His Living Legacy

"The frugality that he lived through, that he committed to in his life, was for this. It's really a gift to all of us to see that pure demonstration of philanthropy and love."
"[He made a first-time donation of $5,000 in the months before he died] Then, shortly after his passing, we learned he would be donating an additional $900,000. The donation is completely unexpected."
Jessica Ross, chief development officer, Treehouse foster-care organization 

"We first became aware of Alan's generosity last fall when we received a $10,000 donation from him online."
"Thinking that large amount might be a mistake, we called him to make sure he had entered the right number of zeroes! Yes, he told us, the donation was right, and there would be more to come in the future."
Pediatric Interim Care Center

"He was just that kind of guy that he couldn't just spend the money. It was just in his nature to save the money and put it aside."
"I think he always knew that he was going to leave his money to charity. Saving money was sort of a game to him. He would brag about how he had a whole day out and didn't have to spend a single cent."
"It's a nice little sports car, but it's not a Mustang or a Corvette or a Porsche that he easily could have afforded."
"[He said] 'My gift is going to be bigger than their annual budget. It's going to blow them away'. And it did."
"I don't know if he was lonely. I think he was a loner."
Shashi Karan, friend, former banking colleague, Washington State

Alan Naiman poses next to one of his few splurges -- a Scion sports car. The thrifty social worker left more than $11 million to charities when he died in January

First he had a banking career, but that profession somehow failed to satisfy an inner need of this man, a need perhaps best explained by a comment made after his death by yet another friend who knew something about his early life experience. That close friend, Susan Madsen explained: "Growing up as a kid with an older, disabled brother kind of coloured the way he looked at things".

So given the way he looked at things, it appears he decided to leaving his banking career which failed to give him the satisfaction he sought, and steered himself instead to work for twenty years at the state of Washington Department of Social and Health Services where he handled after-hours calls. A work detail that might have bothered others, but not this man who never married and had no children of his own.

He earned a comfortable salary of $67,234 annually and was not averse, it seems, to taking on other jobs moonlighting at up to three additional jobs on occasion. Friends who knew his habits spoke of his thriftiness, a man who would get clothing inexpensively at grocery stores and who thought nothing of patching up worn shoes with duct tape, knew when and where deli sales were taking place and thought of a night out with friends at fast-food places to be a treat.

This man scrimped when it came to enhancing his own life with durable goods. Instead because he was ultra-aware of people living in poverty and vulnerable children in need of help, he invested his savings wisely. His brother's developmental disability had left a deep and lasting impression on him. Those investments turned out successful to the tune of making him several millions to bank.

As well he inherited millions more from his parents. When he aged to the point where he qualified for senior discounts he was beyond pleased. Despite the wealth he had amassed, throughout his life he preferred to drive beat-up vehicles, but splurged eventually to buy himself a little sports car. Because he had a love affair with cars.

In this Friday, Dec. 21, 2018, photo, Maddi Heim folds and sorts donated clothes at Treehouse, a nonprofit organization in Seattle that serves the needs of children in the foster-care system. (Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

In his will he left $2.4 million to the Pediatric Interim Care Center, a private organization caring for babies born to mothers who abused drugs. There, children whose fetal development had been impaired because they were exposed in utero to drugs are helped to be weaned off their at-birth dependency.

Another $900,000 was given to the Treehouse foster-care organization. They were informed that he was a foster parent years earlier, with children in his care taken to the group's warehouse where state wards are able to select toys and necessities, supplied without cost. The money Mr. Naiman left to Treehouse is being earmarked for an expansion of its college and career counselling, state-wide.

His generosity didn't end there. He also, in his will, left generous donations to other children's charities, such as Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center, which provides therapeutic horseback riding for young people with disabilities, as well as to WestSide Baby, which distributes new and used items to low-income families.

Chris Meyer, left, and Maddi Heim, at Treehouse, a nonprofit organization in Seattle that serves the needs of children in the foster-care system

 

 

Statistical Bias and Perceptions on Religious Devotion

"Caring for others versus personal fulfillment, those are two very different value constructs. And the relationship between them and religiosity is really significant."
"What this survey proves is that having a faith, being part of a faith community, seems to propel people in the direction of developing higher levels of compassion or caring."
"I find it noteworthy that we have significant divisions in this country on some moral issues, and those divisions seem to be heavily correlated with religious belief and membership in faith communities."
"We like to sometimes paint ourselves as this country where, unlike the United States, which has deep value differences, we are all sort of linked arm-to-arm on all issues. Actually, that's not true."
Angus Reid, founder/chairman, Angus Reid Institute

"On the one hand, in contrast to the prevalent public narrative that religion is private and it doesn't mater, it's quite clear that for the vast majority of Canadians, it does. Over half say, 'Religion is actually shaping my identity and my decisions'."
"On the other hand, that engagement is a relatively thin engagement."
Ray Pennings, executive vice-president, Christian think-tank Cardus

While some Canadians might not attend religious institutions like church regularly, many of them have religious views and personal faith. (Chris Corday/CBC) 

 

On Mr. Reid's part, the recent survey his firm conducted allied with Faith in Canada 150, appears to validate for him a foregone conclusion -- that religious faith makes us better people, more aware of the needs of others, willing to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of aiding others, and being more receptive to the need to be charitable and generous and caring. On Mr. Penning's part, that validation has a bitter core; that not enough members of the broader public have committed to religious adherence and those that have do so in a tepid manner. Religion or not people who live fulfilled lives themselves tend to be more generous with others; it's called simple human decency.



This project took a year to gauge the beliefs of Canadians who took part in the poll to arrive at a consensus on their religious practices. People responding to the questions were divided into four distinct categories identifying them  as a) non-believers on to b) religiously committed devotees regularly attending places of worship. Responding to the choice of two alternatives representing their idea of "the best way to live life", 53 percent chose "achieving our own dreams and happiness" rather than "being concerned about helping others".

When religion was brought into the equation, it was found that 67 percent of those committed to religion chose helping others, while 65 percent of non-believers selected the personal pursuit of happiness. Something seems to be missing here, and that is the common-sense understanding that people who are happy and satisfied are more likely and able to extend themselves to helping others, while those who are miserable are usually so caught up in their situation they are  most often incapable of giving aid to others.

Across different regions of Canada the question elicited different responses, with the Province of Quebec scoring the highest proportion of people selecting for self-fulfillment at 65 percent, while Alberta was second at 54 percent and British Columbia came next at 43 percent. Elsewhere in Canada, a majority of respondents selected giving aid to others; Saskatchewan proving the most generous at 59 percent.

Oddly enough, Quebecers were traditionally the most bound to Catholicism before undergoing a sweeping change where the Catholic Church stepped back during the Quiet Revolution as formerly devout parishioners rebelled against the stranglehold on life of the Church. And Quebec is the province whose administration is the most broadly social-welfare inclined, so Quebecers are accustomed to having things done for them, not to doing for others. Religious devotion still plays a private, not a public role in the province, despite which Quebecers are parsimonious when it comes to funding charities.



A total of 2,006 Canadian adults took part in the survey and responded to a series of questions with clear moral overtones. Pollsters concluded that the two groups representing the religious spectrum, both privately faithful and religiously committed were likelier to agree that:

• Canada should accept fewer immigrants and refugees;
• They would be uncomfortable if a child planned to marry someone from a different cultural or religious background;
• There should not be a greater social acceptance of people who are LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer);
• Preserving life is more important than people's freedom to choose on issues like abortion and doctor-assisted death;

Which hardly shines a socially g enerous light on religious adherents; rather their socially conservative attitude bespeaks issues of intolerance and a lack of openly generous impulse. Another question was where the poll led participants to select the statement they felt reflected their personal views:

• People are fundamentally sinners and in need of salvation; or
• People are essentially good and sin has been invented to control people.

The essential goodness of people was selected by two thirds of those pooled while the religiously committed, providing roughly one-fifth of the survey group, felt by 73 percent that people are fundamentally sinners. The concept of right and wrong in absolute terms or a vacillating conception was posed as well with a large majority of 68 percent finding that right or wrong "depends on the circumstances", while close to 66 percent outright rejected that moral questions' outcome differ for different cultures.



Religiously committed were the most likely to claim universal rights apply to the entire human race, at 74 percent. And they represented people stating their faith to be of primary importance to their personal identity at 54 percent, and to their day-to-day lives at 55 percent. Of course religion, as does culture and heritage, shapes an individual's values and colours the way others are viewed; human beings are programmed by nature to cleave to those who share like commitments and values. Which should not deter them from viewing those outside their groups as worthy, but that too reflects basic human nature.

Freshly Sainted

"[I] thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsigneur, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic."
Christopher Hitchens, critic, author (deceased)

"Mother Teresa would have said, 'I'm not called to be successful but faithful. And if not for what we do there'd be more suffering and misery'."
"She was not working to eradicate the structures of poverty. Her concern was to bring immediate and effective health to the people who needed help and shelter."
Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, designated principal promoting sainthood for Mother Teresa

AFP --  The Nobel laureate nun, who died in 1997, founded the Missionaries of Charity

During her lifetime, Mother Teresa was a controversial figure. A woman of stern but humble mien, a disciple of the worship of Christ through her work with the Catholic Church, this diminutive woman was dispatched to India by her church to work in the field of education in the ways of Christianity. She was born in 1910 in Albania, as Agnes Bojaxhiu, and she dedicated her entire life to supporting the well-being of the humanly deprived.

She had a host of admirers who viewed her self-abnegation and total commitment to easing the passage from miserable life to the release of death for the world's marginalized and forgotten, people who lived on the street in India, foraging for sustenance, beset by the outcomes of dreadful diseases, not the least of which was old age, hastened by ill fortune.

She moved most people to examine the lack of their own compassion for the underdogs of this Earth. Her admirers included world leaders, both political and religious. Celebrities wanted to have their photographs taken alongside that of this woman who elicited strong emotions of both authentic admiration and virulent hostility; admittedly the latter category a small contingent of individuals, while the former constituted legions.

For through the force of her personality and her dedication to her vision of goodness and decency she demonstrated that one person could somehow manage to move mountains. Whatever her detractors said and felt about her, her more manifold supporters applauded her devotion to the welfare of human beings deprived of any hope, status or future in society.

Father Kolodiejchuk, Winnipeg-born, knew Mother Teresa for 20 years as a priest with the Missionaries of Charity, in Toronto. Appointed her postulator striving toward her canonization, 35,000 pages of documents and testimony was compiled by him for presentation to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Two verifiable miracles attributable to Mother Teresa's intervention with God were also presented.

In 1998 an Indian woman's cure from cancer was deemed to have resulted from praying to Mother Teresa, and ten years later a Brazilian engineer dying from multiple brain abscesses went into remission, again attributed to the intervention of Mother Teresa. The Congregation interviewed individuals who gave their opinion as to her outstanding qualities for which she should be anointed a saint, or that designation rejected.

The late acid-tongued intellectual Christopher Hitchens, a convinced atheist, found her qualities to be emphasized beyond their actual value, and that she was wanting in areas where she should have striven to excel. Critics like himself felt she relied upon poverty to enable her to make her mark in life, prepared to aid those whom privation struck, but not to campaign to end the poverty that assailed them.

Her traditional Catholic opposition to contraception and birth control, and her devotion in the belief suffering must be interpreted as a gift from God to make us better human beings failed to convince Mr. Hitchens and his supporters that she was the magnificent soul she was purported to represent. As Christ suffered on the cross, so too must others experience first-hand what it is to suffer to be whole, and united with their Saviour.

Her legacy is undeniable. At her death in 1997, the Missionaries that she founded working in the unforgiving slums of Calcutta numbered among them four thousand members, and an order of allied priests. At the present time, five thousand members have dedicated themselves to service to humanity in over 567 homes worldwide.

Her own relationship with the deity she revered was a troubling one. "As for myself, I just have the joy of having nothing -- not even the reality of the Presence of God", she wrote painfully. "No prayer, no love, no faith -- nothing but continual pain of longing for God", she wrote in personal reflections, the Dark Night of the Soul.

The Saleability of Cutesy Genius (For a Good Cause)

"She doesn't have to do it. We always ask her: 'Do you want to paint today?' and if she says yes, we'll set it up."
"The only thing is that we try to maintain the focus. She wants all the colours out all the time, so if she says after two minutes, 'I'm done', we try to encourage her."
Daryl Swart, music producer

"Some of it ['art' produced by a 4-year-old] is interesting. I would be remiss if I said we have a genius here. Sometimes you put paint down. Sometimes it happens to be interesting."
"We don't know whether it's good art. It has to address a particular knowledge base."
"I'm not sure I'm right there. Sometimes things just feel right."
Gerald Hushlak, professor of painting, University of Calgary

"There is something pure about a child who is not thinking too hard, and can just feel it rather than thinking about it."
"At the same time, we started looking at her paintings and we were seeing that they were turning out really nice."
Kristy-Anne Swart, photographer

Jen Gerson/National Post    Four-year-old Cosette Swart has raised almost $4,000 for World Vision by selling 40 of her abstract paintings.

"Looking at the work, I think there are things that are important to point out that are valid. The work is imbued with a sense of freedom, it represents a sense of innocence. It looks very fresh, and it's certainly playful. That's something most people actually look for in their life."
"Children are really adept at presenting an unbridled creativity, sometimes."
Dick Averns, instructor, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary

Now that really is taking artistic license. It's similar to swooning over the non-representational 'art' work of a 'genius' like Mark Rothko and calling it authentic artistic vision, when what it actually  represents is the ability of those who profess to know artistic genius when they see it, persuading skeptics that it is art. When someone like Jackson Pollock producing sheer unadulterated crap and raking in millions for the effort, gulling people lacking their own aesthetic appreciation of art that what they're viewing is the genuine thing.

But then, a lot of people think that abstract art is wonderful because they've been told by art experts that it is. On the other hand, perhaps the colours and their juxtaposition on a canvass appeal to the colour sense and personal style of people who feel that spending outrageous sums of money for work that is heralded as fresh and new and groundbreaking, entering a wonderful new era of artistic expression reflects well on their taste, their values, if not their smug belief that they've scored really well on acquiring a piece of investment junk.

In Calgary there is a little girl of four, Cosette Swart, whose parents are absorbed in the belief that their child is an artistic prodigy. Cosette's mother Kristy-Anne speaks of her child's 'latent genius' and the objective quality of modern art. Subjectively the question is, is it art? The artistic geniuses of antiquity to the modern era did produce fabulous works of art. But once abstract imagery began to influence the art world, art itself began to degenerate when modernists painted splotches of colour with no discernible form or intent.

Jen Gerson / National Post  Four-year-old Cosette Swart pictured here in her art studio, also known as 

her family's Calgary kitchen, with mother Kristy-Anne Swart.

The family of this child has set up a website, and there they feature the paintings that this little girl produces. They are, needless to say, for sale. The proceeds of which are to benefit charity. The family says that their precocious little girl's art has intrigued people to the extent that 60 of her paintings have found homes at prices between $15 and $275 each. Little Cosette has taken to spreading paint on her canvas with the use of a plastic fork. Sounds about average for a child her age, experimenting with colour and imagery.

Already, even at age four Cosette is a veteran for her interest in art began at age three when the plight of disadvantage children in Africa moved her to declare she had a wish to help the "poor people". Now that is an insight that one would be hard put to relate to the introspective charitable impulse of a three-year-old. Certainly not without some adult prompting. And nor is Cosette the first very young child whose dabbling in art has earned her recognition by the media, resulting in an avid interest by prospective art aficionados.

It's just that most people who have an instinctive reaction to and love for what they consider to be authentic and creatively beautiful art -- recognizably representational art -- might wonder if there wasn't a bit of parental pride gone amok here. Transferring personal aspirations and pride to offspring. Not that this alone wholly represents what is occurring here in hailing a new artistic genius, since the experts in artistic expression themselves have a lot to answer for.

And here's one answer by Erin O'Connor, managing director of the Contemporary Calgary gallery who noted "the honest art of a four-year-old has a super-high feel-good factor". Given a modest financial investment, buyers take possession of a "fresh unique piece of contemporary art that has a great story behind it". And she said it without the whisper of a blush.

But it does go a long way to explaining why it is that some skeptics on seeing a hugely expensive acquisition by a national gallery of art scoff that their child could produce something just as good.

Barnett Newman work, Voice of Fire. National Gallery of Canada

Realities Beneath an Advanced Economy

"Currently in Ontario there are 1.7 million jobs that are considered insecure. Since the 2008 recession, of the jobs created in Canada, 80 percent have been temporary positions. That means people with full-time jobs are still having trouble making ends meet."
"I think the biggest message is that it's still astronomically high [food bank usage]. It's too many hungry people. People often think that people accessing food banks are 'riding the system'. That is so incredibly inaccurate."
"The social services being provided by the government are insufficient and as a result people have to look to external sources to make ends meet. Hunger is not actually the problem, hunger is a symptom of the problem, which is poverty. Fundamentally, people do not have the means to afford basic living in Ontario and that is an issue."
"When people think of a food bank they think of it as a place for non-perishable food that's given out maybe in a hamper, but food banks have grown so far beyond that. Food banks are very much becoming hubs for social innovation."
Amanda King, Ontario Association of Food Banks

© Photo OCCRC

Local firefighters collected over 33,350 items for the Orléans-Cumberland foodbank.

When people think of food banks what is conjured before their eyes is a homeless person, an elderly person living on welfare, just generally people at the very lowest stratum of the economic-social ladder who need a boost to allow them to obtain subsistence levels of nutrition. The majority of the population complaining about rising costs of everything, including food, are still able to afford the necessities of life. People in severely straitened financial situations cannot.

And these are not always only the people living hand-to-mouth, waiting for a miracle to lift them out of poverty and in the meanwhile taking advantage of what food supplies the local food bank can supply them with to supplement their own meagre resources. These are people who through no fault of their own have fallen on very hard times as well. These are people who though universal medicare covers their health costs, fall in arrears when a catastrophic illness hits because they cannot pay for housing and food.

They can include people who have always worked their way through the games of life, but whom life has thrown an unanticipated hardball at. People who are single, people who are the sole wage earners in a family, people with university degrees, people who formerly worked in the health care or social service provisioning field, who have suddenly had the comfort of everyday existence yanked out from under. Including children in their teen years finding themselves approaching a situation they need help with.

Workers and volunteers sort through food donations at the Cumberland/Orleans Food Bank

Yes, those visiting food banks also represent the alcoholics, the drug addicts, those who would prefer anything but work of hard labour to get them through the working week, but food bank registrants represent anyone in society in need of compassionate help, and they have grown in numbers over the years. Bearing in mind that Canada ranks among the wealthy countries who managed to make it through the global recession relatively unscathed.

In a report released a few days ago it was revealed that the number of Ontario households for the first time requiring that special assistance was on an increase. The annual survey produced by the Ontario Association of Food Banks compared food bank usage year over year, finding a 20 percent rise in first-time applicant-users, resulting in 17,182 households deemed to have accessed food banks, a rise over last year's 14,206 total households.

These are people requiring social assistance of an extraordinary measure to help them place food on their tables; from single people responsible for themselves alone, to families with children to feed. The quality and quantity of employment opportunities appear logically the most likely culprit in the search for a meaningful answer to the conundrum of a need that was felt would dwindle, not increase when food banks first came into existence.

Ontario's food banks were used by 374,698 people in March of 2014 -- a figure slightly lower than the 375,698 people requiring those services last March. The Ontario Association of Food Banks estimates that 770,000 individuals make use of food banks on an annual basis. Since 1998, the report noted, monthly food bank use has not dropped below 370,000 individuals. Prior to the 2008 recession, 314,000 people made use of food banks in March of 2008.

Single-individual households represent 46% of food bank users, while 35% of those requiring the aid of food banks are children. As a possible way to meet the challenge of feeding people who require that basic minimum nutrition to be provided through an outside source, while living a life of notable privation, the report speaks to the provincial government for the implementation of a monthly Ontario housing benefit grant to low-income tenants based on rent and income.



As well, it urges consideration for an increase in payments to Ontario's social assistance programs, and that government provide funding for the transportation of fresh food to Ontario's most vulnerable communities. The Ontario Association of Food Banks is a network of 125 food banks across the province, as well as over 1,100 hunger relief programs and agencies province-wide. The situation in Ontario is reflected across the country.

So much for living in Canada, a technologically, socially advanced member of the G7, lauded for its ability to withstand the rigours of the global recession that left Canada in the best shape of all its partners in democracy and prosperity.

Ill-Fated

"We are deeply saddened by her sudden and tragic death yesterday. Laurie was a strong, intelligent, energetic and beautiful person who will be deeply missed by the family, friends and co-workers who loved her so much."
Strano family statement

Laurie Strano, 40, until recently an executive with The Ottawa Hospital, died Saturday morning in a collision with a garbage truck on River Road south of Manotick.
Handout photo / Strano family

"This is a horrific tragedy and a loss to everyone. Laurie Strano was a wonderful, bright and dedicated member of our family at The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. She will be deeply missed."
George Weber, president and CEO, The Royal Ottawa Hospital

Emergency services attend the scene of a crash where 40-year-old woman is dead after being hit by a dump truck while riding her bike near River Road and Doyle Road in Manotick on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2014.

 

Laurie Strano appears to have been a high achiever; identified while in public school for an enriched study program; apart from her academics she was an inspiring athlete. Highly respected in her professional life, she made lifelong friendships. The tragedy is that her life was not a long one. She met her end at the age of 40, a mother of two young children, a boy of nine, and a girl of six. She was looking forward to a second marriage, in November.

Laurie Strano was taking part in a bicycle ride to raise funds for cancer research. Herself a triathlete and an experienced cyclist she was among 900 bicyclists taking part in the Ride the Rideau fundraising event She was three hours into her 100-kilometre ride participating in this charitable event as someone with great bicycling experience, unlike most of those taking part in the fundraising drive. People were riding together in groups.

There were no dedicated bicycle lanes at that juncture on River Road in Manotick, as there are elsewhere in Ottawa. It was raining heavily on Saturday morning, the rain didn't stop until well after noon, when the sun came out from behind grey clouds. But Laurie Strano would never see the sun again, let alone once more be with her two  young children. She was killed in a violent collision with a garbage truck, in Manotick, an Ottawa suburb.

Ironically, in her working life, Laurie Strano was latterly the director of patient safety and risk management at The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre where she had transferred from her work with The Ottawa Hospital. Her fiance works at The Ottawa Hospital; they were to be married during a holiday in Cancun, Mexico. She was riding along with her old colleagues, the senior leadership team representing The Ottawa Hospital at the time of the accident.

This was by no means her first fund-raising ride for Ride the Rideau; she had been part of the event for years past. As an accomplished athlete she had the experience of competing in many triathlons, duathlons, ten-kilometre runs, half-marathons and Masters swimming events. In her high school years she was recognized as a competitive gymnast and swimmer. She earned a physiology degree from McGill University and a master's degree in health administration with the University of Ottawa.

But on this fateful day of high aspirations and good fellowship, a 911 call went out at 11:03 a.m. Saturday and paramedics arrived at the River Road destination in Manotick to find her dead at the scene, the result of catastrophic injuries. Some of the witnesses to the shocking accident were treated by paramedics for shock, while members of The Ottawa Hospital social work team did their best to assist some of the traumatized witnesses.

The result was that over 400 riders were taken off the course as a police investigation into the accident required that the accident site be shut down. The ride was then cancelled as a precautionary measure lest any other accidents occur, as well as to aid police in conducting their investigation. The over 900 cyclists who took part in the event raised $2.3-million for cancer research at The Ottawa Hospital.

"We're doing this for a reason: to save lives because we all know someone who has been touched by cancer. So the last thing you expect to hear is that someone has been killed in the middle of trying to do a good thing. I feel terrible", said Inez Quinn, after cycling 76 kilometres, reacting to the news that, someone had lost their life while striving to help advance cancer science, requiring that the event be called off.

A ghost bike has been placed on River Road just outside of Manotick at the site of the accident that killed Laurie Strano during Saturday’s Ride the Rideau.
Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen

The Entitlement of Fraud

The Ottawa charity that provides housing and education for developmentally handicapped adults is out almost a million dollars. Through no fault of their own -- on the other hand, through their own fault, perhaps, for not being sufficiently alert to the potential of fraud by the very individual who they trusted for over a decade to act as their finance director.

Total Communication Environment has seen its former finance director, fifty-year-old Yolande Knight, plead guilty to defrauding them over an eight-year period -- while in complete control of their finances -- of no less than $800,000, perhaps closer to $900,000. She was arrested in 2010. Her salary at that time was a rather rich $90,000 annually.

Obviously, though most people would be satisfied with that remuneration, Ms. Knight thought she could do better, and was entitled to vastly more. So she undertook to expense her corporate credit card with such items as:

• $77,944 for home furnishings and new appliances;
• $152,04 for Amway products;
• $68,937 for groceries;
• $50,742 for gas and car repairs;
• $10,885 for spa treatments;
• $19,839 for hairdressing;
• $77,271 for Internet and telecom;
• $12,175 for theatre and shows;
• $36,088 for foreign travel and shopping;
• $38,844 for domestic travel;
• $33,147 at restaurants;
• $3,871 at LCBO/Beer Store.

Clearly, Ms. Knight rated herself very highly for compensation on behalf of her efforts representing the needs of handicapped adults and the charity for which she had worked since 1997. Her qualifications must have been quite high for bookkeeping, but no one likely thought it a requirement to look into her moral standards and sense of selfhood as extremely deserving of a lavish lifestyle, courtesy of charity.

Yolanda Knight, shown here in 2006, accepted cheques for Total Communication Environment regularly. CTV News

She was, in fact, quite the charitable type of individual. She used her corporate credit card to purchase airline tickets for family and friends, and laptop computers and radios for her boyfriend in Haiti. She had sent over $60,000 of her entitled gains to Haiti, where her boyfriend, Rene St.Fort, was in the competition for president of the country. No doubt Mr. St.Fort was most helpful in mentoring Ms. Knight's venture into entitlement.

He had been himself sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in 2002, having been found guilty of three counts of fraud over $5,000. He had been found guilty by a Haitian judge of defrauding three banks of $351,000; assisting two women to obtain mortgages with the use of false names and employment and credit information.

In the fall of 2009, a financial audit finally unearthed discrepancies in accounts, revealing the truth that the charity's trust in their financial director had been badly misplaced. "Ms. Knight hid her fraudulent conduct by manipulating the general ledgers and reports to the board of directors of TCE" the presiding judge stated without equivocation.

Yolande Knight covers her face as she leaves the Elgin Street Courthouse in this file photo/Ottawa Citizen

Compassion is its Own Reward

"Once I started using that church, feeling good about myself, my friends started taking me into their places. Good things started happening for me."
"I was inebriated so often that I really didn't give a thought about it until I actually went. I was a wreck."
"Slowly, through time, the staff started helping me out, got me a pair of glasses, just helped me get my dental work done, and they supported me when I was sobering up. Now I'm housed. I don't really drink any more."
"At the (other) shelters, there's just way too many people. I never felt that any of my stuff was safe. I didn't like that whole scene."
Kyle Hiemstra, 26, Ottawa

 

Kyle Hiemstra, left and outreach worker Jason Pino and chat in the basement of First Baptist Church on Laurier Ave West. Pino and the church received a bylaw exemption allowing them to shelter a small number of homeless people one night a week on a trial basis.     Photograph by: Chris Mikula , Ottawa Citizen

"We've had absolutely no issues at all - no thievery or stealing. There's never been an issue of having to call the police. There's been no acts of violence."
Outreach worker Jason Pino

"We're heating the building. We have the space. It seems foolish just to let the mice run around. I'm not saying we have mice, but it's kind of a waste of space, in my view, if (a shelter) can be done responsibly. So why not?"
First Baptist Church Rev. Scott Kindred-Barnes

Sometimes it takes the compassion of strangers to fill in where family and friends have thrown up their hands in exasperated surrender to their inability to aid a young and vulnerable and dreadfully needy family member. Sometimes it's lack of patience, or of adequate dedication to the weary, soul-searching task at hand to apply themselves to the arduous effort required to turn a young person's life back to what is considered socially normal. Sometimes it may be indifference.

So thank nature for all that is good and altruistic that resides in the hearts and conscience of people who have nothing personal to gain in going to great lengths to help those whom fortune has deserted. People like Jason Pino who worked for a year to finally get the City of Ottawa's approval to use his church as a temporary, safe shelter meant specifically to give aid and encouragement to young people living on the street.

"A lot of churches are known as places of sanctuary ... we felt we should be allowed to do this" explained Mr. Pino, who operates the church shelter program through what is called Restoring Hope Ministries charity. It has proven to be such a successful humanitarian enterprise at the local level that the City of Ottawa is now looking around to find other churches willing to similarly commit their premises and supervision to emulating the First Baptist Church.

It wasn't an easy transition from living on the streets to tentatively agreeing to give this new haven a chance. Kyle Hiemstra began staying overnight once a week in the church's basement in the company of five other young people in need of emergency housing. When he finally did arrive for the first time, he liked the shelter. He slept on a pullout cot, chatted with others and played board and video games. "I don't really see it as a church", he said, still returning occasionally.

According to Ottawa's Alliance to End Homelessness 7,308 people used shelters in 2012. The city is looking to broadening interest among places of worship for the accommodation of service of this kind, city planner Alain Miguelez, explained. "What we basically want to do is something that's well suited for Ottawa", he said of the program that first began in Toronto in 1987 following the winter death of a homeless man.

Baby and Infant Care

"When we suggested the baby shelter in June, there was a lot of criticism that I was teaching people how to commit a crime.
"There have been a lot of wild accusations. Some have suggested that the number of abandonments will shoot up, others that baby traffickers will lie in wait outside the shelter and steal infants."
Tang Rongsheng, former head of Shenzhen, China's social welfare centre

Welfare personnel set up a portable room as safe haven for abandoned babies in Nanjing, on Nov 27. [Zhao Jie/for China Daily]

"Abandoning a baby is a crime. But during the process of committing this crime, babies are the victims. Since the root of the crime ... cannot be solved in the blink of an eye, it is a good option to shift our focus to protecting those victims."
Peng Xizhe, Fudan University, professor specializing in public policy and social development

Pictured: Shenzhen Welfare Center (Image: thenanfang.com)

A baby abandoned within a garbage can. Before it was rescued, its vulnerable exposure left it with organ damage. Another child abandoned in a public lavatory, and another yet left outside a hospital. It is illegal to abandon a baby in China. But it is also illegal to have more than one child. If a child is born with physical or mental handicaps, that ties the parents forever to the care of their sole offspring with very special needs; costly, time-consuming and absent the reward in pride of having produced a normal child.

That is one source of abandoned babies. Another is single women finding themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, and no practical means to raise a child on her own. Let alone the social shame that accompanies such a birth. Better to surrender it to an unknown fate. These events of foundlings and social responsibility has resulted in a growing need to make accommodations for the babies their parents spurn through perceived practical need or for any other reason.

Increasingly, cities across the country have taken to offering shelters where babies can be left anonymously and with safety to the child. Shelters that come equipped with an incubator, blankets, oxygen on standby and an alert button that the parent may press to alert staff to the presence of a new responsibility. 

It is held to be transients, migrating from the country to urban centers in search of work, that are those mostly who are abandoning their own responsibilities to their unwanted babies, and leaving them as the responsibility of civil authorities. Young women far from home whom circumstances and fortune have betrayed and left with little option. And who can now furtively take steps to leave their child in capable hands.

When Mr. Tang, as head of Shenzhen's social welfare centre, first spoke of taking in abandoned children, there was a loud backlash of citizens horrified at the thought that this would end up encouraging irresponsible people to unburden themselves of vulnerable children. That the city of several million people would wind up caring for an unwieldy number of abandoned children.

Now, however, Mr. Tang's suggestion has the recommendation of Beijing. And Baby Shelters are to be built nationwide, according to an announcement by Dou Yupei, vice-minister of the civil affairs bureau in Beijing. And within the social welfare centre of Shenzhen where the municipal orphanage is located, 560 children are present, many of whom speak of Mr. Tang as "Father Tang". 

 

The children live in dormitories. Nurseries and classrooms are well-staffed, clean and airy. Many of these children will eventually be adopted. Many more never will be. Those who are judged to be too mentally or physically handicapped for prospective adoptive parents to cope with. But they will be cared for.

Poverty and Homelessness

"It's not high in terms of people's level of consciousness and it isn't a high priority for senior levels of governments. They've worked around the edges but haven't invested the kind of money you need to put the housing and support in place to get these folks off the street and into reasonable housing. When you achieve that, homelessness becomes transitional -- a quick turnover. That's where we want to get to."
"They stay there waiting for subsidized housing to become available, and typically, if they get subsidized housing through a rent supplement or social housing, they never come back -- their homelessness is done. But they are staying longer in shelters because they are waiting longer, and they are waiting longer because of limited housing stock. With kids, they're not looking for bachelors or one-bedrooms."
"It's a significant problem affecting a significant number of people, and we've made no headway in the ten years we've been collecting data on it. Homeless can be solved. We never used to have this problem. We had programs."
Tim Aubry, University of Ottawa professor, community housing specialist

It's difficult to conceive of, in a country as wealthy as Canada that so many of its citizens live in poverty. Even worse, given that there are social welfare organizations operated by municipal governments and churches to help the low-wage earners struggling to make ends meet, that there are large numbers of homeless people living in the towns and cities of the country. These are not just the working poor and those on welfare, but those afflicted by mental illness and drug and alcohol addictions.

Canada once had mental institutions to which people with mental afflictions were referred. They were out of harm's way, with medical attention provided as required. Life wasn't optimal for them, but they were by and large protected both from themselves and from their mental illness impacting on society at large. And then came the time when advocates for the mentally ill conceived of the notion that they would be far better off on their own, independent, with assistance when and as needed.

Government leaped at the opportunity to rid itself of expensive medical-hospitalization institutions housing the mentally ill, and those mental institutions became history, and the mentally ill were finally free, free to wander about as they wished, free to take their prescribed medications if they wished to, or not, if they declined. Little wonder their conditions deteriorated, both their mental health and their well-being, as rather than being housed they became the great unhoused.

The Alliance to End Homeless pointed out that there are approximately one thousand beds in shelters for the homeless in Ottawa. And the trouble with that is that there were 7,308 single people and family members using shelters in 2012. The statistics are sobering; 858 families looking for affordable housing in the city of Ottawa, the nation's capital; sharing facilities at the city's two centres for homeless families, awaiting their time on a waiting list to finally result in the housing they need.

There are 1,125 homeless single woman, and 381 homeless youth. What could possibly be more desperate than to be without the security of a home, of warmth and comfort, food and the company of loved ones. Youth are in transit, living off the streets for a variety of reasons, often enough because they've suffered abuse, because they've been rejected, because they have no other choice. Some live on the street while trying to attend school

"These are people who have come from a harder place. A shelter is a scary place but the people in there have run out of options. They are often mentally ill or have an addiction and they're often not allowed to go back home. But the chronically homeless have lived in shelters for so long, you can't just put them in a place where they have nobody to talk to or nobody to eat with At least shelters give them that. So once they are housed, what resources are you going to give them? You can't just put them in a building without support. The federal government has been dragging its feet for a long time", said the former executive director of the Ottawa Mission, now Ottawa Food Bank chair.

The city government launched a five-year plan named The Road to Ending Homelessness in Ottawa and it is now into its last year. The observation was made that neither the federal nor provincial governments have been involved to the extent they should be to ensure that the program meets with success. Given that our self-respect as a society is involved here, and more importantly the well-being and needs of a vulnerable demographic is not being met, much depends on their doing just that.

Research has demonstrated that giving people self-respect back and the opportunity to live normal lives by providing them with shelter, with helpful supervision and health care, and the encouragement to turn their lives around, seeking employment and security, is an investment that pays off handsomely. As it is, the cost to hospitalize people in response to medical emergencies, the cost of police services, and temporary shelter is far more expensive to the public purse than doing the decent thing.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon hit by winter storm

BBC News online -- 11 December 2013

Syrian refugees are living in makeshift homes in harsh winter conditions

The UN says it is "extremely concerned" for Syrian refugees in Lebanon as a fierce winter storm bears down.

There has been snow, rain, high winds and freezing temperatures in the north of the country and the Bekaa Valley, home to more than 200 informal camps.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was "working harder than ever" to protect the more than 800,000 Syrians sheltering in Lebanon.

The Lebanese army is helping distribute emergency kits, including blankets.

Where Syrian refugees are

• 838,000 in Lebanon
• 567,000 in Jordan
• 540,000 in Turkey
• 207,000 in Iraq
• 129,000 in Egypt
• 6.5 million others displaced inside Syria

(Source: UNHCR)

"We are worried, because it is really cold in the Bekaa region, and we're extremely worried about the refugees living in makeshift shelters, because many are really substandard," UNHCR spokeswomen Lisa Abou Khaled told the AFP news agency.

At least 80,000 refugees will have to spend the winter in tents. Many others are living in unfinished or unheated buildings with only slightly more protection.

Ms Abou Khaled said the UNHCR had stockpiles of items to help refugees whose shelters might be damaged or destroyed, including plastic sheeting, floor mats, blankets and mattresses. Supplies have also been given to local councils.

"The Syrian refugees here are shivering with cold, especially the ones in tents," said Wafiq Khalaf, a councillor in Arsal, a town in the northern Bekaa Valley that has seen 20,000 people arrive in the past few months.

"Water has come into the tents from the roofs, and from the ground where there is flooding," he told AFP. "At the moment there is more than 10cm (3.9in) of snow on the ground, but more is expected."

Almost 2.3 million Syrians have fled into neighbouring countries

 

The BBC's Jim Muir in the Bekaa Valley met one family who were feeding their fire with old shoes because they could not afford firewood, despite their children being barefoot.

There are similar scenes across the region as hundreds of thousands of refugees improvise desperately to stay alive, our correspondent adds.

Forecasters are predicting between 7.6cm and 13cm of snow in total.

The latest warning comes after the UNHCR announced on Tuesday that it would be airlifting food and other aid items into northern Syria from Iraq for the first time.

Twelve planeloads of supplies will be flown in over the next few days, ahead of what the UN fears will be the region's harshest winter in a century.

The decision was made after land convoys were shot at, harassed, and detained at check points, officials said.

Almost 2.3 million Syrians have fled into neighbouring countries since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, according to the UN. There are also an estimated 6.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs) inside Syria, and many more in need of aid.

'Parents' of Greek Roma girl Maria give DNA to police

BBC News online -- 24 October 2013

Sasha Ruseva, named by Bulgarian TV, said: "This woman said 'I'll take care of this child, give it to me'"

A Bulgarian couple suspected of being the biological parents of Maria, the young girl found in a Roma community in Greece, have been questioned by police.

Todor Proychev of the Bulgarian interior ministry said their DNA samples had been taken.
The couple have been named by Bulgarian media as Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev, from the central town of Nikolaevo.

A woman believed to be Ms Ruseva admitted on Bulgarian TV to giving up a baby girl in Greece four years ago.
But she denied reports she had received any payment.

She could not say for definite that Maria was hers, but said she burst into tears when she saw the girl on news reports. Maria bears a striking resemblance to some of her other children.

Maria came to the Greek police's attention after they raided the Roma camp near Farsala in central Greece last week.

They were initially searching for drugs and weapons, but noticed the lack of resemblance between the blonde-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned little girl and her parents. They found further discrepancies when they investigated the family's documents.

The couple, Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, have since been charged with child abduction. They have insisted the girl was given to them legitimately.

Maria is currently being cared for by the Athens-based charity The Smile of the Child. There have been 8,000 inquiries following an appeal to identify her, and the international police body Interpol is involved in the search for her biological family.

Christos Salis (R) and Eleftheria Dimopoulou (L) insist Maria was given to them legitimately

The couple believed to be Sasha Ruseva and Atanas Rusev, and their eight children, were filmed by Bulgarian television at their home in the Roma district of Nikolaevo.

Ms Ruseva, holding a child with red hair, told reporters that she and her husband had been working in the Greek town of Larisa four years ago when she gave birth to a girl.

The girl was seven months old when they had to return to Bulgaria, and she said she could not afford to take the child with her.

She said she was talking to a woman she worked with who told her: "Give me this child, I will take care of it. You can come and take it back anytime you want.

"But I had other children to take care of and I couldn't go... I have never got any money for it."

Greek news site zougla.gr has published what it says is the identity card of Ms Ruseva and a birth certificate for Maria from a hospital in Lamia, not far from Farsala and Larisa.
The birth certificate says the girl was born in January 2009.

Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou told police Maria was four years old, but the Smile of the Child charity say medical examinations suggest she is more like five or six.

Shifting Social Mores

Luca ZennaroThe Associated Press

"In only one blow, he carried out a very brilliant operation, separating the theme of homosexuality from that of pedophilia. We know that a part of reactionary clerical thought plays on the confusion between these two completely different categories."
Nichi Vendola, Italy's first openly gay governor

This man, Pope Francis, is an open book, speaking with clarity and kindness, a true shepherd of the Faith that he represents. "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge? We shouldn't marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society." An utterly refreshing change from his predecessor, Pope Francis speaks in gentle colours of gradations of grey between black and white.

All, he believes, evidently, are creations of the Divine Creator. If God loves them all as his children, who is his representative on Earth to question otherwise? It has been revealed that there exists a cadre of Roman Catholic priests who are gay. And while Pope Benedict XVI signed a 2005 document denying priesthood to those who were homosexual, conciliatory words pass this new Pope's lips. Clarifying how he feels, though while prepared to bless them, he forgives their 'sins'.

Forgiven for being, in other words, what nature has endowed them with. Nature, or God, however it is to be interpreted. Do we forgive people for being unattractive, for their dark complexions, for having flaxen hair, for being born blind or deaf, tall or short? Are those limitations to 'normalcy' seen as sins? Women are not and will not be permitted to serve the highest offices of the Church, precedent will not permit it.

They too, perhaps, should be forgiven for having been born the wrong gender to serve as priests. Their sin, then, is being female. Forgiveness will permit them, nonetheless, to serve their church, to serve in important ways, relevant to their religion and their times, but they may not serve as priests. Gays can, because they can be silent about their sexual orientation and appear without 'sin'. Women cannot guise themselves as men, therefore they may not serve as priests.

Pope Francis is clearly a devout and extremely good soul. How can he be faulted for believing, extolling and supporting the most basic precepts of his religion? He does because this is the manner in which he has been exposed to enable him to reach his exalted position by upholding the tenets of greatest important to the Roman Catholic Church.

His compassion and his willingness to present himself as a modestly ordinary human being is to his huge credit. He hides nothing, and speaks from his heart. He demurs rather than standing in judgement. Although he does judge greed and lack of compassion, and war-mongering and prejudice.

Ask no more of this good man.

Was It Inevitable?

A journalistic expose, or simply a close look behind the operation of a large charity? If and when a charity bases its impetus, focus and reputation on an eponymous source, perhaps that very fact itself should raise an instinctual awareness of possible skulduggery. If a charity's purpose is to raise funds for research into spinal-cord injuries, and to aid people coping with their disability as a result of having sustained such life-altering injuries, there are doubtless countless ways in which nomenclature can be used to good effect.

Naming a charity after someone who suffered a physical blow to his body, rendering it incapacitated, necessitating that other parts of the body be used skilfully to prove that a spirit could be undiminished by adversity might seem like a good idea, but on the other hand, perhaps not. Postmedia News journalist David Baines did some serious behind-the-scenes research on the Rick Hansen Foundation. The result of which was a revelatory and lengthy story about the operations of that charity.

"I am not aware of any other instances in which a Canadian charity has issued an official donation receipt for the 'donation' or licensing of the living person's name", commented Toronto lawyer and expert in charity law, Mark Blumberg, responding to a query. The query revolved around the issue of well-known personality, fund-raiser and charitable organization celebrity Rick Hanson having 'donated' rights to his name to the Rick Hansen Foundation -- a charity he founded and until fairly lately led -- for $1.8-million.

In recognition of his generosity to the foundation, a tax-deductible receipt from the Rick Hansen Foundation was issued to its former founder and head, Rick Hansen. The Foundation has charitable status, and it has an eleven-person board of directors, of which he remains a co-chair. Its function is twofold; mostly to raise funds for the Rick Hansen Institute, an organization researching spinal cord injuries. Its second function is to operate programs meant to improve quality of life for people living with spinal cord disabilities.

Noble enterprises, both. No one should be under any illusions that charities do not benefit individuals in other ways. Those are the individuals whom the charitable enterprises hire to operate them. Charities, as they grow and mature, and become high profile and hugely supported, are businesses. Those who are hired to work within them receive handsome salaries, raised through fundraising efforts, and utilized as part of any charity's operating expenses.

In Rick Hansen's case, he is reputed to have been paid over $350,000 annually as chief executive of his eponymous organization.

The charitable tax receipt he was given in exchange for his name-rights would save him $786,000 on his income tax. Not only do Canadians, singly and through corporations and government initiatives support the charity named after him which pays his salary, funds research and aid programs, but the Canadian taxpayer also generously funded that break on his tax return. Rick Hansen resigned as president and chief executive of the foundation bearing his name in 2011 to enable him to form the Rick Hansen Leadership Group.

That Rick Hansen Leadership Group, comprised of Mr. Hansen and three assistants is on contract to provide "leadership services" to the foundation. The foundation paid the leadership group $775,560 in 2012. Canada Revenue Agency is interested in reviewing the basis for the sale of Mr. Hansen's name to the foundation and the subsequent issuance of that charitable tax receipt. They are investigating through vetting a PricewaterhouseCoopers audit.

Away back in 1987 Rick Hansen came on the Canadian fund-raising scene, emulating in a manner, the internationally famous cross-country run by Terry Fox to raise Canadian consciousness and funding for bone-cancer research. Rick Hanson made his admirable mark on Canadian awareness of spinal cord injuries and research. Since that epic journey and the attendant public relations success for his Man in Motion gambit, anniversary relays have retraced that original route, raising funds and awareness.

Rick Hansen was greeted with applause as his Man in Motion tour left Ontario and entered Manitoba. Glenn Olsen / Winnipeg Free Press Archives Falcon Lake, MB - January 16, 1987

The foundation has also spent millions on fundraising events which have never quite resulted in charitable receipts coming in to surpass and even match the cost of the fundraising events. Shows that included performances by some of Canada's biggest entertainment celebrities, to kick off anniversary Man in Motion World Tours have made a splash, but not recouped their cost. At the 2012 event, Mr.Hansen spoke:

"This night would not have been possible without a dream, and, of course, the courage to try, and a country that believes in me. Once again, I find that the end is just the beginning and I look forward to the journey we will all take in the next 25 years."

Mr. Hansen is obviously a born entrepreneur. He has parlayed his medical-physical misfortune into a personal fortune. In the process he has done an immeasurable service to people with spinal cord injuries, to the medical profession, to research, and to support for those living with disabilities, in highlighting to the public what their needs are, and how they can be helped to achieve them.

It is, simply speaking, a pity that his original personal determination, courage and insistence on making a difference eventually morphed into his own personal endowment through his efforts in making the Rick Hansen Foundation a venue that apart from doing many of the right things, also does some quite questionable things to add to his personal enrichment.