Ottawa shelters offering dinners and gifts for residents over the holidays

Article content

People lined up inside the Shepherds of Good Hope on Christmas Day for a homemade holiday lunch.

Husa Delice, who has been volunteering at the shelter since 2022, was one of several volunteers who was there to help out. He said the Shepherds of Good Hope was “a wonderful place” where he was able to meet a lot of amazing people.

Delice said community members were “happy” and “smiling.”

Article content

“It’s cold out, they need to be warm together,” said Delice, who volunteers three days a week.

Seventy-year-old Azery Sharrons, who is living in the shelter’s indoor overflow area, was one of many who enjoyed a delicious meal, which offered all of the classic holiday fixings.

Worried about the potential of freezing outside during the winter months, Sharrons said the Christmas Day dinner was “very good.”

The shelter expected “a few hundred people” for breakfast, lunch and dinner on Christmas Day, which followed their usual numbers.

On Boxing Day, Shepherds of Good Hope will have a group of Christmas carollers come to the kitchen to serenade guests during the afternoon. They will also be handing out gifts to those who drop by, with community members encouraged to drop off gifts, coffee, warm socks, hats, mitts and toiletries for people experiencing homelessness.

Other items, like mugs, plates and silverware, are also very helpful for the community kitchen, as well as blankets and pillows for those staying in the shelter.

On top of the festivities at their community kitchen on Murray Street, the Shepherds of Good Hope team has brought the party to their five supportive housing residences, serving Christmas dinner and giving out gifts. People who spent Christmas Eve in the shelter were also given gift bags with socks, toiletries and a deck of cards.

Article content

Article content

Peter Gareau, the food services manager at the Shepherds of Good Hope, said weeks of prep goes into Christmas Day. While the team was initially nervous about not having enough turkeys, he said a couple of “very generous donors” fixed that problem, with one woman encouraging those in her neighbourhood to donate turkeys that will be enjoyed all week long.

Gareau said that, for a lot of clients, having a holiday meal likely “brings them back to their childhood when things were very different.”

“Nobody grew up choosing this lifestyle,” Gareau said. “Anything that can help them, maybe that helps trigger something so that they can participate in one of our programs.”

Shepherds of Good Hope isn’t the only organization that put on holiday celebrations.

Chris O’Gorman, the acting director of development and communications for Cornerstone Housing for Women, said the organization planned a holiday gift program, collecting donations from the community to be used for 321 gift bags for those in the emergency shelter and supportive housing programs.

O’Gorman said the gift bags, delivered on Christmas morning, show people that “their community cares about them.”

Article content

The group also partnered with Restaurant 18, which cooked hundreds of turkey dinners for residents.

Peter Tilley, the CEO of the Ottawa Mission, said that, while the organization celebrated its community Christmas dinner a week ago, it also put on a regular Christmas meal for residents and other members of the community during the day on Dec. 25.

The group also had more than 200 donations from a group called Backpacks for the Homeless, which were placed on residents’ beds by frontline staff who played the roles of elves at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning. The packs had everything from socks, to hats, to chocolates and a Tim Hortons gift card.

On Christmas Day, Tilley said the Ottawa Mission would also leave its chapel open, playing Christmas movies all day long.

“It’s not always pleasant memories at Christmas and the other unpleasant piece is, at the end of the day, you’re in a homeless shelter in downtown Ottawa in a dorm room bed by yourself, and that’s a very lonely feeling,” Tilley said, adding that no one thinks they’ll grow up to spend Christmas at a homeless shelter. “So we try and make it as comforting as possible and as rewarding as possible for people to be here.”

Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed.

Article content