Saying goodbye to Glebe House, where several hundred refugees spent their first nights in Peterborough

New Canadians Centre (NCC) staff, volunteers and supporters gathered at 65 Brock Street on April 25 to say goodbye to the house where several hundred refugees spent their first nights in Peterborough over the last eight years.

Since 2016, NCC has rented Glebe House from St. John’s Anglican Church and used it as a reception house for government-assisted refugees. The building was set up to temporarily house several families at a time as they searched for more permanent places to live.

The agency has secured new housing for that purpose, so its leadership decided not to renew the lease for Glebe House.

NCC’s director of client services Marisa Kaczmarczyk said she wanted to give staff one last chance to visit the house before the agency handed the keys back to the church. “It’s such an important building and a marker of the work that has been done with the community here in the last eight years,” she said.

Peterborough has not historically been a major destination for refugees, but that changed in 2016 when the federal government designated the NCC as a welcome centre for government-assisted refugees during the Syrian civil war.

Peterborough was assigned 198 government-assisted refugees over the 12 months ending in March 2017, according to the NCC. Glebe House played a pivotal role in welcoming them.

“We were welcoming a large group of Syrian refugee families at that time, and Glebe House seemed like a good location to give people a sense of Peterborough as a community,” said Kaczmarczyk. “It’s not in the best shape but it’s well loved and it made people feel like they were coming into a homey atmosphere.”

The house’s downtown location was also beneficial, and provided its guests with a sense of independence, she added.

Glebe House had enough space for about 30 people. Each family had their own rooms with doors that locked, but they shared common spaces like the bathrooms, kitchen, and dining room with others. The layout allowed for privacy as well as mingling of families who may have come from similar backgrounds.

Newcomers staying at Glebe House were typically welcomed to the reception centre by an NCC representative after being shuttled from the Toronto airport to Peterborough, Kaczmarczyk explained. Their rooms were set up ahead of time and volunteers brought gifts and made refreshments to share for when they arrived, then took them on a tour to learn about the house and its other inhabitants, she said.

 “Because it was congregate living, even if they weren’t from the same culture they kind of were forced to get along and start breaking those cultural barriers really quickly,” said Liana Honsinger, NCC’s manager of refugee resettlement. “It was amazing to see how friendships formed and how people held onto those connections over time.”

As folks gathered in Glebe House, they reminisced about the time they spent together in the building over the last 8 years, and some popped a bottle of champagne.

Mohammed Ali Jdie used the opportunity to head upstairs and take one last look at one of his first Canadian bedrooms. For him, Glebe House is a reminder of his first three days in Canada. “It was a good space,” he said. “I hope to have a home like this one day, a whole big house so I can help my family from Jordan to come here.”

Jdie arrived in Peterborough two years ago with his parents and four brothers. His family was Syrian but had lived in Jordan for 10 years before moving to Canada, he said.

“It’s hard to come outside of the Middle East, it’s so different to our culture and our lives back home. Here we are safe, but we still miss our memories of being kids and playing with our cousins in Jordan,” he said. “It was really nice to be here because the newcomers often speak the same first language and they liked it when I talked with them in Arabic and told them about what to expect living in Canada.”

Jdie’s family only needed Glebe House for a couple of days — they moved into their own rental housing after that. But he stayed involved with the NCC and today works as a handyman for the agency, helping to keep the newer reception centre houses in good repair.

NCC’s executive director Andy Cragg shared a story from the 2022 derecho windstorm that left many in Peterborough — including Glebe House residents — without power.

 “A lot of us were just stunned and trying to figure out what was going on and how to meet our immediate needs,” he said. “At some point, I thought to myself, I should go and check on the people at Glebe House.”

Cragg walked over to the Brock Street house. “You know, the folks who come through this place, by definition, are extremely resourceful and have been through a lot,” he said. “So of course, they were probably in the least panicked state compared to almost anyone else in Peterborough.” 

“I arrived and they were just very nonchalantly cooking over dry sticks and twigs in fire pits they dug in the backyard and chatting like everything was fine. And here I was not even able to make myself coffee!”

The New Canadians Centre will continue to provide temporary shelter and other supports to refugees arriving in Peterborough, with one small reception house in the north end and a larger one in central Peterborough, Kaczmarczyk said. The program also uses local hotels when the houses are full, so there is no expected change in service provision with the end of the lease at Glebe House, she said. “We are still taking the same approach in the other spaces that we rent.”

Still, it’s the end of an era. “I think it’s important to emphasize what this place represents,” said Kaczmarczyk. “It’s not just a building, it’s a hub where people have come together and the community has connected with the families that stayed here.”

Glebe House has served the community in many ways over the years. First built in the late 1800s as a rectory for the minister at St. John’s, it later housed the local Friendship Centre, then acted as an apartment complex for single women. Before NCC took over the lease, the building was used by Down Syndrome Association of Peterborough for respite care and other programming.

Corrections: Previous versions of this article incorrectly stated that Mohammed Ali Jdie spent his first night in Peterborough at Glebe House and incorrectly identified Tamara Hoogerdyk in a photo caption. Currents regrets the errors.