I started here in July 1994, three years ago. I graduated from Concordia University in ’81, and had acquired experience working for non-profit organizations downtown since graduation. Just prior to coming here I had been working in the Italian Community Centre, in fund raising and other areas. I had also worked at CNIB, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, as an employment councilor, at CLSC Metro, and elsewhere. In such circles, I had heard of the Yellow Door – or the YMCA of McGill, as it is known legally – and had been impressed by its reputation. I was even more impressed by the people I met during the two interviews I had, one with the small Personnel Committee, and the second with the whole Board, a meeting which could have been intimidating – there must have been a dozen of them! -- but which was actually pleasant and informative. A great and dedicated bunch! I told them that, if they wanted me, they’d have to wait a few weeks as I was just about to get married, and they agreed. And so I got married, went on our honeymoon, and started a new job, all from the end of May to mid July, 1994.

Yes it was. And when I got here I realized that the honeymoon was over. The Board had hinted that things had fallen behind somewhat, but I wasn’t here long before I realized that that was somewhat of an understatement. The previous Director had been gone for some time, and the two key staff members responsible for the Elderly Project had either gone or were on the point of leaving. Chris Fitzgerald had already departed, and Mike Adamowicz, was in the process of leaving A new team had to be recruited before the next academic year began. There was no time to lose.

Through the years the “Door” has committed itself to being a people-orientated organization, and that we certainly are. But people need pleasant working conditions in sound buildings to be effective, and this struck home immediately. The Board wanted the building condition assessed, and my recommendations for renovations. The apartment on the third floor had already been renovated, and we engaged the same contractor to carry out the work in the meeting rooms, in the office areas on the ground floor, and in the basement, where the Coffee House stages its events. Also a major cleanup was needed, and we set about brightening up the surroundings.

I was fortunate to have some great people available for the re-building of an effective team. Carolee Honeywill, who had been Mike’s assistant, moved up to be Coordinator of the Elderly Project. Leigh Ann Taylor became Assistant Coordinator, and would later move up to Coordinator. Karen Haffey, who had been a volunteer at the Coffee House, became the Coordinator, and moved into the third floor apartment. Somehow or other we successfully knit ourselves into an effective team, and despite the fact that so many of us were new on the job, we had a good year. At the Coffee House we had an excellent year.

One of our important goals is in the area of Chaplaincy. We were founded to encourage spiritual and moral matters in the student community. We have been active in the area of Chaplaincy, but it lacked the degree of support a coordinator could give it. Just recently Gwenda Wells, an Anglican priest, has been appointed one of the chaplains of McGill and she has worked hard to reinvigorate this program. The McGill Chaplaincy is located in the Newman Centre, and she is my liaison and we talk and work together. We have also been able to keep aware through Elizabeth Rawlinson, a priest on the staff of Christ Church Cathedral and chaplain at the Montreal Diocesan Theological College, who is a member of our Board and who is part of the McGill Chaplaincy. With such connections our programs should be much improved, but we must continue to search for a coordinator, perhaps a volunteer, or someone from Newman Centre. A coordinator for Chaplaincy, to give leadership and direction, would make us more effective in this vital area.

The management approach I have taken is to leave the detailed running of our major projects to the Coordinators, and to avoid the hands-on approach which had been the policy in the recent past. I consider my role to be to build up and motivate a dynamic and competent team, to reinforce and consolidate the individual programs, to ensure that we are pertinent in some measure to society’s needs (which requires me to get out into the community, that of the students as well as the broader community), to raise our public image, and to see to it that we are financially viable and operating within the budget the Board has set. And I am a believer in having a truly open door policy. As a simple symbol of this, I always keep the door leading from the entrance hall to my office open. It creates an atmosphere.

Well, the Coffee House is one key area, and it is the longest running Coffee House in North America. As a matter of fact, we just had a concert to celebrate its thirtieth birthday, and a bang-up concert it was. It far out performed the expectations even of Heidi Fleming, who was the producer. Interest was expressed across Canada, and from the United States as well. We had a full house the night of the concert, and sadly had to turn people back at the door. The atmosphere was electric, it was warm and a little melancholy because the people remembered the sixties and seventies. This was a sign to me that the people had a commitment to the movement, as expressed by the music and the togetherness, their commitment was not to a building, this building, that had been the site of the movement. The Door is and always has been People.

Folk music at its best was one of the mediums of expression for these people of the sixties and seventies. They were people who ran a stage, a show that addressed the issues of the times, that meant something to everybody. Now the baton has been passed to the nineties generation, which is just as committed, just as caring, just as socially conscious as that of the sixties. They believe in their stuff just as strongly as the generation of those days did, they just have a different way of expressing it. But they will express it, and they have started.

The Elderly Project is a key area of the Door’s functions. It too is hoary with age, no quip intended, because it is about to celebrate twenty five years of existence. It is, of course, a whole different kettle of fish than the Coffee House. Marvelous isn’t it, that these two dynamic programs were founded and head quartered for so long in the Door, both staffed largely by students. The Elderly Project came into being, through the initiative of Roger Balk, who is still involved, when he and others realized that it was vital to help the elderly to keep their independence in their own homes. An LIP grant from the federal government was obtained in 1972 to permit the assessment of the needs of the area. It was fount that there was a large number of elderly living in the area (from St. Denis to Atwater, from Mont-Royal to Notre Dame) who were lonely and socially isolated. It was decided to initiate a program of volunteers, primarily students but many others as well, to visit the elderly to overcome their loneliness. The program was called the Elderly Project and the volunteers became know as Friendly Visitors, and they would not only visit the elderly, but would also assist them with their shopping, and help them in many ways. And this proved to be an enriching and learning experience not only for the shut-ins but for the volunteers as well. One of the needs was to accompany the elderly and handicapped to their medical and dental appointments. Over time it was found preferable to use community volunteers for this, as the students could not take enough consecutive hours off. But Accompaniments are another key service offered. And from time-to-time we have maintained a Telephone Contact service, where volunteers, sometimes elderly and house-bound themselves, call a list of shut-ins daily, both to exchange a friendly word and to check on their well being. This service is particularly useful during the summer vacations, when student volunteers are in short supply. And then we hold a couple of events for the elderly each year, a picnic at Beaver Lake in the summer, and a party, complete with carols and Santa Claus, at Christmastime. This party is held at RVC, Royal Victoria College, thanks to the Residences and catering service of McGill, all made possible through the efforts of another Board member, Florence Tracy.

One of the strengths of the Yellow Door has always been the interaction between generations. Students and seniors get along famously. Whenever the student-volunteers have to leave, generally when they graduate, they always stop by to tell us how enriching the experience has been for them, how much they have learned, how they appreciated the opportunity, and how much they wished that it could go on and on. Without failing their exams, of course! And they are always so sad to leave the old woman or old man who had become part of their extended family. And they worry whether their clients will be looked after, and receive the love and attention they deserve, after the student has moved miles away. We take care to assure them, and to follow up, too.

The students mature and grow “in the service,” perhaps as much as they do in their studies and in their own aging. When they leave the Yellow Door they are much better human beings than when they first came in. They have done something for somebody else. They have seen something, a part of society and a part of life, that they would probably never have seen if it weren’t for the Yellow Door. If there is not a vehicle by which they can meet seniors, they won’t. The effect on the staff, who are all young and maturing as well, is similar. They too are different people when they leave than they are when they arrive. When they leave they are ready for the outside world.

The Door gives something rare and precious to the students and staff for all the work they do. And they do work hard. They get a better perspective on life. They meet people. They are part of a team that’s caring. The volunteers, the staff, the members of the Board, the president, they form a team, a caring team. You don’t get contacts and end up on the Board of Directors of IBM by volunteering here, that’s not what we’re all about. What people do here is very altruistic, very altruistic. And do you know what? That’s what makes you grow the most. You’re doing it for no other reason than to help somebody else. That’s where the true maturing process begins. You find there’s more to life than just pleasing yourself. When you walk out of this place, to carry on with life, you’ll be changed. When you look at a senior or anyone else, for that matter, you’ll see the man or woman, as a person, quite differently than before, you’ll see the people in the crowd, not just a mob. You’ll see the whole world differently. You’ll understand others better, and you’ll understand yourself better too. Its a very enriching experience, volunteering, believe me.

Now, besides the Coffee House, the Elderly Project and Chaplaincy, there are many other activities around the Door. Over the years we have given a home to many Community and Youth Projects, among them Alcoholics Anonymous, Canada World Youth, the Student Christian Movement of McGill (which operated from the Yellow Door for many years), the Montreal Coalition for Peace and Disarmament (which met here during the cold war period), and many groups starting up with very little funds, or unable to obtain space to meet elsewhere because they held views unpopular at the time. Rare are the people the Door has been closed to.

We’re moving towards the future (Hey! Aren’t we all?! Ready or not, here it comes!). But yes, we see big changes coming and we’re going to have to become stronger because the demands on the Yellow Door are going to be more and more pressing and important, what with all the changes to the health and social services structures. We are seeing a shift away from the para-public sector back to the grass roots. During the sixties and seventies, there was a shift from the grass roots organizations to the para-public sector. Structures such as the RRSSS, the health and social services giant infrastructure, were created to guarantee the social safety net. The CLSC’s, staffed by professionals, played a major role, and still do, and probably will do so in the future, although somewhat differently. The community organizations, such as the Yellow Door, became secondary, faded, into the background of the big scheme of things. Now we’re seeing a shift back, and community centres like the Yellow Door are becoming more and more important. There is insufficient money allotted by our society today to pay the nurses and social workers needed to fill all needs. Organizations such as ours will have to take up the slack.

In this situation, the Yellow Door must become a pioneer again, as it was in the sixties and seventies, a leader ready to take on challenges, to initiate change. We have already started a reappraisal of our services. We are looking into house keeping and home care. We are looking into animation, so important for the elderly, and the creation of drop-in centres. We are already experienced and successful managers of low-cost downtown housing through the housing project on Jeanne Mance, La Corporation d’Habitation Porte Jaune, Inc., a separate organization, but one with which we maintain close ties. The three directors of the Corporation are appointed by our Advisory Committee, and some other officers are common. We might get involved in other low-cost housing undertakings. We have to look into all these things. If we and other organizations do not do so, there may be many elderly and other dependent people who suffer neglect

One of my jobs is to make sure that we know what’s going on in the area of social services, or lack of them, and what the needs of the community are. One thing we know is that the population mix is changing. We’re about 60/40 anglophone/francophone now, but that is changing rapidly. We can expect to see a 50/50 split soon, and 60/40 the other way in a decade. We are fortunate in that a lot of our volunteers are bilingual, and so we are not having a problem right now. But we must recruit more volunteers from the francophone population to be fully apt to face the future.

In the downtown area there are 24 or 25 community organizations. There are only 2 in the Milton Parc area aimed at the elderly, the Entraide Bénévole Métro and ourselves. Together we have about 300 clients. But the population is aging. The average age now is about 78, but in the next 5 years we may well have two groups, the active and the less active, one older than today’s average, the other younger as the first baby-boomers reach 65. The government policies of Guichet unique and Virage ambulatoire will handle emergencies but don’t speak to long term help. There is no policy, no strategy for that. They may say there is one, but there isn’t. As soon as the patient is out of the hospital, it’s the community who’s responsible. But who? Family members? Most seniors living alone downtown have no one, and it just won’t work. That’s where we and other community organizations will have to step in. The changes have not trickled down to us yet, but they are coming. That’s the future. Short term? Long term? Who knows. But we do know that the elderly will not survive into the long term if someone doesn’t care for them in the short term.

One of our problems is to figure out how to involve students into any future approach we may take, how to maintain the inter-generational dimension. It would be easy to create a community centre that caters to seniors. But that’s not the entire mission of the Yellow Door.

In a sense it’s only a complementary mission. We must be a service to students. How do we involve students in any service to the elderly which may be needed and which is appropriate for us? And how do we make sure that we make a firm commitment to any project we undertake, for there will be a continuing need? I have my own ideas, but we’ll have to think it through together, and come up with strategies. It will be a challenging task, demanding work, exciting work. And really worthwhile

Well, about a third of our funding comes from the government, about a third from Centraide (which is known as the White Feather in other provinces), and we raise the other third. More precisely, it is closer to 35%, 35% and 30%.

In August of the first year I was here, before I had had a chance to settle in, I had a visit from a representative of the RRSSS, the Régie régionale de la santé et des services sociaux de Montréal-Centre, our Provincial government funding agency. She was very upset She did not seem to be a happy camper.. I made sure that I knew exactly what she wanted from the Yellow Door. The need for an administrative cleanup soon became obvious. A lot of things had to be done again and again as representatives at the RRSSS kept changing. Eventually, with the help of Robert Metcalfe, a member of the Board and a lawyer, along with the backup of the executive committee, it was all cleared up, and they put us back on their triennial list. This means that we have been accepted as a full-fledged community centre, and we only have to fill out their short form to renew our grant, not the 20 page extravaganza we have had to use since I arrived. Furthermore, we shall be considered for future cost-of-living increases, and, best of all, this year they gave us a $5,000 increase!

Yes, I’m extremely proud of this accomplishment. But there’s more. In addition the RRSSS has formally recognized us as being a separate entity from the YMCA, and from McGill. And they did so in writing, a letter I’m going to keep on file in case there are any other changes in our representative. All this took 2 1/2 years, but it has been worth it.

I have approached other government funding agencies. Lucienne Robillard has supported us in our grant applications, and Jacques Chagnon has helped us. I am working on funding by the City of Montréal, although the city is not flush these days. But they did support the 30th anniversary concert with a $2,000 grant. Through Human Resources Development Canada we received Employment Development and Challenge support which enabled us to engage temporary staff, 16 through the former program, 6 through the latter. We got a lot of good work done, and the temporary employees made some money and gained useful experience. Thus we have received support, in direct grants or in salary, from all three levels of government

With Centraide there also was some patching up to do when I arrived. There, fortunately, we have had the same representative since I got here, and we have a good working relationship with her. We hope to get an increase in their annual donation to us, although one has to realize that they conduct an annual drive, and just how generous they can be to us depends upon how generous contributors are to them. But our representative indicated how to present our case, so that we might get something if there is anything available. Were we to get an increase, we might be able to afford to engage two people to work on the Elderly Project, which would make us much more effective.

The government and Centraide are more interested in out Elderly Project than in our other work. We must raise 30% of our budget ourselves, and that takes a lot of effort. We have a few corporate sponsors. Michael Hagen created the Michael Hagen fund the year I got here. Power Corporation contributes. Mappin Jewelry gives us $500 to $1,000 each year.

I have started looking into some foundations. The Léger Foundation funds projects for the elderly. The Molson Foundation, the Bronfman Foundation, and others, might be interested in contributing, and I shall approach them. We get help in other ways. For our Christmas and summer parties the pharmacies in the neighbourhood contribute gifts and prizes. We are a registered charity, and therefore we can issue receipts for taxes.

We hold a fund raising event at the Comedy Nest that has worked out famously for us. Each week during the winter months the manager of the Nest, Ernie Butler, reserves Thursday nights for community organizations of the neighbourhood to host an event called “Comedy for a Cause”. The Nest gives the organization $9 out of every $10 in ticket sales. We hosted an event last year and the year before, and raised about $1,000 each time. All we have to do is sell the tickets, and do whatever advertising we think we need to do. Both years we filled the house. The Nest gets the place filled on Thursday night, which may not be their most popular night in winter, and makes some money on the drinks sold during the show. But I think the main pay off to Butler and the Nest is the altruistic fix they get. It is a really generous and constructive gesture on the part of the Nest and Mr. Butler. Other businesses should be as creative and socially helpful.

One such company is a restaurant in our sector, the Café Santropol. They commit 1% or more of sales to community organizations. They founded a community organization, Santropol Roulant, which provides meals on wheels for senior citizens. They recruited the volunteers they needed through the McGill Volunteer Bureau, and it has become a dynamic group working with seniors in our area. It is now supported by the McConnel Foundation, and we would like to establish a relationship of some sort with them. It is great to see initiatives like this.

The Coffee House makes a contribution to the Door on a regular basis. It is not a great deal, but it helps. And at the 30th Anniversary Gala we took in $7,000 and earned some $1,500 net for the Door. And all the organizations that meet at the Door pay rent, which contributes to meeting our costs.

We should aim to maintain about 70% financing by the government and Centraide, with the government contribution higher than the present 35%. This means getting financing from various government agencies and bodies. It would have to be long term financing if we were to commit ourselves to manage additional facilities and programs. We would have to make sure any new project we undertook fitted our mission, our goals, and sat well with the Board and the Advisory Committee. And, as I mentioned earlier, we must not neglect our responsibility to involve the students, part of our uniqueness. Also before we made any commitment we would have to be sure we can meet and live with the government criteria of operation and financing. And we would have to be certain the financing was in place and that we had the staff, volunteers and facilities to meet our commitments.

These angles would be very important in any change in the scope of our operations. It will be hard work and time consuming to analyze all this and to come to a sound decision. But I believe that we have to expand. I do not believe we’ll have the option, in the long run, of continuing as we are. If we cannot serve the future needs, other organizations will step forward to assume the responsibility, and our support by government and Centraide will go to them

Well, both of my parents come from southern Italy, from the town of Cosenza in the region of Calabria. My father came here in 1951, when he was 16 years old. He was sponsored by his grandfather, who had been here since the first world war. In the fifties things were bad in Italy, war ravaged and all, and he planned to earn some money and send it back to support his mother and father and his 9 brothers and sisters. He intended to return to Italy in about 5 years, but he came to know and love this country and decided to stay. In 1955 he went back to Italy for 6 months, and he met my mother there. She came here in 1957 and they got married. I was born in 1959.

I grew up in an Italian part of the city, in St. Michel. The great majority of our neighbours were of Italian origin, and were Italian speaking. I went to an English school, as did most of my neighbours’ children – we went through the Montreal Catholic School Commission. I then went to Vanier College and to Concordia University, and graduated from Concordia with a degree in political science.

I then started working mostly in the downtown area. Prior to getting the job at the Yellow Door, I worked exclusively in a French milieu, which helped me to improve my French, and I became fluently trilingual, a great advantage in a city as diverse as Montreal. I think that this is unique to the Montreal reality, learning 3 languages and only going to school in one.

The factor that most affected my life in terms of my development and who I am today, is the fact that I have a visual impairment. I’ve had it since the age of 4, and it gave me some difficulties while I was growing up. Despite it I went through the regular main stream school system, all the way up to the university. At times it was arduous. For example, I could never read the blackboard. The teachers were aware – I wore thick glasses – they would say to me “Do what you can to learn,” and that’s what I did.

When growing up it meant a lot of ridiculing, it meant a lot of teasing. You grew up hard. You grew up getting into an awful lot of fights, defending yourself.

Oh yes. Big fights. I became a fairly tough individual. I guess my advantage was I didn’t grow up small. Even against the biggest bully I could at least hold my own. Although I’ve gotten a couple of thrashings, at least I gave some back! During elementary school and early high school it was a factor. After that it calmed down and I just went about my business like everyone else, and learned to face up to the fact that I had my limitations.

I did everything. When I was a youngster I never ever forewent any activity, in terms of any sports activity. I played ice hockey, rode a bike, everything, and my friends and my parents never held me back. Other parents might have said, “Careful! You might loose your eye!” My parents never did. I played baseball, football, went horseback riding, go-carting, whatever I could get my hands on. I was very active, very involved.

I only started realizing what it meant to be visually impaired after a certain age. Until you get to an age where you understand it – that you’re not like everybody else, that you don’t have the same vision as everyone else – until you reach that age you just go about your business as everybody else does, thinking that you’re “normal,” if there is such a thing. When you do realize that in fact there is a difference, that’s when you have to screw up your courage a little bit more and say, “Wait a second now! What am I going to do? Sit back and do nothing, or am I just going to go on?” And you go on.

I could read, and write my exams like anyone else, without assistance. I read as much as anyone else, neither more nor less. I used to remove my glasses, bring the book up close, almost to my nose, and read it. That was something I took for granted when I was going through school.

When I was 22 I got my B. A. I was accepted in the M. A. program in public policy at Concordia, but I didn’t go on. I’ve always regretted that decision. I was working part time at my parents’ store in the Jean Talon market, and I wanted to get out in the world.

It appears to be partly genetic. I had severe myopia – which makes you short sighted. -- and some of my cousins, and my younger brother suffer from it too. It means that you have weak retinas because your eye is malformed. When you have a weak retina you’re prone to having it detach at some time during your life. Lifting a weight, a punch in the eye, a blow to the head, any shock can cause it to detach. When I was 4 years old an ophthalmologist at Ste Justine Hospital thought that he could fix my retina problem and at the same time remove a small cataract on the left eye. He goofed, and of course we now know you don’t operate on a four year old child in such a case. That was one eye. In 1970, when I was eleven years old, in one of my fisticuffs, I got punched in the eye, and the retina detached. Well, that was the second eye, the right one. That year I went through a series of operations at the Montreal Children’s Hospital to repair that detached retina, and they managed to attach it again. I still wear a buckle to hold my retina in place – that’s what it’s called, a buckle.

Well, that’s how I got to the visual state I am in today. But you never know. There is a remote possibility or regaining most of my sight one of these days. I’m not depending on it though. I have to go through life with what I have. That’s not a bad thing, it’s not a good thing, it is just what it is. That’s the way I’ve always taken it.

Now I wear contact lenses, and in appearance I look like I have no disability or handicap – challenge, I suppose they would call it nowadays – but in fact it is there. And as you grow older your eyesight dims, and it’s happening to me. When you start off low, your losses are a lot more important, the limitations more serious. That’s my reality, and it’s a reality that hasn’t been easy in a lot of ways. But look, I’ve got a marvelous wife, a challenging and gratifying job, fantastic people to work with, and it’s Spring!