I had the chance recently to re-visit my 1980 roots in the movement to assist abused women when I attended the 2014 Annual General Meeting of the Haven Society and had the opportunity to meet and reconnect with current and past Board members and volunteers.
Back in 1978-79, shortly after I moved to BC, I began working to stop violence against women, and helped start Haven House in Nanaimo.
Within a year or so we’d raised enough attention to society’s quiet permission and shameful silence that we attracted the attention of Rosemary Brown, the only MLA brave enough to speak up for women and the families who were being abused – and that led to some of us then forming the BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses.
When we started, we just had a summer grant. We could afford a telephone and a bunch of stickers that we slapped up on all the telephone booths and in the bathrooms of bars and restaurants around town, and we set-up a ‘Haven Crises Line’.
After the summer grant, when it became apparent how prevalent the problem was and how violence against women was largely being ignored, we started a safe house. Our first ‘Haven House’ provided a sanctuary and a place to begin gathering resources so we could respond … to provide a place for abused women and children to hide and recover, and to assess their options. That first house on Cavan Street, which is no longer there, was slated to be demolished, but we persuaded the City to give it to us for the women of Nanaimo.
With donated clothes for the women and children who came in their pajamas, and a handful of volunteers to help, we went from grant to grant. And we argued the need for dedicated programs that would address the range of problems which allowed violence against women to be quietly ignored and virtually sanctioned across all sectors in society.
For many of us, volunteers as well as the women who came for help, the times were too often scary … when angry men came banging at the back door ‘for their women’, or in the middle of the night when it was necessary to rescue a mother and her children and we found ourselves chased down the road and through the streets of Nanaimo.
Now, the Haven Society works in our communities, organizing and coordinating with 18 different programs and support services that span a wide range of initiatives. Their goal encompasses, “Promoting the safety and integrity of women, children, youth and families.”
After listening to the progress that has occured throughout the years, with so many organizations participating and contributing to help women in domestic violence, I was left with a huge sense of pride for what I had helped to start, of total gratitude to the women who have continued the struggle – and with a great feeling of hope for the future.
In the beginning, hashing out the options over cups of coffee, we could only dream of a safe place for women to go … to have a recognition that violence against women was not acceptable and that our communities and our society would recognize the need to help stop domestic violence, to get it out of the closet and out of the home.
At the AGM, I was able to hear about what the Haven Society is accomplishing and to speak with many of the new Board and volunteers. Although much is still to be done, I’m so very pleased to see the progress since I first got involved – how violence against women is no longer sanctioned or acceptable in our society, and that so many are now adding their support to make a difference.
I’m so pleased and so proud, and all I can say is … thank you one and all for making my dream come true.
Jackie Moad (R) with Anne Taylor, Executive Director of the Haven Society in Nanaimo
Jackie Moad
Thistledown Farm
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