Finding a way at Wayside House
Men who have stumbled get a steadying hand on Charlton Avenue
Jimmy got up to speak, at the front of the room, near the end of Wayside House’s annual general meeting the other night.
He’s a client there, young, and if the smile he floated in on seemed miles wide, it was with the distance of the hard road he’s been putting behind him. It was an excited, guileless smile complicated by anxiety. Unaccustomed as we are ...
He started bravely. “Before I came to Wayside House I was living in a hostile world. I didn’t have many people to trust ...”
He paused. He started, then stopped, looked at his counsellor Bryan Kitchen, started again. The whole room was pulling for him, like stevedores.
Hundred plus — doctors, cops, addicts, nurses, volunteers, researchers, counsellors, family.
“I had a lot of anxiety,” Jimmy went on, then adding, as a joke, “much as I have right now.”
He said, “I’d been hurt so many times.”
He wanted to tell what Wayside House means to him. His counsellor Bryan walked up close, stood by him. You could feel the comfort his presence imparted to Jimmy.
Jimmy’s face said everything he wanted his words to, more eloquently than any language could. That room. There were diamonds in our eyes.
This was the annual general meeting of Wayside House, in a room at Tim Hortons Field, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, and that’s what it was like.
I’d never heard of Wayside House before Madeleine Levy told me about it recently. It’s a handsome building on Charlton, non-profit, which offers integrated residential addiction treatment and supportive housing for men with addiction and concurrent mental illness (anxiety, bipolar, depression, for instance).
The men (all ages) have committed to recovery and spend anywhere from six months to three years in the house, which has 60 beds, trying to redefine their lives. Wayside House also has housing for after they leave.
Substance abuse is a crisis in the city and “to be frank, people are dying,” said John Hartnett, WH’s board chair, at the AGM. Yet funding is stagnant.
This is partly why Wayside is raising its profile. The opioid crisis, yes, but so much more. Alcoholism, mental illness, PTSD. So much need, few resources.
Jimmy told me after the meeting he was addicted to methamphetamines. When he was a boy, his mom was on crack, his biological father disruptive. He ended up variously in foster care and on Ontario Works. He developed anxiety.
“Wayside makes me feel safe. Every day I’m helping, having things to do. It feels like home.”
The clients do the cooking, cleaning, repair projects, in addition to working closely with counsellors on their lives, careers and education. The place is immaculate.
I met Richard at the AGM. Also a young man, he’s working on a degree in neuroscience. He came to Wayside with a heroin addiction that brought him to the brink of death. He OD’ed, and only survived because his father happened to come into his room to find him in bed, no vital signs.
“It was probably cut with fentanyl,” he says, eyes intelligent with life and second chances, adding that unlike many addicts he has no history of trauma, such as abuse.
These are the men Regan Anderson and his team won’t/can’t let go of. He’s been executive director 18 years.
It’s not a business but a sacrament of care for all of them, haunting every moment not just with worry and work but joy and pride.
“Jimmy (who did all the tech at the AGM — he’s giftedly bright) practised his speech all day,” Regan tells me proudly. But Jimmy wasn’t the only one to lose his words.
Regan himself found his voice breaking several times, especially when accepting an award he didn’t expect to get.
“I want to celebrate their success,” he said. And there’s much success, with many Wayside alumni, like Ken, scattered around that room. Those faces, the hard poetry in their features. You can’t forget.
And sadly, it must be said, some don’t make it.
“That’s the hardest part. Last year we lost four men. Two to alcohol, one to crystal meth, one to opioids.”
But the men are there because they haven’t given up. They’ve gotten up. Like Jimmy did.
They might stumble but, as the song says, they will never walk alone; Wayside House is there to steady them.
So much was said, so many truths told at this remarkable gathering. Two words linger. Regan, talking sometimes through barely suppressed tears (“We do it for the guys”), reminded those men, as he does every day:
“You ... matter.”