From idealism to pragmatism

After Duluthian Joel Kilgour graduated early from high school, he decided he’d spend a year interning at various places. His first one was at Duluth’s Dorothy Day House with Loaves and Fishes, a Catholic Worker Movement-based shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

“I meant to be there for a summer,” Kilgour said. “And here I am, 27 years later.”

Kilgour, a longtime advocate for Loaves and Fishes, has seen the community surrounding the organization change in that time. He’s seen the number of people experiencing homelessness grow over the years, the establishment of other area shelters and increased collaboration.

By Teri Cadeau Duluth News Tribune

“Throughout, he’s been a steady and calm leader with vision and skills,” said Angie Miller, a founder of Loaves and Fishes. “I admire him greatly and I’m extremely thankful that because of him and Donna (Hursby), Loaves and Fishes continues to ‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’”

Kilgour was born in southern Alberta, Canada, but was raised in Duluth from age 4. He considers himself a “fourth-generation Hillsider, on my mom’s side.” He grew up in a large working-class family and said he started to awaken politically while attending a private school.

“A lot of my teachers and fellow students there were wonderful, but I was confronted pretty quickly with a whole different class reality,” Kilgour said. “Just by the assumptions that a lot of my fellow students made about life. They were really foreign to me and the handful of poorer kids who went there.”

He grew up watching people such as his grandparents care for their communities and had a sense of empathy instilled in him at a young age. He remembers his grandmother, Phyllis Monsaas, caring for neighborhood children and becoming deeply involved in her community.

“She served as an election judge for several years and she even left hospice during her last year in order to go vote in the election,” Kilgour said. “She and my grandpa were my guiding lights; they’re who I think about when I do this work. I’m not doing anything that my grandparents wouldn’t do for their neighbors.”

As a teenager, Kilgour started to get involved with Loaves and Fishes through its political protests. At the time, the organization was known for its involvement in protests against nuclear weapons and its advocacy for nonviolence.

“A nice way to think of me through my teenage years was as a wide-eyed idealist,” Kilgour said. “Another way is as an insufferable young activist.”

Miller said she noticed his idealism as a teen, but noted it had changed over the years.

“Over the years, the idealistic side of Joel was tempered by pragmatism,” Miller said. “And he has grown into the person who I believe is mostly responsible, along with Donna Husby, for the fact that the community is still alive and providing a safe place and a welcoming environment for unhoused people.”

During that first summer, Kilgour moved into the Dorothy Day House, where he’s volunteered to help run the house ever since. Dorothy Day is a house for male-identifying people experiencing

Continued on page 20 homelessness. He still lives in the same house, in a room which he said has never had a lock.

Over the years, Kilgour said the homeless population has expanded exponentially. Back when he first moved in, he said they never had to turn anyone away.

“We would just make it work and find room on the couch or something,” Kilgour said. “Today,

“I hope the city has second thoughts about kicking us out of here,” Mitchell Hall, of Duluth, said in September 2013. He had been homeless since June 2013 and lived in a tent camp under the freeway, where he considered those people his family. Also pictured are Tom Jarvis, from left, who often lived in the camp; Joel Kilgour, outreach worker for Loaves and Fishes; and Deb Holman, street outreach worker for CHUM. (Bob King / File / News Tribune) if everybody who is out on the streets came into a shelter, we wouldn’t have the space. Right now, there are over 1,500 households on a priority list for housing. We saw 550 people come through the warming centers this winter, which means at some point they were unsheltered homeless. We have never seen numbers like that.”

And the length of time people have had to stay at shelters has also increased. Kilgour said the average guest at one of their shelters would be able to find a place to live within a month or two. Today, if an unhoused person is doing everything right, such as working, saving money and applying for every program available to them, they’re still going to have to wait at least six months.

Despite this, Kilgour said he’s also seen some positive changes in his years with the organization. The development of more shelters for domestic assault victims as well as youth under 18 have helped. And the organizations with a stake in combating poverty and providing more housing have started to work together to advocate for their communities.

“We have so much more collaboration between agencies in Duluth,” Kilgour said. “We’re able to do so much more together than on our own.”

But the biggest miracle for Kilgour is how the Loaves and Fishes community has continued to grow.

“We have this beautiful network of volunteers and donors around the area who will just step up any minute we ask for things,” Kilgour said. “Loaves and Fishes is a bit of a miracle in that way. We ask people to come and they volunteer. That’s a big commitment.”

His favorite moments are when people who used to stay with them return to provide for those who are staying in the organization’s three houses today.

“I’ve seen people who lived at Olive Branch when they were kids show back up at our door with a donation of food,” Kilgour said. “And they’ll say, ‘I lived here when I was 9. It was a scary time in my life, but you guys made it OK. And I’m doing great so I wanted to support the work you do.’

“How much more beautiful can you get than that?” u