DECEMBER 2021

HOUSING CRISIS: THE WASHBURN INTERVIEW 12/29/2021

Possibly the biggest untold news story of the year is the local housing emergency and the wider housing crisis in this country. Northumberland journalist, Robert Washburn recently invited Green Wood's Executive Director, David Sheffield, and Meaghan McDonald, Executive Director at Habitat For Humanity Northumberland, for a longer form radio interview to wrestle through this housing issue and explore possible solutions. [You can follow Robert's stories at consider-this.ca or on 89.7 Truly Local Radio]

LISTEN HERE

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 12/25/2021

We’d like to wish our friends and neighbours a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. Through the realities of grief and loss, this is a difficult day for many, but please know that we are thinking of you and holding hope for better days. To all who are with us on this journey, thank you for keeping faith. [Thanks to Domnie Doig for this illustration]

COMMUNITY DINNER DECEMBER 12 12/2/2021

It's time to reconnect!

It feels like a long time since we've been able to gather to share a meal and encourage each other in person, so we're excited to welcome Community Dinner friends back to the table on Sunday, December 12. This dinner will feel a little different, and there are limitations in place but we look forward to seeing our friends at the Port Hope Rec Centre (at the fairgrounds on McCaul St. Port Hope). The meal will be provided by Lisa's Catering. Numbers are limited to 150 people. If you can join us, the Rec Centre/Health Unit require the following: 1. Register for a free ticket (click on the button below) before Dec. 12 2. Bring your proof of double vaccination (printed or on your smartphone) 3. Bring a piece of ID (must have your name and birth date on it) Doors will open at 4:30 PM as the check in process may take some extra time. The Rec Centre requires that masks are required except while eating. Thanks to everyone who has taken a part of the work to organize this Community Dinner so that we can celebrate together!

NOVEMBER 2021

HONOURING JEFF WITH A GIFT TO GREEN WOOD 11/26/2021

A talented knitter who designed his own patterns, Jeff O'Neill knitted when he was in a good mental space​.

​"He reminded me how important it was to be human first and love and ​accept people on that level before trying to change them." ​- Stacey DaCosta, probation officer

In the month following their son’s death, Ken and Yvonne O’Neill, and older son, Mark, reached out to Green Wood, “Tell us how we can give back to the Coalition through a gift that honours Jeff’s memory”. Jeff had connected with Green Wood three years earlier, adrift, a tormented soul. But his parents say that from that moment forward, until his death last December at age 43, he found some peace, a sense of belonging he had been denied his whole adult life. “Green Wood gave him a lens into the future as opposed to just surviving,” his mother says. “He didn’t give himself credit for much, he didn’t have much self respect until he spent an extended time there. They walk the talk. They treated him as an important person. He felt valued.”

Ken and Yvonne O'Neill with the new shed at Green Wood's Community Garden​

Bullied and rejected in high school, Jeff turned to drugs to escape the loneliness. Over more than 20 years, he was in and out of counselling, addiction treatment and the justice system. He moved around Southern Ontario but always returned home to ground himself in his parents’ love and putter in the family garden, ready to make a fresh start. “He was very bright, an avid knitter who designed patterns. He made many things for people. He was kind and generous and always there to help and support others, often at his own expense,” says his father. Since Jeff’s death, Ken continues to drive folks to and from the Green Wood programs that helped their son, deliver meals, do wellness checks. “The challenge continues for these folks. We have to continue to support them.”

The O’Neills learned about Green Wood through their role as managers of the Port Hope food bank. Green Wood’s Community Dinners took place next door, when the food bank was open, so they talked regularly with David Sheffield. Yvonne and Ken soon embraced Green Wood’s radically different philosophy toward caring for people. They retooled the food bank, referring to people as visitors, not clients, invited users in to shop for food as opposed to receiving handouts, and re-educated volunteers and the community to rethink the food bank’s mission as sharers of food the community has donated rather than “feeding needy people”. Yet during all of this time, their family was living its own private hell. Then one day Yvonne and Ken attended a talk at Port Hope Rotary where David described Green Wood’s programs. That night they asked if Jeff could meet with Green Wood staff. “He was at a point where he didn’t know what else to do or where else to turn,” she says. ”When he found his way to Green Wood he was a hurting soul. There he found acceptance and respect.” Over the more than two decades accessing an array of social services, each helping to some extent, nothing filled the void in Jeff’s life that Green Wood did...the kindness, acceptance, respect, always being there, say his parents.​

Jeff was a familiar face at Green Wood's garden.

His first connection came over coffee with outreach worker Nicole Whitmore. “He was knitting away. I just said, ‘What do you want in your life?’ and his eyes filled up with tears, and he said, ‘I don’t know, can you ask me that another day?’ I think we were able to see each others’ pain but understand that there’s healing, there’s kindness, and it’s gentle without judgment.” Over the next three years, they forged a deep friendship. Jeff got involved in Green Wood’s programs - Art Hive, WrapAround Life Planning, but the RedPath Addiction Recovery program Nicole led was transformational. “I admired his strength. I admired everything about him. I was encouraging him to face his fears and demons, and the amount of growth and insight he was able to have just blew my mind. He was doing the work; he was really trying to understand himself.” Jeff reciprocated in a million ways, through a million small kindnesses. “He just cared so deeply for others, he looked at them, and they knew, ‘My ears are safe for you.’ It’s who he was, but I think with the stigma attached to substance use, people just thought he was a lost soul. He wasn’t. He was a beautiful, beautiful person. I couldn’t have made a human better.” His picture sits on her desk, beside a set of his knitting needles. “He is everywhere I go. I miss him every day.” What Jeff loved most was being in nature. No matter where he lived he packed his space with flowers, more houseplants than there was room for. Green Wood’s community garden became a refuge. He’d steal away in the evening, pick a zucchini, take it home to bake bread and then share it at the next day’s RedPath meeting. It’s the reason, together with Green Wood, the family settled on a garden shed as their memorial gift. They wanted to do more than donate money; they wanted to be part of leaving a legacy. So this past summer, father and brother framed in the shed and joined with others to complete it. “As much as we could have done it ourselves, I knew Green Wood’s philosophy; it wasn’t ours to do, it had to be a community thing,” Ken says. Early last December, Ken and Jeff drove to the family cottage in Huntsville to clear away fallen brush after a wind storm. Jeff was alone in the woods when the accident happened; a birch tree fell, fatally pinning him. “During the two-and-a-half hour drive home, I kept thinking to myself, if he had to script this, he probably couldn’t have done it any better. The cottage was always a comfort zone for him. He was out working in the woods, doing something constructive in a place that he loved,” says his Dad. ​Rarely does the justice system reveal its heart, but shortly after his death, Ken and Yvonne received a note from his probation officer: ​ “There hasn’t been a day since he passed that I don’t think of him sitting in my office knitting away as we had our talks. I smile as I hear his needles clicking away with unreal speed talking about something he was passionate about.... They say when someone passes they leave a mark on us, and Jeff has left me with a sincere wish to treat others with the same kindness and compassion that he did.”

OCTOBER 2021

HOW TO FIGHT 'THE GOOD FIGHT' 10/25/2021

The Good Fight, a new graphic novel by Canadian Author and Green Wood community member, Ted Staunton [illustrated by Josh Rosen], has earned a spot on Toronto Life’s List of 21 Summer Reading Recommendations, CTV’s 'Ten Canadian graphic novels to add to your young readers’ bookshelf' and the 2021 Toronto Book Award long list. Ted talked with Green Wood about the book’s inspiration, creative process and relevance for young readers today.

Green Wood: You’ve written over 40 books but never a graphic novel and never a work of historical fiction. Why now? Ted Staunton: For me, stories come from 10 or 12 different places. A while ago I read a story in the New Yorker about a guy who was a master pick pocket and fan of old pick pocketing lure. He had all the jargon, like whiz mob, and I thought, man, I so want to put this in a book. That means historical, 1930s, so if it was in Toronto, Christie Pits, a place where people could pick pockets... and the story sort of spun out of this. Green Wood: It sounds as if you knew where you wanted to take it. Ted Staunton: Yes. My parents lived through this time, and my grandfather was the mayor of Toronto for the bulk of the Great Depression, from 1931 to 1934. As I did research it became apparent that Toronto was a very, very different place in the 1930s, so British and so WASP... never mind the different ethnicities, if you weren’t Protestant you were out of luck. That suddenly brought home how not just anti-Semitism but how these kinds of attitudes could become so pervasive that we don’t even notice they’re there. The fact that my grandfather was involved was an interesting sideline. He had a huge sense of fair play and honour, and he wasn’t going to put up with what was going on in the city at that time. Grandpa did succeed in having the swastika banned. I’m proud of what he did. Green Wood: How did you land on the graphic novel as a literary form? Ted Staunton: I had the idea for the book, but historical novels are a tough sell, so I began to wonder if a graphic novel might be a good hook to hang something like that on. Graphic novels are a really good way to present historical fiction in that a lot of visual description is made unnecessary. We can plunge you into the ambience of that era right away. Especially for a young reader who has little or no concept of a time that is almost 100 years ago, you get this immersion right there. Green Wood: It’s true, The Good Fight is full of the slang, music and clothing of that era. How hard was it to capture that authenticity? Ted Staunton: The 1920s, 30s and into the 40s are my go-to era for music and other cultural things. I grew up with it, but Josh had to do a phenomenal amount of work. This was not his era at all. He ended up working from things like the 1934 Eaton’s Catalogue, and people were sending him photos of what hairstyles were like in the ‘30s, what clothes kids wore and what did a man’s suit look like. I was constantly teasing him about hats. I said, ‘Josh, everybody wears a hat. You’ve got bowlers, Fedoras, homburgs, newsboy hats. We need hats. We need hats!’ Green Wood: The collaboration between writer and illustrator feels seamless. Visually, you’re transported at warp speed to the 1930s while being carried along by the fast-paced storyline. Was that hard to pull off? Ted Staunton: First of all, it took a long time. The book has been in process for almost five years, and a good chunk of that came down to giving Josh enough time to do all these illustrations. There are 220 pages of drawings, and it’s a huge undertaking. Green Wood: What do you hope young readers will take away from the book? Ted Staunton: Sadly, this story is always going to be relevant. The riot at Christie Pits became a beacon for people in those communities because it said, ‘We can stand up for this,’ but given what was on the horizon and the engrained nature of bigotry in Canadian life at the time, Christie Pits didn’t change much. It did not make Toronto a kinder, gentler place in the short run. What it boils down to is, are there things that are worth fighting for? What does it mean to fight the good fight? How can we all quietly fight the good fight all of the time? [This interview has been edited and condensed]

The Good Fight is available locally at Let's Talk Books (Cobourg, ON) and Furby House Books (Port Hope, ON).

THE RETURN OF A CLASSIC 10/24/2021