JULIE has fought major addictions and is now helping others in the community. Photo by Tom Godfrey.
Julie is an Indigenous woman who has overcome a lot of difficulties in life and is now using her many experiences to help others in the community.
A member of the Garden Village Reserve of the Nipissing First Nation, near North Bay, she has been living in Toronto for decades.
In her years, she has managed to beat addiction, abuse and overcome homelessness and speaks to groups on now to avoid her pitfalls.
“I had to change my life,” Julie explains. “It had changed me.”
JULIE at a gathering in the community. Courtesy photo.
Julie has a lot to offer and is a volunteer in a number of community organizations. She now is an Ambassador for the Vaccine Engagement Team as they work to make the area safer and healthier. She obtained the job through LAMP community health centre.
Julie has worked at the Breakaway Addictions Program and volunteered at the Rape Crisis Centre. She was also involved in the Out of the Cold Program at St. Margaret’s Church and helped women and children in crisis at Women’s Habitat.
“I am proud of who I am and my many achievements. I worked hard to get here. My life was given back to me,” she says. “I must give back in any way that I can. Better the person, better the world.”
She speaks to local groups about life on the street and how to break the cycle of addiction and homelessness. She will be speaking about reconciliation at St. Margaret’s Church on Sixth Street on November 28 at 10 a.m.
“It all comes down to a matter of choice,” Julie says. “You have to be willing to want the change.”
She is planning to finish her second year of school at Humber College and hopes to work in a shelter for the homeless.
Her supervisor Amber Morley praised Julie’s hard work in the community for the last 12 years.
“She has suffered abuse, in addition to homelessness and tries hard to help those in need,” Morley says. “She worked hard to change her life and now wants to give back.”
Julie says her uncle was a residential school survivor ‘who was never the same when he came back home.”
“He came back home traumatized,” she recalls. “He was broken and was never the same man.”
The Nipissing First Nation is a long-standing community of Nishnaabeg peoples located along the shorelines of Lake Nipissing in northern Ontario. The Nipissing are part of the Anishnaabe peoples, a grouping of people speaking Algonquin languages, which includes the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi and Algonquins.