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Cold Comfort Ice Cream

This afternoon we got the chance to chat with the owner of local ice cream shop extraordinaire, Cold Comfort. They wanted to know about how Umbrella uses donations and what the impact of a fundraiser was on programs. An hour later, our Facebook lit up when we learned tha...
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Axe throwing

Tonight for a bit of fun, the Foundation House residents and a few of the housing staff went to Axe and Grind and threw some axes around. The house counsellor Terry is away so we snuck the boys out of the house for some fun instead of their weekly house meeting. We have...
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Issues of Substance

We are pretty proud of our Conor who is currently in Ottawa at the Issue of Substance conference. He has been working with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and people with living experience at SOLID on cultural safety in the hospitals. Conor looks pret...
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Dr Coutts Visit

At our staff meeting on Wednesday, Dr. Joyce Coutts joined us to talk about substance use and older adults. This is an area that we all need to learn more about and we were grateful for Dr. Coutt's expertise and guidance as she provided the team with lots of helpful tips...
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New signage

We have signage! Our awesome neighbours at Creative Sign Design located at #5-416 Garbally Road came by and put our our logo and address in our beautiful orange colour on our front door. Leya was so helpful and professional and her work is incredible. We are loving ou...
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2 years sober!

Last night some staff from Umbrella many Foundation House and Cooper House residents and a very special guest, Justin's mom, all gathered to celebrate a very special day. Justin, who lived at Foundation House for 18 months and was the senior resident for much of that ti...
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Housing Provider of the Year!!

On Sunday, November 17 Umbrella was awarded the Housing Provider of the Year award! Sharlene and Blake, Housing Manager, were at the event to accept the award. This is a true honour to be recognized for our housing program, the staff, board and all our residents are gra...
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Halloween Community Support

How amazing is this? Pete and Brenda, pictured here with the Umbrella team, had their 3rd annual Halloween Haunted House and had a couple of Umbrella donation tins on hand. Today, they joined us at our staff meeting to bring an extremely generous donation of $1415.10! ...
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Halloween at our houses

The residents had a lot of fun this Halloween preparing for the tricker-treaters. Hudson and Cooper house carved up their pumpkins and Foundation House did things a little different. One of the residents had some fun in his gorilla costume... You may have seen him givi...
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Happy One Year Erik!

Last night we celebrated Erik's one year sober! Erik is the senior resident, a leadership role, at Foundation House. Erik's journey began with a connection with Lesley on Saltspring Island and continued with Erik moving into Foundation House last December. Watching Er...