They said build it and they’ll come… and the rallying call went out to all pockets of the community. Contractors, trades people, the arts and business community, not-for-profit organizations – the whole community came together and found innovative ways to lend their support and raise the bricks and mortar required to build a safe haven for women and their children.

They built a place where women in distress could take their young, seek refuge and get the temporary support required to piece their lives back together.

An astounding amount of community energy poured into the project, and while some nay sayers at the time covertly criticized the fact that so many of the community’s resources were going to one specific project, many quickly fell in line with the realization that it could very well have been their mother, sister or daughter seeking that support.

In a perfect world children would not have to go to sleep on an empty stomach. In a perfect world children would go to sleep feeling safe, rather than being told to sleep on someone’s couch or keep their street clothes on in case they were required to flee in the middle of the night. In a perfect world this editorial would not exist and members of the community would not be asked to write to Ontario finance minister Dwight Duncan for operational funding to keep the Chrysalis women’s shelter afloat. In a perfect world close to 100 women and children would not have been required to use the Huntsville shelter since June.

Obviously this is not a perfect world, but hopefully we can impress on the province that having shelters such as Chrysalis make it a better world.

We can rally for our community and women and children in rural Ontario by asking the minister of finance to add $332,000 to the budget of the North East Region of the Ministry of Community and Social Services in annualized funding for Chrysalis.

Shelter administrators are asking us to do our part by having every man, woman and child write to the minister with the request.

Please address your correspondence to: 

The Honourable Dwight Duncan
Minister of Finance
95 Grosvenor St.
Toronto, Ontario  M7A 1Z1

Or e-mail your request to: dwight.duncan@ontario.ca

T.d.V.