Joanne Farley - "Never Turn Anyone Away"

With a $5,000 donation and a dream, West Island Citizen was born in 1976 with the idea that a community takes care of its disadvantaged residents with no other reward than the good feeling of a job well done.

Thirty-five years later, the philosophy hasn’t changed but the organization sure has.

Funding has ballooned from the initial $5,000 to more than $500,000 annually and the number of protégés has jumped from 15 matches in its first year to approximately 400 today.

Citizen Advocacy’s conception can be attributed to a Winnipeg conference founder Joanne Farley attended in 1976 where she was inspired by Dr. W. Wolfensberger and his “people helping people” philosophy.

As the parent of an autistic and intellectually challenged son, Joanne had already spent more than 20 years championing the causes of people with intellectual and physical challenges in the West Island of Montreal when she decided to open the first Citizen Advocacy office in Quebec. 

“She was strong, determined and nothing stood in the way of what she wanted,” said Mary Clare Tanguay, Joanne’s daughter and current Director of Citizen Advocacy.

When Paul was born in 1950 and later diagnosed with autism, a term unfamiliar at that time, it pushed her to spend the next four decades creating educational, recreational, and housing programs for the handicapped. 

In addition to helping establish the first special education program in Quebec with the Baldwin Cartier School Board, Joanne sat on the board of the West Island Association for the Intellectually Handicapped and helped raise funds to get the Gary Taylor Centre built.       

If that weren’t enough, she helped establish a summer camp for the intellectually handicapped at Camp  Kinkora and she was involved in the development of the  Lakeshore Vocational Project which provided jobs with local employers for the intellectually handicapped. 

In 1985 WICA launched a housing project called the Church Apartment Program designed to provide supervised housing for people experiencing mental health problems.  CAP provides shelter for 42 residents in the community as well as in two apartment complexes called Heron House and Farley House. 

The primary mandate is to recruit, screen, match and follow up volunteers with disadvantaged people in the community.  It could include the intellectually and physically challenged, people experiencing mental health problems, and seniors.

Mrs. Farley’s philanthropic efforts have not gone unnoticed.  She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2004, which was hand-delivered to her Pointe-Claire residence by then-Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.

“It was her philosophy to never turn anyone away,” said Mary Clare.

That philosophy has carried Citizen Advocacy into the year 2011 and counts almost 400 active matches, 350 volunteer advocates and almost 500 protégés.  

Written by Marla Newhook
Edited by Lucinda Atwood

Published by Catherine Brindley

Hot Soup on a Snowy Day

I was born in the Cree community of Moose Factory, Ontario, a tiny island nestled in the mouth of the Moose River which streams into James Bay.

We were nine people (my parents, grandmother, and five siblings) living in a tiny house with no indoor plumbing. At that time, more than 40 years ago, we relied on walking, boating or ski-doo to get around.

In the spring during break-up, the expanse of ice that separated Moose Factory from the mainland, Moosonee, would creak and groan for weeks before the ice floes finally broke apart and slowly drifted out to James Bay. It was a dangerous time of the year because if you were caught on the ice when it decided to shift, you would certainly be crushed.

It was also a much-welcomed season because it meant that we kids could soon resume playing along the shore, collecting fossils and swimming amongst the reeds in the murky water. If we were lucky, someone would load us onto a boat and take us out to the soft, white sandbanks in the middle of the river exposed during low tide.

Sometimes when I smell the acrid scent of a crackling fire, I can remember sitting on a fragrant bed of freshly cut spruce boughs in the teepees, watching elderly Cree women baking homemade bannock over an open fire

My sparse but nostalgic memories of Moose Factory are probably much different from those of my grandmother (or Kokum in her native Cree language), Lydia Corston, who spent much of her adolescence in a residential school.

In a historic moment in 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the native community for the government’s treatment of Canadian aboriginals. In addition to being separated from their families, stripped of their culture and language, they were physically, psychologically and oftentimes sexually abused.

Although the official apology has been met with mixed reaction from the native community, the mere statement of accountability means that the healing of a nation can finally begin for people like my grandmother.

The effects of the residential school were deep and far-reaching. Her memories and experiences of that time were locked away deeply in her psyche only to emerge in times of distress and anxiety. The Cree culture and language have disappeared as well as the time-honored tradition of creating beautiful moose hide crafts such as moccasins and mukluks.

When I was young, I would take the bus with my overnight bag to the hotel where she worked in the laundry. She washed and folded sheets that came out the huge machine nicknamed the “mangler” for obvious reasons.

When she finished her shift, we would walk down to the S.S. Kresge store to wait for the bus and she would buy me a soft drink served in those little cone cups at the dining counter. I looked forward to those sleepovers because it was an opportunity to escape my large family and spend one-on-one time with someone who listened to me and told me stories. She taught me how to play card games like Gin Rummy while we listened to the radio, or if I was lucky, she let me help her make her necklaces by threading beads.

My grandmother recently passed away at the age of 89 years old. Her passing is still so new and it weighs heavy on me. I know there will come a day when the feeling of aching sorrow will fade and thinking of her won’t bring tears to my eyes.

She wasn’t famous or noteworthy, at least not to those outside of our community, but to me she was a constant in an ever-changing world. She represented everything that was warm and comforting, like hot soup on a snowy day.

Written by Marla Newhook
Edited by Lucinda Atwood

Published by Catherine Brindley