News from or about the community of Holy Trinity.
Through Canada’s Summer Jobs program, Holy Trinity is searching for two candidates to support our work in our downtown Toronto community. We are looking for two candidates between the ages of 18-30, who have exceptional gifts in Community Outreach and Communications and Storytelling.
Thank you to long-standing member Kevin Bezanson for this insightful and and eloquent appeal to compassion.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/opinion/contributors/2020/04/23/we-dont-have-to-let-our-loved-ones-die-alone/icu.jpg)
We don’t have to let our loved ones die alone
I believe in most circumstances, for patients nearing the end of their lives due to COVID-19, we can and should seek to support a physical visit with …
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/04/23/we-dont-have-to-let-our-loved-ones-die-alone.html
Thank you to everyone who has donated their time and support to Holy Trinity’s COVID relief efforts. Holy Trinity continues to play an important role as a centre of compassion and support in the midst of this epidemic. We are thankful for the outpouring of donations that you have very generously made available to folks who need them.
We are now serving 150-200 meals a day, and making food available to take away at our West door between 11-1pm daily. We have also distributed over 70 tents, and many more sleeping bags, hygiene items, and cold weather gear. We see how essential these items are becoming for survival as folks on the street, who are facing gridlock in finding appropriate accommodations or places to isolate. We are also seeing more and more housed people who do not have access to food coming for assistance. As almost all services are shutting down, or operating with limited means, these folks need our continued witness and support.
This would have been Jim Houston’s 20th Good Friday staying behind in a church kitchen while nearly four hundred people did the “Stations of the Cross”, walking for justice through Toronto’s downtown streets.
Jim took over doing “soup ’n bread” in the year 2000. For five years, when The Good Friday Walk started and ended at a different church each year, Jim would have to negotiate the use of a strange new kitchen with a women’s guild or a caretaker.
We are recommitting to the practice of sending out a short note after each Vestry Executive Committee.
The focus of our meeting tonight was orientation for our new members Susie Henderson and Joan Heeler. We are setting up a Google workspace to share minutes, policies and a workplan.
We are looking towards having some time in the future to take stock of where we are with our hiring process and regroup based on what we have experienced in the last little while.
In terms of the current COVID-19 context, we have made a commitment to ensure paying our staff until the end of June and to review the financial situation before that period is up. We expressed our deep gratitude to staff and volunteers who continue to be a life-giving presence in our community. We are humbled by their witness and honoured to be a part of a community that carries on through struggle. Please keep these folks in your prayers.
Our next meeting is April 29th, 2020 7 PM.
Vestry Executive is Vivian Harrower, Rena Post, Joan Heeler, Keith Nunn, Susie Henderson, Zachary Grant, Sherman Hesslegrave.