SOD TURNING

Housing is needed….

Sister Joan, pictured centre, in London Ontario with members of local non-profit housing advocates.

The Vision SoHo Alliance is responding to the Mayor’s call to build 3000+ units of affordable housing.

Six not-for-profit housing developers turned the sod on Friday, Oct. 14 in response to the Mayor’s call and to the desperate need for housing for many of our citizens.  The housing crisis in the city is on everyone’s mind as the fall turns cold, and snow will soon follow. 

What is unique about this effort is the collaborative work done by six non-profits to develop a piece of land that has both historical significance in London (former site of the War Memorial Children’s Hospital and the first Medical School) and its central location in London.  When completed it will provide approximately 680 units of mixed housing.  This is London’s biggest affordable housing project that the city has undertaken and has the potential to build a community where so many are needed to make it happen. 

We thank the media for the good overage we received for this ground-breaking ceremony and share the links to their coverage here:

Everything you need to know about SoHo affordable housing mega-plan - London Free Press

SoHo affordable housing project on old Victoria Hospital land to get underway in the spring - CBC News

SoHo development ready to move to the building phase - CTV News

Vision SoHo Alliance breaks ground on London, Ont. housing project - GLOBAL NEWS

We will post photos over time - following this transformation of land into homes.  We invite you to follow us!

Sister Joan Atkinson, Chairperson of the London Affordable Housing Foundation.

It Takes a Whole Community

It takes a whole community…

The city of London, Ontario could learn from the people in the Maritime provinces when it comes to helping each other.  I am speaking about the response of people rolling up their sleeves to help in large and small ways to address the devastation that has hit so many individuals and families who are dealing with the effect of Hurricane Fiona.   We in London are facing a homelessness crisis.  We need to come together and to find a humane way to work with the people who are without food and shelter.  The solution the City of London has applied to shut down this program at the Baptist Church on Richmond St. due to a bylaw violation will not change much.  This may satisfy a few people who live or work in this area, but it is not the solution that is needed to create real change for everyone but most especially for those who need shelter, food and a lot of understanding.

Image: Unsplash/Jon Tyson

As the colder weather approaches us, this is not a problem that can be kicked down the road for a new council.  This is problem that all of us, who are a part of London, need to listen to and understand the multiple perspectives of many people.   People of faith communities, people at City Hall, people who are homeless, businesses in the downtown, neighbours, agencies, health care people and likely others who I have not named have ideas.  This is a challenge facing all who live in the city - in which a simple or “one size fits all” solution will not address the crisis. 

I would advocate that we start coming together to talk to each other and even more importantly, listen to each other.  I believe hidden in the spaces of such conversations are spaces for some new and innovative ideas to emerge.

“I wonder if…” ideas worth considering could help us all move forward together. We will all be better for it.

Sister Joan Atkinson, CSJ | Office for Systemic Justice

St. Joe's Café

St. Joe’s Café - Our Newly Located Soup Kitchen

Sister Mary Jean Klatt, pictured right, at the original Hospitality Centre, London, Ontario, 1983.

Forty years ago, our London downtown “soup kitchen” was named St. Joseph’s Hospitality Centre.  This coming Monday, August 15th, 2022, it will be sporting a new moniker - St. Joe’s Café, as it takes up residence in its newly renovated location at 602 Queen’s Avenue. We Sisters who have prayed for the success of operating at the new address, were delighted to have a preview of the new location.

As we entered the café through the inviting waiting space, we were intrigued by the beautiful hardwood pews - kindly donated by St. Andrews Church, soon to be a resting place for guests waiting to be seated.  Entering the spacious dining area, we admired bright white walls set off with pearl gray accents and millwork, forming a serene backdrop for the round tables and chairs to seat hungry guests.

Our Coordinator Tracey and Sister Margo, our Congregational Leader, were excited to greet us and point out some of the new features: newly updated stainless-steel stoves, refrigerators, and surroundings to a long, raised serving counter and roomy storage space - in large part due to kind donors and generous grants. This larger space will help us accommodate more guests, to assist those in need in our community who we hope will benefit from an inviting atmosphere, nutritious food, compassionate volunteers, and a feeling of community and deep hospitality.

Sisters make sandwiches to send to the Hospitality Centre for care packages during covid, 2020-2022. Pictured below, the many changes over the years. Sisters, Staff and Volunteers that make all of this possible.

The Hospitality Centre has changed and adapted over the years as demand has changed and grown. During the recently challenging years of Covid, when we were unable to host guests inside, our Sisters and Staff continued to feed those in need, making sandwiches and ‘take-away’ meals. On a recent Tuesday over 500 people were fed - this was the most mouths we have fed in one day. Quite a staggering and sobering number.

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Also housed in the building at 602 Queens Avenue are our new partners - London Cares Homeless Response Services and Regional HIV/AIDS Connection.  One can envision other endeavors to come. This is truly a partnership that we hope, by joining forces and uniting core services in one location, will enable us all to better serve the vulnerable population in London.

Our faces shone as we listened and rejoiced that another dream has come true, reaching out to continue a long-ago desire of Sister Mary Jean Klatt.  In 1982, she rolled up her sleeves and in a little storefront on Dundas Street, with a couple volunteers, began to feed the hungry.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj 

If you are interested in providing support to this vital ministry, you can SUPPORT THIS WORK HERE. We thank everyone that makes this ministry possible.

The Chapel Project

”I have been up to London three times this quarter. I find the people very glad to hear the gospel preached to them. I have in attendance on public preaching about one hundred and twenty-five persons I think…On last Lord’s Day I held an experience meeting. I invited some white friends to meet with us. I must say the meeting was one of deep feeling. There was many tears shed. In the afternoon, I administered the Lord’s Supper. God was with us, his spirit it was felt powerfully in the hearts of those who loved him. We have a tolerable good meeting house to worship almighty God in. It is a hard thing to preach among those who have made their way to Canada from slavery, but it requires much faith and patience. But I do not feel weary in trying to work for God. I love the peace of Christ and I am determined to spend and be spent in the missionary cause.”

These moving words were written on 20 April 1860 by Rev. Lewis C. Chambers to George Whipple, secretary of the American Missionary Association in New York. Chambers was working as a missionary for the AMA in the neighbourhood of Dresden, Canada West, and had just been appointed elder to the British Methodist Episcopal Church on Thames Street in London. He moved his family to that young city in October 1860.

Sketch, John Rutledge

The “tolerable good meeting house” was likely built c.1848 by trustees of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (in Canada, from 1856, the BME Church). Chambers was a diligent and devoted pastor and missionary during his three years in London: when he left for a new posting in St Catharines in June 1863, his congregation was already discussing expanding the small building on Thames Street. Moreover, he had also nurtured new church groups in Ingersoll and St Thomas. In the event, the London trustees bought land on Grey Street and built a larger, brick church, Beth Emanuel, still a place of worship and hospitality today. The small frame chapel near the river was sold and then became a modest family home for approximately 130 years.

Few buildings of that vintage in London have survived the vicissitudes of Canada’s climate, neglectful owners, and rampant urban redevelopment. But the former AME church on Thames Street did survive. When its last owner, planning a business expansion, sought a demolition permit from the City of London in 2013, city officials and politicians, concerned citizens, and heritage activists protested the request and mobilized to save what was generally referred to as the “Fugitive Slave Chapel.”  Mirable dictu, a lot on Grey Street next to and owned by Beth Emanuel Church was offered as a home for the chapel, and it was moved there in November 2014.

For more than eight years those concerned citizens and heritage activists worked with church officials to plan both the restoration of the chapel and an addition to it so that the building could eventually serve both as a learning centre about London’s Black settlement, the history of slavery, and the Underground Railroad, as well as a locus for community engagement. An architect was hired to draw up necessary plans, outreach was made to other southwestern Ontario centres that celebrated Black history, and heritage festivals like Black History Month in London were engaged. The work of restoring the building also began; volunteers worked with staff from Pathways Buildworks to strip off layers on the inside and outside of the chapel added by previous owners. Fundraising got off to a slow start, but hopes were always high that the goal of transforming the humble chapel into a learning centre could be achieved in time.

Aerial photo of Beth Emmanuel and the (daughter) chapel on Grey Street. Photo: Reubin Kuc

But by early 2018 it was clear that this was beyond reach, as Beth Emmanuel gave priority to its admirable community outreach. With the church no longer in a position to host the learning centre project, the British Methodist Episcopal Church offered the chapel to the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, hoping that the outdoor museum could take both ownership of the building and include the story of Black settlement into its already successful program of historical interpretation. The offer was first declined (many factors were at work here) but when made again in May 2021, the building was accepted with gratitude.

Plans are now underway to raise the necessary funds to move the chapel from Grey Street to the Village site, to provide a concrete pad as its new resting place, to restore the interior and exterior as closely as possible to its original design, and to begin plans for its future educational role. Everyone seems energized by this auspicious new partnership: the trustees and employees of the Fanshawe Pioneer Village, members of the Chapel Project who have been labouring for such an outcome for so many years, and Londoners who waited patiently for the learning centre to materialize. Perhaps also, its late pastor, Lewis C. Chambers, watched and prayed for this new home for his former worship place.

It is an unusual human being that does not become attached to familiar places and buildings. We often invest them with deep affection and nostalgia for the times spent and events enjoyed there. They gain in significance when we know those feelings have been and are shared with family members, contemporaries, and ancestors. Those of us who are currently involved in saving and restoring London’s “Fugitive Slave Chapel” feel that accumulated love for this humble building. Whether or not we have ancestors who actually worshipped there, we value what it meant for them and their descendants. Its walls, floors, and wainscotting have known anguish and joy, deep prayers and hymns of praise, struggle and harmony. This building is at the heart of London’s Black history.

Hilary Bates Neary

Hilary Bates Neary is an active historian in London. She was entered in the Mayor's New Year's Honour List in 2015 for Heritage. She also contributed a chapter to Shepherds According to my Heart: a History of St. Peter's Seminary in 2012. Her book, A Black American Missionary in Canada West: the life and letters of Lewis Champion Chambers, will be published by McGill Queen's University Press in its Studies in the History of Religion series in the fall of 2022.

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The Sisters of St. Joseph are honoured to contribute to this local fundraising campaign. Interested in more information? Please visit The Chapel Project.

Blue Community in London Ontario

London is now part of the worldwide Blue Community movement.  London City Council voted almost unanimously in favour of becoming a Blue Community on March 23, 2021.

This is a victory for water protection and social justice. London City staff and London City Council have supported requests from the Council of Canadians and our allies to pass the resolutions needed to become a Blue Community. Now Londoners know even more certainly that their needs for water are primary and placed before profit-driven interests. Instead, water itself is valued as essential for life, as a common good, cared for and distributed with equality and preservation in mind.

What does becoming a Blue Community actually mean? The motions passed by City Council state that:

•  Water and water sanitization are recognized as a human right.

•  The sale of single-use plastic bottled water is reaffirmed as banned at City venues and events where access to municipal water exists.

•  The City will oppose privatization in any form of water delivery and water treatment.

In making these resolutions London joins 78 Blue Communities in the world and 47 in Canada, a number growing rapidly with London’s Brescia University College becoming a Blue Community just days ago. Other Blue Communities include the Sisters of St. Joseph, Vancouver, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Bayfield.

London has had a policy in place for some years regarding the phasing out of plastic bottled water sales in City venues and our utilities have a plan in place providing assistance to those who cannot pay their water bills. The Council of Canadians has been advocating since 2018 for the adoption of the full package of Blue Community resolutions, and we have been joined in this campaign by allies such as The Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Urban League of London, Climate Action London and the London and District  Labour Council.

Canadians care deeply about water and many know our seemingly endless gifts of water are actually threatened on many fronts. Blue Community resolutions are something municipalities and other communities can do to take a position for water protection and for water justice.

Imagine whole watersheds – such as the Thames /Antler River system - making these commitments.

Canadian Maude Barlow, past water advisor to the United Nations General Assembly and cocreator of the Blue Community movement in 2009 had a dream- “It is my hope and my dream that it (the Blue Community movement ) can unite us in the quest for sound water stewardship and water justice”.)  

London has been part of making this dream a reality as of March 23, 2021.

-Sister Loretta Manzara, csj | Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada