Thousands of women and children fleeing violence have found a safe haven at Monarch Place.
Monarch Place – a transition house offering shelter and support for women and children fleeing abuse – recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. It is operated by WINGS (Women In Need Gaining Strength) ministries.
Krista Penner, board chair of WINGS, said Monarch Place has served 3,305 women in the past 25 years – providing them with a place where they felt safe and hope, and giving them an opportunity to carry on with their lives.
“Those women brought with them a total of 1,934 children, and those children are the future leaders of this community and beyond this community,” she said. “Those are children who have experienced firsthand the hardship and the fear of not knowing what's next, and they have walked into a place where they have been seen, they have been heard, and they're told that we have a future together. And that sense of belonging has changed everything for them.”
Penner said 5,239 children and women have been helped by Monarch Place since it opened in New West, but its true impact can’t be measured. She said those statistics represent just a fraction of the home’s impact.
“There are children who were helped 25 years ago, 22 years ago, 15 years ago, that have gone on have beautiful , productive lives in this community and communities beyond, and we will never know their stories,” she said. “We will never know how they were impacted by this organization. We just rest in the truth that as we keep doing the work that we're doing, that it will be blessed and that that increase of impact will continue to happen.”
After establishing as a non-profit charitable society in 1997, WINGS opened Monarch on Dec. 1, 1998.
Lorrie Wasyliw was initially on the WINGS board of directors but became its executive director three months after Monarch Place opened.
She recalled nights of sleeping on the floor in the house in the weeks leading up to opening day, working around the clock with others to renovate and furnish the home for the moms and kids who would soon be arriving. Leaving the house the night before it opened, she said there were about 15 articles of clothing and four pairs of shoes available in the house – not nearly enough for folks who may be arriving with no belongings of their own.
“The next morning, when I arrived back at the house on that first morning, Dec. 1, 1998, we already had our first family. Our first family … was a mom with two children,” she recalled. “When I walked in the door, this young boy immediately ran to the door to greet me, to welcome me, and to tell me how excited he was to be there. And not just that, but he had found a pair of shoes in the donation room that fit him; one of the four pairs, that was all we had at the time. This little boy had never had shoes before. This was his first pair of shoes, ever, that he knew. And he had found a safe home with us.”
At that moment, Wasyliw said she knew there would be many similar stories to come in the years ahead and that Monarch Place would be a lifeline for women and children.
At the anniversary celebration, Mayor Patrick Johnstone noted a New Westminster woman had lost her life to partner violence just days earlier.
“It just reminds us of how important this work, the work that you're doing, is,” he said. “But let's think about lives saved, about the lives have been transformed by Monarch for 25 years.”
Overcoming challenges
Del Sturhahn, founding chair of WINGS board of directors, recalled some of the challenges encountered in the lead-up to the opening of Monarch Place, including getting the province’s support to open a transition house, finding a suitable house, fixing up and equipping the house, hiring staff, and working with others to raise funds for the project – efforts that included selling ice cream bars at Westminster Quay and modelling in a fashion show.
In the time leading up to the opening of Monarch Place, Heather Whiteford was manager of the Stopping the Violence program at Family Services of Greater Vancouver and co-chair of the New Westminster Action Committee that was addressing violence against women.
"For years, we had seen the need for a transition house in New West, and for years, there seemed to be no viable route to one being established,” said a statement from Whiteford that was read out at the anniversary celebration. “Women and children in the area had to travel to transition to houses in other communities to find safety, which of course was a barrier for them."
Whiteford said the action committee was “apprehensive” after being asked by the province to meet with the faith-based group (WINGS) interested in establishing a transition house in New West, to see if they could be partners.
“Our apprehensiveness had to do with the stories we had heard from women about being encouraged by the pastors to stay with their abusive husbands and partners,” she explained. “We were skeptical about whether this group could prioritize women's safety over the sanctity of a marriage vow. I well remember the relief after the first meeting when we discovered that we had so much common ground with these women, and that indeed, we were at all focused on the same thing: the safety of women and children.”
Judy Grams, a member of WINGS original board of directors, recalled how one of its board members was a real estate agent who visited dozens of houses in search of “the right house” for Monarch Place. She found it – but it was in a residential area and would need to be rezoned – which prompted concerns about the confidentiality of the location.
According to Grams, the city’s then planning director Mary Pynenburg had the “innovative idea” of rezoning all areas of New West to allow for women’s transition homes. Council approved the change – so Monarch Place didn’t have to go through a rezoning process and its location could be kept private.
A charitable foundation has owned the house where Monarch Place is located and leased it to WINGS for $1 a year.
“It's just a house, it's any house on the block, a potential home, like every other residential home in a community. And yet, it's so much more. It's a safe space. It's the refuge that we've heard about. It is a sacred space where really important, sacred things happen,” said a representative for the foundation. “And so it's a privilege and an honour for our foundation to have provided the house.”
At the time it was getting starting, WINGS was a brand new ministry so the foundation’s board of directors felt it was wise to retain ownership of the house. (The Record is not publishing his name or the foundation’s name in order to ensure the privacy of the residence.)
“Today, I'm really pleased to share with you that WINGS, 25 years later, is a wonderful, well-established mature ministry, and the foundation doesn't need to retain ownership of the house anymore. And so we have worked with WINGS and we are in the process of transferring that house into the ownership of WINGS from our foundation,” he said. “And it's just a joy to be able to share that on his 25th anniversary of Monarch Place.”
In addition to the 12 emergency first-stage shelter beds at Monarch Place, WINGS also provides 11 second-stage housing beds at Chrysalis Place in New West, a five-unit affordable rental housing building (Calisto Place) in New Westminster, 10 second-stage housing beds at Wings Place in Delta and a transition home called Azure Place in Delta.
