On Friday morning once a month, from 7 to 8am, I join a group of good hearted real estate colleagues serving a nutritious meal at the Our Place Society facility:

(www.ourplacesociety.com) on Pandora Street.

We call ourselves The Breakfast Club.

I have been part of this group for a couple of years and, while it feels good to participate,

this experience definitely takes me out of my comfort zone. It can feel like, first arriving there, that I’m crossing a line to ‘the other side.’

Many of those who come for breakfast aren’t homeless but all in some way are, or likely feel that they are, at the margins of our affluent city.

When I started doing this I expected to encounter a lot of anger and grief amongst those we served. There are smatterings of that. But mostly our breakfast patrons are friendly, warm, smiling, and grateful. They come in all adult varieties; old, young, male, female, drug-addled, wheel chair bound, wise, confused, well dressed, and ragged.

While there I never feel that I’m on ‘the other side’ of any great social divide.

Rather, I feel comradery and belonging.

We are all just humans after all; doing our best with what today offers.

Tom Oak