up to $10,000 in Green Wood’s Street to Stability campaign. Why do you care so much?
​
David: Because it’s Port Hope, it’s the stuff I grew up with from my parents and my grandparents and the view of the world that if you can help other people, tell me why it is you wouldn’t. If you can have a day when you can make a difference, why wouldn’t you do that?  

Green Wood: Thank you so much for your time today, and for your good work on many fronts. And thank you for this generous challenge. We wish you and your family a happy holiday season. 

If you'd like to join David Sweanor's challenge and make a donation to support Green Wood Coalition's work, just click on the button above. Thank you.

​We're presenting an online, three-part film series that includes live discussions and music performances. This series of thought-provoking events invites us all to move forward, re-imagining a different kind of society.​The films, Us & Them, Conviction and PUSH will confront the issues of homelessness, poverty, substance dependency and mental health as calls to action. This free event is made possible by Northumberland United Way, sponsor of Green Wood’s speaker series, Community 101 and IMAGINATE Conference.

​Us & Them: Watch online anytime between Saturday, Nov. 14 - 21, then join us for a virtual live music performance by Rick Fines, followed by a discussion with filmmaker, Krista Loughton on Thursday, Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. EST.

​Conviction: Watch online anytime between Saturday, Nov. 21 - 28, then join us for a virtual live music performance by Alysha Brilla, followed by a panel discussion with Senator Kim Pate and Conviction filmmakers, on Thursday, Nov. 26, 7 p.m. EST.

​PUSH: Watch online anytime between Monday, Dec. 1 - 7, then join us for a virtual live (international) music performance by Martyn Joseph, followed by a thought-provoking conversation with Human Rights Lawyer, Michele Biss, about the global housing crisis and the right to shelter, on Sunday, Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. EST.