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Lucid reporting from year on charity front lines

Reviewed by: Douglas J. Johnston

Posted: 05/10/2010 3:20 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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A Year of Living Generously

Dispatches from the Front Lines of Philanthropy

By Lawrence Scanlan

Douglas & McIntyre, 384 pages, $33

THIS is a good book that might also have made a good documentary film.

Ontario writer Lawrence Scanlan's latest non-fiction work is the product of his 2008 monthly stints working with 12 philanthropic organizations -- local, Canadian and international. Some of his tales from the "front lines" yield visuals that would have made for arresting television.

It features indefatigable reporting, three-dimensional portraits of the poor and disadvantaged and shrewd examinations of public-policy issues concerning poverty, health and the environment -- all packaged in writing that's lucid and laced with literary flair.

The charities or non-profit agencies range from as close as "Vinnie's," aka the St. Vincent De Paul adult drop-in centre and hot-lunch program, a 10-minute walk from his Kingston home, to as distant as a run-by-women-for-women community radio station in Dakar, Senegal.

Scanlan, a veteran Canadian magazine journalist and author or co-author of 13 books, takes the same tack in each chapter: Relate being a foot-soldier volunteer in, or with, a homeless shelter, prison, hospice, environmental-watchdog group, Habitat for Humanity project or the like, and then at chapter's end link that experience to the big picture.

He's an empathetic guide to near-unlivable neighbourhoods and the sometimes less-than-endearing types who inhabit them. In his hands, food banks and shelters are credibly portrayed as quietly dynamic, and oddly redemptive, places.

And overall, he strikes a nice balance between personal engagement and the larger socio-economic issues raised by his dozen stories.

September was the only stint he didn't do solo.

Accompanied by his dog Rusty ("equal parts husky, terrier and border collie"), he spent the month at the Ongwanada Resource Centre in Kingston, which provides programs and services to some 600 "boys, girls, men and women .. with disabilities that range from mild to major."

The dog proved a walking advertisement for the therapeutic value of companion animals, and more broadly, what psychiatry refers to as "pet therapy."

Rusty, who provided yeoman service to so many patients, died before Scanlan completed the book. But in a sweet touch, instantly grasped by animal lovers everywhere, the book is dedicated to him.

A recurring theme in his North American dispatches -- from the Tyendinaga Mohawk reserve in southeastern Ontario to post-Katrina New Orleans -- is that governments have abandoned their traditional custodial role when it comes to the poor, dispossessed, disabled or addicted.

Scanlan is adept at wielding statistics to support this argument, but it's his journalist's eye for small details and large differentials that gives them heft, as when he writes about his hometown, Toronto:

"The 'encampments' in Rosedale Valley a stone's throw from the mansions above. The tent hidden in the brush near a vast and gleaming BMW dealership at the bottom of the Don Valley Parkway. The six people using a TD Bank entryway to warm themselves in the heart of the financial district."

Still, some stats are revelatory:

"Some 21 per cent of donors account for 82 per cent of donations, and the one per cent of charities and non-profit organizations with revenues of $10 million or more are grabbing 60 per cent of available donation dollars. Meanwhile the 42 per cent of organizations with revenues under $30,000 share just one per cent."

A Year of Living Generously succeeds every which way from Friday.

Douglas J. Johnston is a Winnipeg lawyer and writer.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 10, 2010 H8

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