Meet Desmond Olsthoorn, Director of Emergency and Proximity Services

Could you introduce yourself?

My name is Desmond Olsthoorn and I’m the Director of Emergency and Proximity Services at the Old Brewery Mission.

What are your responsibilities?

My job has two main components. I’ll start with the emergency part. This encompasses everything to do with front-line emergency services. Our mission, at this level, is to accommodate the people who use this service.

However, we don’t just provide a temporary bed for the night, as shelters did in the past. When someone comes to our door, they stay until a plan is put in place for them. Our goal is to reconnect them to the community, help them reaffiliate and, ultimately, find a stable home. It isn’t just about bricks and mortar, a roof and a meal. First, you must make the person feel secure. Then, we try to find out more about their life story and understand their story, so we can chart a path towards long-term stability in their lives and make sure they don’t end up on the streets again.

What’s the second part of your job?

The second component is proximity services. For example, we have Café Mission, a 24/7 drop-in centre where people can come to warm up in winter and cool off in summer. It serves snacks, light meals and coffee, and offers access to laundry, showers and the Internet. At the same time, it gives us a chance to make contact and get to know the people who come in.

Café Mission isn’t like an emergency shelter, but often we do start the reaffiliation process there. We check whether people have ID, whether they have access to healthcare, whether their taxes are up to date. If not, they can’t get into the system and access all the support that people who are connected to society can. We try to build trust.

When anyone comes to use either emergency or proximity services, we start with triage. We do an assessment and direct them to the appropriate department, such as prevention or rehousing. Or we may refer them to a partner if we can’t provide the service or if we’re at capacity.

We also have a shuttle service. A 15-seat minibus criss-crosses the city, stopping at metro stations at closing time and other strategic locations where people experiencing homelessness are likely to be. The bus takes them wherever there is space available on that day, which could be another drop-in centre, a partner organization or similar resources.

To complement this, we have a mobile clinic that delivers services directly in public spaces, so people don’t have to come to us.

What did you do before joining the Old Brewery Mission?

Basically, I’ve had three careers and I’m now on my fourth. I’m very happy to be working at the Old Brewery Mission. I feel the experience and expertise I bring from my past jobs are definitely transferable.

In my previous life, I worked for the CIUSSS de l’Ouest-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, where I managed COVID-19 vaccination sites for almost a year. I learned a lot about the healthcare system, and I saw that there really are competent people and experts in our system. There are dedicated people.

I also worked for about two and a half years on the Maisons des Aînés / Maisons Alternatives project, getting the whole clinical side ready before they opened. These are the next generation of CHSLDs. In the case, the target clientele is people with intellectual or physical disabilities or autism. My job was to prepare operations for the launch.

Before that, a dozen years ago, I worked on retirement homes. I was responsible for up to 12 regions across the province. At one point, I was working in two different provinces, Ontario and Quebec. My responsibilities included team and operational management. And my first career before all that was in hotel management. It was a great experience.

What brought you to the Old Brewery Mission?

I worked in the private sector for a long time. The objective was profit. We had to find a balance between delivering services aligned with our mission and capabilities, and making a profit because we were there to grow the business.

Now I’m at a point in my life where my bottom line isn’t profit measured in dollars but human profit. I want to use my experience in management, operations and scheduling, and my strategic vision to profit human beings.