St. Felix Centre

ST. FELIX CENTRE Serving Purely Out of Love

St. Felix Centre in Toronto, a partnership between the Felician Sisters and the city of Toronto that provides the homeless with respite from the bitter cold, clearly makes a difference in the lives of its guests. It has saved countless lives with shelter from the cold, and staff try to help the guests make meaningful changes in their lives, when they are ready. out that what is needed is a different lens when talking about success.

Asked about success stories, executive director Brian Harris points out one of the current resident advisers in the transitional house, St. Felix House. “She was a resident first; she came to us from a shelter,” he said, adding that she had been in jail for 20 years, had an active addiction and her husband had died. “She moved into our transitional house, enrolled in the pre-placement program and went back to school for social work,” he said, adding she earned a degree in 2018 and got a job with one of St. Felix’ partners. “She has reconciled with her daughter – she’s one of our very special success stories.” But stories like these are admittedly few and far between, and Harris points “We have learned to re-gauge what we consider a success – someone who has never chosen to engage and then one day they make an appointment – that’s a success. That’s a start,” he said. The process can be agonizingly slow – or never even begin: “You can stop by to talk with someone, and ask if they are willing, and if they say take a hike, you have to. We have to respect what they want – check back in a month. A lot of the people we support here, it takes them a long time to develop trust. You need to take time to develop trust.” Substance use is a serious problem, and a staff member checks the restrooms every five minutes to ensure everyone is safe. “We bring a different level of genuine caring to people. We bring hope that there is a different way of living – that even if they don’t have family, they have an extended family that cares about them,” Harris said. “Each individual is a person; that’s the message we try to spread. They may have all of these things happening but at the end of the day, each is a person.”

“The people we work with have a lot of complexity of needs in regard to mental issues. We coach staff on providing compassionate service and a safe space, to remind people to not personalize things. It’s not about us; it’s about providing service,” he said.

Making the Shelter a Home

Iris Bartraw, who began as a volunteer at St. Felix Centre 23 years ago and then joined the staff as kitchen manager, currently serves as director of mission integration and engagement. The respite site serves three meals a day in addition to offering housing support and clothing; she manages the volunteer coordinator and oversees the clothing program and its donations. The clothing program is offered four days a week at the Augusta Avenue site and is open not only to guests but others from the community, including new immigrants coming from Canada and those from other shelters.

She helps the center to feel welcoming and homey by decorating and planning special menus for monthly birthday celebrations and holidays. Before every meal, the kitchen staff pray a special prayer that ends with “help us bring kindness and generosity to all we do.”

A special aspect of the St. Felix Centre is that pets are welcome and – unusual even among the shelters that allow pets – they are permitted to remain with the guests. On the Feast of St. Francis last year, “we did a blessing of the animals. It meant a great deal to the guests. We make sure that we have enough food for them, and leashes and jackets,” Bartraw said. “They are so appreciative of us having that for them. They know that St. Francis is a lover of animals. A lot of them wouldn’t go into a shelter because they didn’t want to leave their animals.”

“I was saying good-bye to one of the men at Augusta and asked, ‘Will you be back tonight?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’ll be home for dinner.’ It struck me – this really is their home.”

Iris Bartraw Director of Mission Integration and Engagement

Bartraw arranges five mini-retreats a year for staff and volunteers, and involves the guests as well, with an emphasis on learning about the Sisters and their mission. A recent project has been the development of a memorial quilt, with photos to remember guests who have died.

The volunteers pick up and share the family feeling: Bartraw said that John Callihan, a retired volunteer, was making soup and talking to the soup: I love you, I love you. “I said, why are you saying I love you to the soup? He said, ‘So that every person who eats the soup today will feel the love.’”

“I was saying good-bye to one of the men at Augusta and asked, ‘Will you be back tonight?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’ll be home for dinner.’ It struck me – this really is their home,” she said with a smile.

Transforming Lives

Like Bartraw, communications and business development manager Enrique Cochregus started as a volunteer. “I joined the center as a volunteer for the youth drop-in program,” he said. “I fell in love with the organization and was really learning a lot. I felt a call, so I ended up selling my business and staying in Canada.”

Sr. MaryAnne Olekszyk prays with guests in a weekly prayer group meeting.

“transformation” sums up what it means to work for the St. Felix Centre. “I’ve been transformed by everyone – the people who work with me, the people we support and the organizations that are involved with the work we do. I always think about St. Felix Centre as one of the most important teachers in my life. It opened my eyes to a lot of things I wasn’t really aware of.”

Harris, like many of his team members, first volunteered for the center with its after-school program. He was so drawn to the work that he went back to school for social work, then did one of his placements at St. Felix Centre and was offered a job before it ended. and serving 20,000 meals a month with an annual budget of more than $8 million. The biggest challenge, he said, was taking on the larger respite center at 69 Fraser Ave., which houses 100 people and serves many more each day. “Our goal coming in is to make sure 150 people are better today than they were yesterday,” he said.

At that time, in 2012, the St. Felix Centre had 10 staff and an operating budget of $300,000. As time went on, he was offered opportunities within the organization and today, St. Felix includes two locations, 110 employees

See Purely, page 26

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

interact with people in the dining room,” she said.

AND SERVING CANADA

The Felician Sisters first came to Toronto, Canada, in 1937, and shortly after established a convent at 25 Augusta Ave. As occurred at most Felician convents, the Sisters would give sandwiches to those in need of food who came to the door, said Sr. Celestine Giertych, who served as provincial minister from 1989-94. Initially, the Sisters saw a need for child care, and they built a day-care center on the property that served families for more than 50 years, she said. When the government began to provide subsidized day-care services, the Sisters realized that they should consider another ministry. As a result, the Canadian Felicians made a commitment to dedicate the Augusta property to serve the poor. The provision of food from the convent was formalized into a lunch program for people in need, especially the homeless. In partnership with other groups in Toronto, programs for children were added before and after school and on Saturdays. These programs included tutoring, Bible classes, Big Brothers/Big Sisters and a mentoring program with students from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. In the late 1990s the day-care building was renovated to suit the growing ministry, which was named St. Felix Centre. In the early 2000s, the sisters realized they needed to plan for the center’s long-term sustainability. The Felician leadership in 2006 restructured the board of directors. They recruited lay people with expertise in needed areas – finance, law and development – to join the board and help to coalesce the vision for the center. During 2008-10, “we recognized that our place was to be a place of welcome serving basic needs, a very low-barrier place where people could come and experience welcome and respect, with food and bit of companionship. We serve people no one else wants to serve,” Sr. Shelley said.

Giving the Convent Over to Transition Housing

“As Felician Sisters, we always try to respond to the needs of the time,” Sr. Celestine said, so they closed the daycare center, though they kept serving people who came to the door and for a while, used the day-care building to temporarily house refugee families.

Beginning a Ministry to Children, the Hungry and Homeless

In 1993, Sr. Mary Dorothy Tomaszeski, a Felician Sister who wanted to minister to the homeless, hungry and children who needed after-school care, initiated a discussion at the Provincial Chapter about the Felician ministry in Toronto.

Canadian-born Sr. Shelley Marie Jeffrey spent more than one summer at the convent on August Avenue and along with the other sisters, helped with the lunch ministry. She was invited to be part of the advisory board for the newly formed St. Felix Centre. Later, she served on the board of directors and as mission leader for several years.

Sr. Shelley remembered the warmth and welcome of the center, which served as a day-use social community. “We had a number of guests who remarked that coming up the driveway past the convent was like discovering a hidden gem in the midst of the city. People liked to come and just sit outside, or to Sr. Shelley was serving as local minister of the Augusta Avenue convent in 2011 when the decision was made to convert it into St. Felix House, a residence for women who needed assistance in the transition to independent living. “The number of the sisters in the house was declining and we decided that the three of us would move to a condominium and turn the house over for ministry at that point. … It was hard because it was the first convent of the Canadian foundation and for many years it had been the center for sisters ministering in Toronto. The house held memories for us, our history, our beginnings in Canada,” she said.

HISTORICAL TIMELINE · ST. FELIX CENTER

1937

Felician Sisters come to Canada

1928

St. Stanislaus Kosta Convent established, 25 Augusta Ave.

2012

Convent at 25 Augusta Ave. vacated and renovated as transitional living center, St. Felix House.

2017

St. Felix Centre begins 24-hour respite center at 25 Augusta Ave.

2018

City of Toronto asks St. Felix Centre to operate a new respite program site, 69 Fraser Ave.

“The day we moved out, Sr. Esmeria and I went back in the evening to remove the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle and move it to our new location. That was a wrenching moment. … I remember the two of us just stood there for a while, aware of the significance that at that moment the house at 25 Augusta ceased to be a convent. That was when it became real,” she said.

The distinctive roofline of the former convent at 25 Augusta Ave., Toronto, now St. Felix House

One of the early residents of St. Felix House, Sr. Shelley remembered, was named Susie. Blind and with some developmental delay, she had been living with her mother and her brother, who had been taking financial advantage of them. The social services department placed her at St. Felix House for a year as she transitioned to her own apartment. Another older woman named Anna had been living in her own home and taking care of a daughter with disabilities, but could no longer manage. “While she was living with us, she became very involved in helping out in the kitchen – it gave her meaning and brought her back to life in some ways,” Sr. Shelley said, adding that after she found a home, she looked for a way she could return to St. Felix using public transportation, to continue to help.

Moving to Provide Shelter for the Homeless

As the St. Felix Centre staff and board continued to explore ways of serving the most marginalized people, the City of Toronto was looking for places where the homeless could shelter from the cold, day or night, Sr. Celestine said – a serious need in the bitter cold that Toronto experiences in winter. St. Felix Centre began to provide overnight accommodations for these people, some of whom brought their pets. Meanwhile, attendance in the children’s programs had been declining as the city worked to rebuild the subsidized housing in the neighborhood. For this reason, as well as the need for 24- hour shelter for adults, programs for children ended.

Sr. Shelley visited St. Felix Centre often and getting to know the staff and guests “just made me see things quite differently,” she said. While taking a program of theological studies, she chose to write her thesis on the challenges of providing pastoral care in outreach centers to people who were mentally ill and homeless.

“It was life-changing – understanding what that experience is like for people,” Sr. Shelley said, including chronic sleep deprivation, lack of privacy and the perpetual need to be on guard for danger. She is dismayed by “the whole stigma around mental illness, and how the media help to feed that prejudice that people who are mentally ill are dangerous. It’s simply not true.”

In addition, “homeless people are ostracized because people make assumptions about who they are and why they are homeless,” when virtually anyone could end up homeless if just one or two major, unexpected things happen such as an injury coupled with job loss, she said.

Her life has continued to be impacted by her experiences at the St. Felix Centre. In 2014, one of the sisters living

in Livonia, Michigan, proposed that the Felicians re-establish a convent in Detroit, where they had ministered in education for years, for the purpose of initiating a social outreach ministry in collaboration with other community and faith-based groups. This new ministry is called Deo Gratias Ministries Detroit.

While Sr. Shelley never intended to leave Canada, “as soon as I heard that, I knew I wanted to be involved,” she said, and she relocated to assist with the start-up. “It just would not have been on my radar at all if it hadn’t been for St. Felix Centre and all of the years that I was involved there.”

While the St. Felix Centre is now headed by lay staff, Felician Sisters still provide strategic leadership through Sr. Mary Francesca Buczkowski, chair of the board of directors, and Sr. MaryAnne Olekszyk and Sr. Sharon Marie Dombrowski, who also serve as board members. In day-to-day ministry, Sr. MaryAnne and Sr. Mary Teresa Mielech leads weekly prayer groups, Sr. Mary Blaise Podruczny prepares snack bags for the homeless and Sr. Mary Agnes Jakubowski helps with clean-up. Other members of the community assist with special efforts as well. St. Felix Centre continues to serve the most needy of Toronto, faithful to the spirit of the Felician charism of compassionate service and total availability.

“Sometimes they are not in the right space to express their gratitude but I have seen so many examples of guests who may be upset about something about the center, but yet they keep coming every day. They do feel the difference; they do feel respected, and they know we really care,” he said. “We try to build that expectation in our staff (that they are not doing their jobs for thank-yous or validation); the validation should be internal.” Harris works to ensure the center and staff have adequate resources and are in accord with provincial and federal regulations and safety standards, and helps legislators and community members understand that while the center receives some government funding, its growth in both numbers and programs means that more funding is needed. He also focuses all members at the center, staff and guests, on being good neighbors in the community, whether it is picking up cigarette butts or helping with a community event. Because of the difficulty some guests have in expressing themselves, the center has worked with the owner of a security company to develop a community safety team that is trained in de-escalation to reduce confrontations and prevent incidents. Harris hasn’t lost sight of the personal impact of the center. He remembers a gentleman who came to them in January 2017 at Augusta, a software developer who was helping a friend change a light fixture, fell off a ladder and shattered every bone from his ankle through his shin to his knee. “This was his first time being homeless,” he said. “He had gone to the hospital and went to an after-care facility for a while but everything is time-limited. He had lost his apartment while he was in the hospital and he wound up on a street corner in a wheelchair with his dog, Jasmine. ... Somehow he was referred to St. Felix Centre, and he told us when he got there he was pretty close to wanting to end his life.” At that time, the center was closed from April to October and the staff worked hard to find a place for him, took their van and moved him in, along with some items he had been able to place in storage. The center’s housing specialist worked with him, and they assisted with veterinary needs as Jasmine grew ill and then when he got a new dog. “I think he still kind of sees us as his extended family,” Harris said.

Looking to Grow and Change Again

“Even though no one is going to freeze to death from April to October, it’s still really detrimental for people to sleep outside,” he said. In 2018, the city asked them to keep the Augusta Avenue site open year-round. “There had been some expectation that numbers would drop through the warm months, but that is not what happened. People began to consider it their home.” Unfortunately, funding issues led to the city withdrawing support for yearround service in spring 2019. The center and others continue to advocate for year-round care, but Harris’ longrange hopes are much more lofty. “We have been doing these respite programs since 2014, and we don’t really want to do them, because they are part of a Band-Aid solution, and we would prefer to be part of providing a long-term solution, because we believe that is more impactful,” Harris said. The city of Toronto is experiencing a housing crisis; 100,000 people are on the wait list for affordable housing, and the average rent has far outpaced the income supports the government “Each individual is a person; that’s the message we try to spread. They may have all of these things happening but at the end of the day, each is a person.” Brian Harris Executive Director Purely, from page 23

can offer. The center offers housing specialists and social service caseworkers along with its homey, mission-focused and welcoming atmosphere, and encourages residents in the surrounding area to advocate for more affordable housing.

Harris would love to work with the Felician Sisters to develop the halfacre of land around the Augusta Avenue location. “We should look at how we could redevelop that space and maximize that resource to impact the largest number of people. We have had some very preliminary talks and the Sisters have expressed an interest in exploring this,” Harris said. “Their desire is to do the most-needed thing – they have a legacy of doing that,” to the point that they moved out of their own home to give the space to those who needed it, he said. “Now we need to change again because there is a new, even bigger need.”

The members of he meal crew enjoy a look a he frui s of heir handiwork as hey prepare o pray before serving he gues s a 25 Augus a Avenue.

St. Felix Centre by the number - Fi al Year 2019

24-HOUR RESPITE CENTER

Home to up to 150 guests per night

COMMUNITY MEALS

20,000 meals per month on average

CLOTHING BANK

60,000 clothing items distributed

ST. FELIX HOUSE

32 women housed

35% transitioned

into housing ahead of time

CASEWORK AND HOUSING

120 guests received active casework management

28 successfully housed

VOLUNTEERS

350 individual volunteers

60 corporate and community groups