The Warming Centre in North Bay officially opened its doors with a tour of its new location on Fisher Street, Sunday.
For the past four winters, the centre has been located at St. John the Divine Anglican Church on Main Street. It provided a place where people could drop by and warm up or spend the night when the temperature dropped to -20 with the windchill.
"St. John's was very supportive, but with how frequently we needed to be open for our guests and those in need, we kind of outgrew the space. And that's one of the reasons that sparked us to look for a new location like we have now," said Volunteer Lead Karrie Lepoudre.
The new location is in the Triple Link Centre, just look for the bright orange door.
"This location is about the same size, but it's laid out a little differently," said Lepoundre."It's very centrally located to a lot of the services that many of our guests need to access. When you look at counselling, crisis intervention, the Gathering Place which is a huge community partner of ours, accessing places like True Self, Canadian Mental Health Association, those groups, we're right in the walk line for them, and along the bus route."
The plan is to have eight cots permanently set up.
"If we needed to, we could do a bit of an overflow. But we also have agreements with other community partners if we get to our max, which is about 12. We also provide some hot food, soup, and sandwiches, if they have not been to some of the other community meals, or they're still hungry. Some of our volunteers provide casseroles, things like that. There's always snacks out and then in the morning they can have oatmeal, cereal or hard boiled eggs to go."
November and December will be for emergency openings.
"We're following the school board limit of -20 with the windchill, and that is if we have enough volunteers to be open a full rotation, which is three shifts. So we need a total of nine volunteers from about five o'clock in the evening, to eight-thirty in the morning. As of the first week of January, through to at least the first week of April, we will be open five nights a week permanently, from Wednesday night to Monday morning. The other two nights being emergency openings," said Lepoundre.
"The reason for that is so we're not burning out our volunteers. It gives us time to restock, do laundry and proper cleaning, and train our volunteers. We see the occasional lady, but most are men aged 20 to 70. It's not that they couldn't go to some of the other agencies, sometimes it's a personal choice. We don't ask a lot of questions, so they have comfort and safety in coming to us."
Lepoudre says it has taken 10 months to get where they are today.
Dave Radcliffe. a volunteer member of the Warming Centre committee says it has been a real community effort.
"We basically had to take everything out, we had to take some of the walls down, take the floors out, we just finished about a week ago. We had people from the community coming in and helping us, doing things like flooring and ceiling tiles, painting, cleaning, building the kitchen, donating all the appliances. Without all the help, we couldn't have done it," said Radcliffe.
"And we're still grateful for getting any type of donations of winter apparel or blankets or gift certificates for food stores and Tim Hortons, places like that, that they can use."
The public is also invited to join the Warming Centre Club.
"Our operational goal is to raise about $16,000. It's what we need for rent, equipment, cleaning supplies, all that, to operate for one full year," said Lepoudre. "We are asking for donations to our Warming Centre Club, and it is only for operations because we are a volunteer, donation based group."
For more information on how to donate or volunteer, contact [email protected] or call 705-495-0508.
