This Canada Day, support and change can start locally and travel outwards.

On Canada Day Thursday July 1st, all four locations of Ed’s Real Scoop will be donating $1 per scoop to the Anishnawbe Health Foundation.

“Not only does this incredible foundation already do great work all around our city, they have some fantastic plans for the future,” according to Ed’s Real Scoop. “We are proud to be working with them.”

“We encourage you to join us and stand in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples in Toronto and across Canada on Thursday July 1st,” says Ed.

If you are unable to attend and would like to show your support please donate directly to https://supportanishnawbe.ca

Joe Hester, Executive Director, Anishnawbe Health Toronto, said they help people others overcome barriers as homelessness, poverty, trauma, abuse and addiction.

“Guided by the teachings of traditional healers, elders and medicine people, we aim to build a healthy, strong Indigenous community by looking at health holistically,” Hester wrote.  We don’t just offer a bandage solution, we are helping clients to overcome barriers to health and living a good life.”

In 1989, with no funding for capital, Anishnawbe Health Toronto established its first permanent home in what was once a branch of a former bank at Queen Street E., and Sherbourne Street.
As needed programs and services grew, additional sites at two Victorian-era residential buildings at Gerrard Street E., and Sherbourne Street and then Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue W. were leased.

The sites were not built for Health care or traditional healing and ceremony but Anishnawbe Health has adapted the sites as much as possible, including opening Toronto’s first sweat lodge facility in a public facility over 17 years ago. Anishnawbe Health ‘made do’ and adapted its buildings, but for clients, travelling between centres for care is an added burden on this vulnerable population and an added barrier to health.

Today, these facilities are extremely outdated and overcrowded, and present privacy, confidentiality and infection control risks to clients and staff.  These issues make it extremely challenging to meet current standards for ambulatory healthcare facilities and compromise Anishnawbe Health Toronto’s capacity to deliver critical programs and services. Together, we can build a new Home for Anishnawbe Health Toronto.

Toronto has the largest and most diverse Indigenous population in Ontario, an estimated 70,000 people or one-third of Ontario’s Indigenous population.

Loss of land, culture, and family life through government-led policies like the residential school system and the ‘60s Scoop’ have had a traumatic impact on the community resulting in a loss of identity with numerous ramifications.

Today, 90 per cent of Toronto’s urban Indigenous population live below Canada’s low income line,  often living at the margins of society and are more likely than non-Indigenous to be homeless, unemployed and to have not completed high school.

This inequity contributes to chronic disease and complex health issues resulting in multiple health care needs and in many cases, premature death.  Many of the diseases, such as Type II Diabetes, start at a younger age and are experienced as chronic illness for a long period of time with multiple complications.

Combined with high rates of mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and sexual and emotional abuse, this population is arguably the most vulnerable and disenfranchised community in the GTA.

A 2014 Anishnawbe Health Toronto study looked at Indigenous deaths of its clients and at other Toronto social agencies. For the 109 reported Indigenous deaths, the average age of death was 37 years compared to average age of death of 74 years in rest of Toronto.

Ed’s Real Scoop stores are located at 920 Queen St. E., 2224 Queen St. E.,189 Roncesvalles Ave., and 2370 Lake Shore Blvd. W.