‘Helping is medicine’: Volunteer community walk spreads cheer

The volunteers began to trickle in just after 9:30 a.m., carrying stacks of sandwiches and boxes of cookies and other things they hope will bring comfort to those most in need. Outside grassroots social agency OPK’s (Okichidah Pimahtisiwin Kiskinawmatowin) Main Street office, the sparse Christmas morning traffic crawls down the street, exhaust hanging thick in the biting cold.

Already, a few people linger by OPK’s doors, waiting patiently for volunteers to emerge with something to eat.

The folks who eke out a life here know the routine. Spearheaded by devoted community worker Mitch Bourbonniere, these Main Street Community Walks have gone out twice a week since April 2020, handing out food, warm clothing and hygiene kits to anyone they meet. They haven’t missed a day, regardless of the weather or holiday.

Yet to do the walk on Christmas is “special,” walk leader Morgan Fontaine reminds the helpers. Before the group heads out into the chill, she gathers them in a circle for a short prayer, and a few words of intention. She urges them to go slower than they usually would, to take their time as they circle around Main Street.

It’s a day when the people they meet may need that extra moment of time, she says, that extra bit of connection.

“It may be a day that people expect we’re not coming,” she says. “And yet, here we are.”

There are 50 volunteers out on this Christmas morning, an average number. They come from all across Winnipeg, and from all different backgrounds. They include a group from the Aurora Recovery Centre in Gimli, who arrived with bags of food to share as part of their own healing journey; and the principal of a local elementary school.

Some are joining the walk for the first time; others, including Sister Lesley Sacouman, a longtime community advocate, are regulars. Sacouman, a nun with Sisters of the Holy Names, joins the community walk every Thursday; to do it on Christmas morning, especially, is “where I want to be,” she says.

“What is Christmas? It’s God with us,” she says. “God’s with us, me and you, and certainly the people we’re encountering on the street. That says they’re important. And what other message do any of us need, but to know that we mean something to someone?”

One volunteer, Andrew, is doing the walk for the second time; he recently lost his brother to a fentanyl overdose, and buried him just last week. Another, a staff member with the United Way, turned up with dozens of Valour FC scarves and Grey Cup hats donated by the Blue Bombers, which will now help keep people warm.

Ray Comeault, a teacher at St. Paul’s High School, has known Bourbonniere for years; he came to the walk with his grown daughters, and mused that it might become a new family Christmas tradition. They were joined by one of his colleagues at St. Paul’s, Marc-Andre Veselovsky, a Catholic priest and member of the Jesuit order.

For Veselovsky, who recently moved to Winnipeg from Ottawa, the walk was a chance to get to meet the city up close, and understand its struggles. To be out on Christmas morning was doubly special.

“It’s just a reminder of our own vulnerability, and the need to be there for each other as much as we can,” Veselovsky says, holding out a bag of sandwiches as street residents peer at the contents. “God has given us so much, it’s good to be able to spend some time giving back to others.”

On Christmas, there is much to give. Because of the holiday, Bourbonniere thinks, there is more food than usual, including dozens of individually-packaged turkey dinners sent by grassroots group Community Helpers Unite. Usually, volunteers at these walks have to ration food carefully; but today, Bourbonniere announces, they can share it “willy-nilly.”

“Make sure everybody gets lots today,” he calls out cheerfully, as the group heads up the street.

As the volunteers make a slow circle up and down Main Street, they meet fewer people than on most walks; that’s a good thing, Bourbonniere points out. It means many of the folks who make their life on the street have found a warm, safe place to spend the holiday morning.

To some of the volunteers, the walk itself serves that same purpose.

Brian Gopher, 41, blinks back tears as he thinks about what it means. He was homeless for 13 years, he says, living on these streets and “stuck in many numerous cycles,” such as addiction. Now, he has been sober for 42 days, and the walks have been part of his healing.

For Gopher, it’s a difficult morning. It’s his first Christmas without a loved one, and were it not for the walk, he might have spent it alone. Instead, he was able to spend it with the community, as he has many times in recent months, and that meant the world.

“I was part of the destruction here, the cause of many things here that still carry on to this day,” he says, as the group pauses to hand out more food. “I’m not proud of it, but you know, you can’t do nothing about it. And by coming here I feel a sense of giving back, and when I go home, I feel real good.”

That sentiment reflects what Bourbonniere sees as the greater purpose of these walks. In a way, Bourbonniere notes, these community walks are mostly symbolic. A new sweater, a fresh turkey sandwich — these are small comforts, a brief reprieve from the struggle of life on the street. The real work goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without stopping.

Yet to come out twice a week, even — and especially — on Christmas, is “doing the Creator’s work,” he says. And not only for the people who receive those comforts, but those who help distribute them.

“What we do is for the people, but it’s also for us,” he says. “It’s for everybody. When you extend a hand, you’re helping two people… you’re also helping yourself. Because helping is medicine.”

It doesn’t take long to share that medicine. After less than an hour on the street, the group heads back to the OPK office, rubbing their chilled hands against the cold. As they near the end of the walk, a slender man with a weathered face hustles up to them with a hopeful look, and plucks a turkey sandwich from the offered bag.

“Merry Christmas,” he says, with a wave, and his smile beams as bright as the snow.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca