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History

Nipissing Transition House History

Marsha Greenfield, founder of Nipissing Transition House had this to share about the shelter’s creation:

"Nipissing Transition House really began at Interval House, Toronto, in 1973, with the notion that every community needed a shelter for assaulted women and their children. I worked at Interval House in its first year as part of a collective staff/board. In 1973, there were no other services for assaulted women, so we developed our services based on what assaulted women told us they needed, wanted and were not getting anywhere else in the community. We worked hard at making our shelter a place where women’s and children’s needs came first and at telling the community, (police, doctors, educators) about women’s experience of battering and what they could do to make women’s lives safer. (We’re still telling them.)

In 1975, I moved back to North Bay and tried to establish a shelter. At the time, our community professionals did not believe that woman abuse was a problem here, and so I was unsuccessful. The positive side of that effort was that, in the next few years, people in the community who were working with assaulted women (hospitals, CAS, police) would call me at home from time to time to see how they could provide for the safety of these women.

In the summer of 1982, Donna R., Dawn A., Sharon B., and I sat down at my kitchen table to talk once again about a shelter for women and children in North Bay. One of our friends was being assaulted and after we managed to find her a safe place, we decided that we were going to have a shelter now!!!

We approached the North Bay Women’s Centre to sponsor a project with Employment Development to do a needs survey and feasibility study for a shelter here. Val A., Elise Mc., and I were hired for the six month grant. This time the community was ready. Our first board meeting was on April 24, 1983. We were incorporated on June 30, 1983. We opened our doors to women and children on January 19, 1984.

We only had funding for three staff. Fortunately, we believed that the provincial government would shortly begin to fund shelters… so, on a wing and a prayer, we hired 5 additional staff.

In our early days we operated as a collective, however, when the provincial government began to fund us, we developed into a modified collective to meet their funding criteria.

It’s difficult to try and share the history of our shelter and the people who have made and are making it what it is. Nipissing Transition House isn’t just a building or an agency. It’s a combination of both, but also it’s the product of women and children’s experience and our community’s response to that experience. As with any place where women and children live, we are shaped by the love and laughter, tears and fears of shared endeavours and so it goes."

You may get a sense from reading Marsha’s words how very much her vision, tenacity and commitment to women’s and children’s physical and emotional safety contributed to the creation and maintenance of Nipissing Transition House. What may not be apparent is the degree to which Marsha was the catalyst for the politicization of the issue of woman abuse and the provision of services to women and children throughout Northern Ontario. As an activist, and advocate and a visionary, Marsha shared her expertise, her analysis and her goal of women-centered services with anyone who would listen – many of them did. She, and NTH with her, has helped give birth to safe places for women and children across the province, places she continues to nurture and support (and challenge, when need be) to this day.

While no one can minimize the work and commitment of all the people of NTH's past, this shelter must pay tribute to Marsha Greenfield for not only its very existence, but also her ongoing commitment to protecting and empowering women. And she does it very well indeed.

This shelter is a living being. Always growing, changing and evolving. But at its core is the value that founded it, that women and children need and deserve a place of safety and empowerment. Here’s to our future.