The long, dark Winter in the Northwest Territories can be a brutal time for the homeless. A church in Inuvik is hoping to help.

Inuvik church opening their doors to the homeless

Now in its second year, Inuvik’s Anglican Church of the Ascension's warming shelter is an integral part of the church’s ministry.

By Sharon Dewey Hetke and ChristianWeek | April 6, 2015

Canadians are at the tail end of a very cold winter. But in Inuvik, NWT, every winter is very long, and very cold and dark. The temperature dips below zero in early October—and keeps on dropping. Winter can be depressing and it is certainly dangerous, especially for those who have no safe place to stay.

Desperate for warmth, their only recourse has been to commit a crime in order to get arrested, show up at the hospital with a phantom illness, or crawl under one of Inuvik’s buildings—jacked up on stakes due to the permafrost. And then “they build fires… and little fires turn into big fires and buildings catch ablaze,” says Rev. Stephen Martin, priest at Inuvik’s Anglican Church of the Ascension. Martin could no longer ignore this problem—especially when the mayor knocked on his door. Would the church be willing to open their doors to provide an emergency warming shelter?

With 20 years experience as a street pastor in Toronto, Martin was taken with the idea, so he approached the congregation. He told them, “I know I’m pushing you way outside your comfort zone. So no matter if it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ we’ve got it out in the open and we’re going to talk about it.” In the end, the plan went through without much difficulty.

That first season, Martin worked some 85-hour weeks, doing full-time ministry and managing the warming centre seven nights a week. “And I really couldn’t sustain that over the long haul. So I passed the reins over and I stayed on as a board member, the landlord, and also as the one who mentors the new people,” he says.

Inuvik’s Anglican Church of the Ascension.

Now in its second year, the warming shelter is an integral part of the church’s ministry. Open every night during the cold months, the hall sleeps 5 to 18 people. Martin is clear that his shelter is neither “dry”—turning away the intoxicated, nor is it “wet”—allowing drinking inside. Rather this shelter is “damp”—no one is turned away simply on the basis that they have been drinking.

At first, Martin says, there was a bit of “hot water in the Christian community.” He explains, “They thought we were enabling, allowing them to drink in there—we said ‘No, the bottle is confiscated and poured down the toilet, right in front of them.’ I’ll say ‘It’s not a party house. This is a place you can come in to get warm for the night, you get a nice hot dinner, you get breakfast in the morning, and some blankets and a mat to sleep on.’”

An imposing 6’4”, Martin is not easily intimidated and is vigilant about the staff’s safety. But there have been tense moments: He describes an incident this past season in which he was struck by a resident. The church was very upset and hurt by this--Martin says, “They thought the minister shouldn’t get hit.” But Martin called it just “the price of doing business.”

Rev. Stephen Martin, wife Michelle and “bb”.

The RCMP pressed charges, but Martin told his congregation: “‘Pray for them first and pray for the family….It’s a situation--it’s not personal, it’s alcohol.’ And that was a really hard thing…it was a good thing, but a hard thing.”

The shelter has presented a “real learning curve” for the community, Martin says. But there are encouraging results, and some ripple effects: “We’re actually saving money for the town because the RCMP have less work to do with petty stuff and the hospital has seen a huge drop in services as a result of the shelter being open.”

He also describes one man who camped at the shelter last winter and who is now “back on track”--and a board member. In Yellowknife, at a recent conference on homelessness, Martin says that this man “actually addressed the politicians and the government agencies—telling them what this place meant to him.”

Martin asks, “As a church, how well do we care for the community? What is our call and mission? Are we a building that says ‘We’re special so we stay in’ or do we say ‘We will take anybody in our church and give them safe haven? What is our response?”