Montreal’s Old Brewery Mission celebrates 135th anniversary with inauguration of new living spaces

The Old Brewery Mission is celebrating its 135th anniversary with the inauguration of their new living spaces for Montreal men in need.

No more dormitories, they now have semi-private rooms.

The completed renovations includes all five floors of the Webster Pavilion with a 185-person capacity for emergency shelter, which comes just as the weather gets colder.

“The vision to be able to see more people than we ever were all for albeit having slightly less spaces than we have. We’ve actually reduced the number of spaces because of the transformation. It’s just impossible to keep the same volume as we had before,” said James Hughes, President and CEO, Old Brewery Mission. “But it was actually a very large increase in the number of spaces. And so now, we think we’re in a position to help more people than ever before.”

This new modern approach away from the old dormitory-style, serves to increase the quality of the environment for those using the shelter by giving them a sense of security, humanity and peace.

“It’s much easier for me to concentrate on my path when I have more privacy, more comfort rather than when it’s more cramped up, my mind is always about what I am going to do, so I don’t have enough sleep, I don’t have this or I don’t have that, or I’m sick,” said Ashton, Old Brewery client.

“Before it was much more of an open area and in this dormitory there were 50 people or more and the spaces were much more cramped up. Right now that we have the rooms, it’s much easier. You know which person is responsible for the room and you can enforce the law of cleaning your own area,” added Ashton.

There are more than 5,000 people sleeping in the streets of Montreal every night, Old Brewery Mission’s goal is to give people their own space to help them in the next steps of their recovery and focus on long-term solutions.

“This is an initiative to help people get in a position to help more effectively around their journey to get out of homelessness. It’s a platform that’s stronger and more sturdy than we’ve ever had to work in a clinical manner,“ said Hughes.

“The qualitative feedback has been fantastic. And as I say, I hope soon we’ll be able to report to you that the quantitative numbers are changing too, that we’re taking in more people, that they’re staying less time and leaving in a more organized way,” added Hughes.