Documentary captures Siloam’s mission of mercy

Margot Ross says there’s a 70-something year old woman using Siloam Mission’s services who used to volunteer there.

“She was taken in by an internet financial scam and was too embarrassed to tell anyone, and eventually was evicted,” she says.

Ross is the interim director of development at Siloam, which offers shelter, meals and wellness supports to people experiencing homelessness and poverty. She has plenty of similar stories of bad luck and sudden reversals of fortune.

So does The Mission, a new 45-minute documentary about Siloam by Winnipeg filmmaker Kevin Nikkel, which premières on CBC next week.

“I was blown away by the number of people who were calling in just to say, ‘Hey, I’m working late, and I’m not going to be there for eight o’clock. Please hold my bed. I’m coming. I should be there by, say, 10 o’clock,’” says Nikkel.

“There’s so many of these types of arrangements. There’s one fellow who we interviewed, his house had caught fire. He was living in a duplex, and the fire was next door. It wasn’t his fault, but there was a fire on the other side of the duplex, and he had to run out with just a backpack with a few things. So now he’s homeless.”

The Mission is also guided by voices who have turned their personal experiences of homelessness into a source of support for others.

“I was homeless twice,” says Mike, a Siloam staff member, in the film. “Homelessness was years in the making. Shortages of affordable housing. There was a lot of safety nets that had holes in them. But now it’s becoming more in people’s faces.”

Told in a vérité style with quick-moving camera work, The Mission is filled with sensitive, often eloquent, reflections on homelessness.

But it doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable realities either.

Founded as a soup kitchen in 1987 by former inmate Suk Woon Lee, Siloam has expanded its footprint considerably.

The non-denominational Christian humanitarian organization now operates multiple facilities in Winnipeg, with its main drop-in and shelter at 300 Princess St.

The centre operates 365 days a year and distributes an average of 700 bottles of water and 1,500 meals per day. In addition to food, clothing and housing — which can be overnight, transitional or long-term depending on the site and units — Siloam offers vital health and addiction treatments.

It takes 900 active volunteers and a sizeable donor base to sustain the effort, Ross says.

Demand for Siloam services has increased as the meth and fentanyl crises have reshaped Winnipeg’s streets, with Siloam dropping its “sobriety requirement” as of 2023.

Siloam’s new behaviour-based approach means that people aren’t turned away just for being inebriated. However, this introduces new challenges involving conflicts and behaviour, something also reflected in The Mission.

As a Siloam staff member says to a community member near the end of the film, “’You’re not a bad person, you’ve just been suspended,’” says Ross.

“It’s the level of toxicity of the drug supply that’s out there. We could never have imagined drugs where, even with doses of naloxone, we’re not able to bring people back,” says Ross.

The Mission gives equal weight to the people using social services as it does to experts, staff and volunteers.

They talk openly about their problems and their hopes, giving The Mission a refreshing candour. It was important for Siloam that the film not feel voyeuristic or sensationalized, Ross says.

“When folks come up and say, ‘Oh, we’d like to do a documentary,’ we have lots of questions and we share with them the dignity of community members. But we had a good sense of Kevin when he came in. He listened well,” she says.

Nikkel describes making The Mission as a humbling experience that inspired him to adjust his perspective.

“We do a very poor job of having a definition of this thing. What is homelessness? And I think maybe my huge takeaway from this project was to have that dictionary definition just blown apart, or expanded to page after page of possible scenarios of where people are at,” he says.

“I’ve been way more intentional about offering dignity, making eye contact and a gesture or a wave, even if I don’t have any money, but just to offer that respect.”

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