Turkey dinner helps rekindle joyous memories
Union Gospel Mission serves traditional holiday fare to 3,000 who have fallen through the cracks
Dave Boreham well remembers, as a young man, the wonderful Thanksgiving dinners where he’d celebrate everything precious: family, friends, his home and his construction and landscaping business. In short, his life. Today, the 60- year- old is still giving thanks, but his situation has dramatically changed.
Now, his family is the hundreds of people who, like him, lost so much over the decades, but gather for the special Thanksgiving dinners at the Union Gospel Mission in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and New Westminster.
Boreham, who volunteers more than 20 hours a week at UGM, is also wheelchair- bound from the cancer that’s ravaging his body.
“My wife always had people over for Thanksgiving dinner,” recalled Boreham of his partner of 25 years, who died 10 years ago. “Sometimes she’d cook for 15 people. It was a good time. It was time just to be with family.”
But it was also a time when Boreham, who has two step- sons he rarely sees, ramped up his drinking and became a hardcore alcoholic. “I started drinking about 15 or 16 and it was just something to do, so I didn’t think anything of it,” said Boreham, noting he had a happy childhood.
Eventually, because of the drinking, he lost everything and ended up in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Monday was happier, with Boreham and about 3,000 others — many struggling with extreme poverty and drug and alcohol addictions — showing up for the mission’s annual all- day Thanksgiving dinner.
They were served 363 kilograms of turkey ( 130 turkeys), 363 kilograms of mashed potatoes, 318 kilograms of vegetables, 363 kilograms of stuffing, 300 litres of gravy, 260 litres of cranberry sauce, 4,500 dinner rolls ( 375 dozen), 800 pumpkin pies and 400 litres of ice cream.
“It’s been super, super busy,” said Keela Keeping, spokeswoman for UGM, which provides counselling, education, safe housing, and alcohol and drug recovery to those struggling with poverty, homelessness, and addiction. “We serve up to 160 ( people) at once in the larger dining room, and 80 in the other. We’ve been putting on this dinner for 30 years.”
UGM Senior Chaplain Bruce Curtiss said the meal is about more than just physical sustenance: “For many of our guests, this is a special time to celebrate and give thanks for what they do have, which is often very little. Over and over, we’ve seen Thanksgiving leading to hope, and hope inspiring courage, and courage — with friends to stand alongside — leading to transformed lives.”
Boreham, who went through the mission’s six- month drug and alcohol treatment program and has survived five colon cancer operations, said his alcoholism eventually cut him off from his family and everything important in his life.
He said things have looked up since he completed the UGM program and he now feels his life is on the upswing and has meaning.
Asked what younger people should do to stay on the right track, he said: “You might want to listen to somebody when they say you have a problem. And you have to understand what you have that’s precious and not take it for granted. If you do, it’ll blow up in your face. And then you’ll wonder, ‘ How the hell did this happen?’ ”