In Canada, a woman is killed by her intimate partner every six days. Alberta has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country. Starting in the 1970s, Alberta women’s shelters have ...assisted women in crisis. Much more than a safe place to sleep, shelters work to prevent violence through education and training, connect people and communities, and support the complex needs of survivors through a multitude of services. We Need to Do This is the story of Alberta women's shelters. Based on dozens of in-depth interviews, it traces the evolution of a progressive social movement in a traditionally conservative province. These are the stories of women whose voices may otherwise never have been heard: entry-level workers at fledgling shelters battling the assumption that their facilities would create crime, small-town shelter directors forced to self-censor or lose communityand financialsupport, Indigenous women fighting to serve their sisters in Indigenous spaces. Beginning with the women who founded the first shelters, and continuing through the establishment of the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters to the present day, We Need to Do This is a story of hope and survival for the women’s shelter movement and for the mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and daughters it continues to serve.
Lena Neufeld was on summer break from university in 1986 when her roommate mentioned a job opening at the women’s shelter in Lethbridge. Neufeld didn’t know much about Harbour House, but figured it ...had to be better than delivering pizzas until 3 a.m. like she was doing at the time. She completed an application and was hired within a day.
The shelter occupied the top floor of Lethbridge’s brick YWCA building on 8th Street. On her first day at work, Neufeld was buzzed up to the secure fourth floor; she stepped off the elevator and was almost immediately handed a
Anita’s escape from her marriage began at her daughter’s preschool. There had been another argument with her husband, this time in the car as they drove to pick up their child. Anita was crying when ...she walked into the Calgary church where the preschool was housed, and she asked to see the pastor. She told him her story.
They prayed for a few minutes and the pastor told Anita that a church member worked at a women’s shelter in the city. He would arrange for the woman to meet Anita the next time she dropped off her daughter. Anita, who
Ardis Beaudry climbed the winding staircase to the bell tower of the All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral in downtown Edmonton. The corridor was uncomfortably narrow and steep, but she pushed ahead. It was ...1970, and it was Beaudry’s first shift at the first shelter for women in the city.
Beaudry had no experience as a social worker or a shelter employee, but she was willing to volunteer and, in the early 1970s, that was qualification enough. The bell tower was small and isolated, hardly an ideal spot for an overnight shelter, but it had room for a few pieces of furniture
When Clara Moberly was a child, she and her siblings would run to a neighbour’s house when the fighting in their home got bad. The family lived in Wabasca, one of several communities that make up the ...Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta. The population totals just a few thousand residents and, at the time, the closest women’s shelter was about three hundred kilometres away in Edmonton.
Then, one day, Moberly stopped running. She hid under the kitchen table instead. Looking back, Moberly wonders if her instinct to stay with her mother was a sign she would do something different
Jan Reimer was out of the province when she first heard that a woman named Betty Fekete had been shot and killed by her estranged husband in the lobby of her Red Deer apartment building. The man also ...killed the couple’s three-year-old son, and then himself.
At that time, in 2003, Reimer was just two years into her job as executive director of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters. She had come to the position after a long career in public service, having served as an Edmonton city councillor before being voted the city’s first—and, to date, only female
My name is Ruth Scalp Lock. Awo Taanaakii is my Blackfoot name; it means Shield Woman. Awo Taan is a shield in my culture. My grandma gave me my name, and I respect it every day on my journey.¹
I had ...a vision to start the Awo Taan Healing Lodge when I was working at a Calgary women’s shelter in the 1980s. I was the only Native counsellor there. They didn’t know how to work with our women, especially to fulfill their spiritual needs. There were no workshops, and Elders did not come to work with the women. In our
