‘The HART Hub is a locally built, deeply human response to suffering. It brings mental-health support, addiction care, primary care, community outreach, and housing into one connected system’
EDITOR’S NOTE: This letter is part of an ongoing SooToday series — ‘Turning the Tide’ — that explores potential solutions to our city’s toxic drug crisis. You can read more about our project HERE.
SooToday received the following letter from Jonathan Boyer-Nolan, co-chair of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Algoma:
This holiday season, a new light of hope is shining in the Soo.
Over the past few years, Sault Ste. Marie has fallen on difficult times.
More of our neighbours, childhood friends and family members have found themselves living on the streets. The mental health and addictions crisis has become more visible in our once-thriving downtown, and the strain on families and services has become impossible to ignore.
We’ve seen the look of despair on the faces of parents worried about their kids, and we’ve felt the hopelessness of those trying to get help in a system stretched so thin that it feels like it might snap.
But as the air gets colder, and we embrace the spirit of the holidays, we can all feel something beginning to shift.
People are slowing down, focusing on their families and their loved ones, and we’ve all started checking in on our neighbours more. We’re remembering what makes Sault Ste. Marie special: we’re there when someone needs a helping hand.
The flickering new hope in our community is the newly opened Sault Ste. Marie Homelessness and Addiction Recover Treatment Hub — our own HART Hub.
The HART Hub is a locally built, deeply human response to suffering. It brings mental-health support, addiction care, primary care, community outreach, and housing into one connected system.
One place. One community.
Although our HART Hub has moved into the old Community Resource Centre, it’s different because the HART Hub is designed around recovery.
It isn’t a temporary fix or a band-aid solution. It’s a wraparound model that brings all the needed care, resources, and services for recovery, together.
It offers hope.
Hope that things can be different.
Hope that our community can grow healthier and stronger.
Hope that Sault Ste. Marie remains a place where we look out for each other, just like our parents and their parents did before them.
Our Hart Hub team believes that healing happens when the community lends a helping hand to those who need it. That’s the driving force behind community safety meetings in the new year — so that people living in Sault Ste. Marie who want to help, but aren’t sure where to start, have the information they need to be a part of the solution.
The Sault Ste. Marie HART Hub is also committed to prevention efforts and training initiatives aimed at empowering community members and stakeholders.
While the HART Hub isn’t a catch-all solution to homelessness and addiction, it is a strong first step.
Most or almost all of the people who will walk into the Sault Ste. Marie HART Hub were born and raised here. They went to school here, played on local sports teams, biked the Hub Trail and hiked the Hiawatha Highlands. They’ve weathered the same snowstorms and share the same pride in calling the Soo home.
Some are newcomers, who like many of us, have come here hoping to call the Soo home.
The Hart Hub was built with the goal of making it easier for the people in our community to get the help and care they need.
And it reflects a simple belief we all share; when our neighbours are struggling, we don’t look away, we reach out.
This holiday, consider whether you and your family would like to join a community safety training meeting to empower yourself to help the Soo, or to get involved through volunteering.
That’s one small piece of how we can turn the tide on the homelessness, mental health and addiction crises here in Sault Ste. Marie.
So, this holiday season, as you gather with your family, open presents and eat good food, let’s all remind each other that the Soo hasn’t given up. This season, and every season, we’re choosing hope.
Jonathan Boyer-Nolan
Co-chair of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Algoma