After the Fire in Prince Albert: Salvation Army Offers Hope From the Ashes

On this past Christmas Day, a fire broke out at The Salvation Army in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, completely destroying the building. It was a devastating blow for Salvation Army ministry in the community. But with the support of the town and its people, the Army is still giving hope amid the ashes, ensuring the mission continues even without the home base of a building. On this episode, we are joined by Prince Albert’s corps officer, Major Ed Dean, who tells us about the fire and its aftermath, how The Salvation Army has pivoted to ensure its corps and community services continue, and how Salvationists and friends in Prince Albert and beyond can support the mission. 

The Salvation Army is deeply grateful to our matching sponsors, the Murray & Audrey Neufeld Charitable Foundation and the Malcolm Jenkins Family Foundation Inc., and all of the generous donors who have contributed to the Plates of Hope Campaign to date. Together we have raised more than $220,000 toward our goal of $250,000. Help us reach our goal by donating before March 31.

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. On this past Christmas Day, around 8 p.m., a fire broke out at The Salvation Army in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Thanks to the hard work of local firefighters, the fire was contained and did not spread to any other structures. But the roof of the Salvation Army building collapsed, and the structure is considered a total loss. I remember seeing the news and photos on social media, and feeling absolute horror. It was a devastating blow for Salvation Army ministry in the community. And yet, it has been amazing to see how Prince Albert has rallied behind the Army, ensuring the mission continues even without the home base of a building. It’s truly a remarkable story, and I’m grateful to have Prince Albert’s corps officer, Major Ed Dean, on the podcast to tell us all about it. After you listen, be sure to check out the show notes to learn more about how you can support The Salvation Army in Prince Albert in this critical time.

Hi, Major Ed. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Salvationist podcast.

Ed Dean

Thank you for having me.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, it's great to have you here to talk about the life and ministry of The Salvation Army in Prince Albert. Now I think a lot of listeners will be familiar with the very tragic events that happened—on Christmas Day, no less. But I'm wondering if you can take us back to December and to that day. When did you receive the news that the building was on fire?

Ed Dean

The West Flats community group had borrowed our space to do a meal, and they did that meal from 12 to 4, and then the building was supposed to be closed that night. There was nobody in the building. And at about eight o'clock, I get a call to ask if the warming centre is open. And I said, No, it doesn't open for another two hours. And that's when I was informed that there were people, possibly people, in the building, and there was smoke coming from the building.

Kristin Ostensen  

And what was going through your mind at that point?

Ed Dean  

Well, a million things, because it was the first day that we actually had taken off from the community in a month and a half with the busy Christmas season. We were blessed to be able to spend time with our own family that day, because it was a group coming in to do the meal, so we didn't need to worry about a meal that day. And so, then the phone calls started, that it's a tragic fire, it is lost, and until the police actually called and said, It's really bad. And I said, How bad? And he said, Totally lost. This has been a labour of love. Since we arrived in July of 2022, the building was about 85% revitalized. The new tiles and lighting were on pallets in the building. The floors had been done. It's been painted. We had reworked the building so that we had a commercial kitchen with all new equipment. And so the loss was tremendous.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah.

Ed Dean

I have likely spent hundreds of hours myself. Our volunteers gave thousands of hours in doing the labour of love. That was our chapel, that was our dining room, that was our kitchen. It was also our night warming centre and a day warming centre, where other services such as clothing and laundry and showers were also offered. That was our Christmas toy distribution site. It was the office, and now the office—we've been grateful that the Open Door Church of the Nazarene has opened their doors and has given us chapel space and an office so that we can use. We're leasing other space to run program. 10 o'clock that night, I arrived back to the community. By 12 o'clock that night, we had a warming centre ready to open.

Kristin Ostensen  

That's amazing. When I saw the news—I actually saw it on Facebook—and I know my reaction was just complete horror, horror to see this. And I'm wondering—so you mentioned that by midnight, you actually had the warming centre established somewhere, which is incredible. And I'm wondering if you can take me through that sort of immediate process—in that immediate aftermath, how did the evening unfold and how did that come together so quickly?

Ed Dean

Well, I believe it's because of great partnerships. When I received a call on the way home, and somebody said, Come and meet us at the Urban Service, Prince Albert Grand Council Urban Services building, when you get here. Well, of course, the first thing I do is I come down to see the aftermath, or what was still going, I should say, because it was going for many, many hours thereafter. But there was a group of people that met me, and there was the mayor, city councillors, Prince Albert Grand Council representatives. We had the executive director of the YWCA. We had representatives of the mobile crisis, and we had a representative from the security firm that does security in the city here, Prince Albert Security Services. And so, they were all there waiting for me to come home. And I guess I get into the meeting about 10:30, and their comment was: We are here for you. It's -27 degrees out that night, and our guests needed a place to be. So, while I was on my way home, they rallied some volunteers that left their families on Christmas night, to make sandwiches, get things, their gym prepared for what would come next. And so, for the next seven days, we used Urban Services for the services that we would normally offer in our building. Now we're about three blocks away from each other, and so have been used to using and working with one another. And so, when the offer came, we were very grateful, because it could have been a different story. If we didn't have these community partners, where would our people have gone that night?

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, -27—awful.

Ed Dean  

It's not the kind of night that you can sleep on the park bench very comfortably.

Kristin Ostensen  

No, absolutely not.

Ed Dean  

And the warming centre—it only opened the 15th of December, and so it was just few days after that, we're having to move.

Kristin Ostensen  

And you mentioned, of course, you run many different services as well as the church, the corps. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about—so the warming centre, you were able to find a home relatively quickly. And I'm wondering if you can talk about how some of the other services that we offer in Prince Albert, how they were able to find a new home and a new sort of ministry expression through some of these partnerships.

Ed Dean  

We were able to transition very quickly. And so, a lot of our services didn't get lost. In moving to—we moved from the Prince Albert Grand Council Urban Services to a leased space called the Union Centre. The mayor had already made contact to see if it would be available. And so, a week—31st of December—we moved into what would be a more permanent space, for now. And so, when we moved here, the Friday night, New Year's night, was our first night here at the Union Centre. And so, then the Saturday, we did our first meal. Well, you don't realize just how much stuff you need until you plan a meal. Oh, we don't have pots, don't have plates; we don't have anything. And so Saturday morning, one of my volunteers said, I'll meet you at Great Canadian Wholesale, and we did a shop of the items that we would need. And believe it or not, during that next week, there were many other shops that we needed to do because you realize, Oh, well, we haven't got spoons. Oh, we haven't got a spatula. We haven't got this—

Kristin Ostensen  

No salt and pepper.

Ed Dean  

Exactly! And of course, being the holiday week, nothing is available for delivery, because at that point in time, we didn't know where delivery was going to be.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, that's challenging.

Ed Dean

It is. And so, then it's getting the paperwork through headquarters, because it's a holiday week, and not everybody is at the office. And so, there's been many challenges. The two services that we haven't been able to resume is our showers and our laundry. And that's because this building was built in 1956 and it was never designed for people to be staying. So, we run the warming centre every night, seven nights a week, from 10 p.m. until 8 a.m. They have a breakfast before they leave. They can stay. We say our capacity is 35, but if it's extremely cold, we open the door and add in numbers. For example, one night that it was extremely cold, there were 90 people that came through the warming centre that night. And remember, we have a staff of three on at a time, and we were able to bring in some, the security company to offset some of that. But yeah, we are funded, and when we put in the proposal for the funding model, it was for 35 people and three staff. So, when you're doing 80, it's a lot tighter. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, wow. 

Ed Dean

And for those listeners that are wondering, the difference between a warming centre and a shelter is that a warming centre is designed so that they come in, warm up and rotate out, where, with a shelter, there's beds they can [stay]. Now, most nights, we’re at capacity plus a few, and on the extreme cold nights, we opened Thursday night, couple weeks ago, at 10 o'clock at night, and we stayed open until four o'clock in the afternoon on Friday. We had Urban Services open up their facility, and they did the four to 10, and then they came back to us and did the same thing on Friday and Saturday, so that our guests are alive. And that's the thing in the extreme cold—we don't want to lose any of our neighbours.

Kristin Ostensen  

No, absolutely not. And it really just underscores how vital the service is, how important it was for the Army to get up and running again. And of course, I know that you have a lot of background, you've done a lot of emergency disaster services work in The Salvation Army. What's it like, kind of being on the other side and being on the receiving end of all that support? What was your reaction to that community rally that you experienced?

Ed Dean

We are a blessed community, and people say, Oh, it's only PA. Well, yeah, it is PA—it's still a community that cares. The Salvation Army has been in this community 132 years, and as it was put at a follow-up meeting with the Grand Chief, he said, When one of our services go down, we really notice it, and we have to pick each other up. We're there for the same purpose: to help each other, to help our neighbours, to help the relatives that may not have a place to be. But it was humbling, because we're used to giving, and all of a sudden we have to be the receiver. I'm all for putting my hands in and helping where I need to. But when I walked into that room, I knew they were my friends. They were the ones that would hold me up when I need it. We moved out of the Urban Services into the Union Centre in one hour. We had five trucks lined up. Everybody loaded the trucks, and then we backed in over here, and we unloaded the trucks. The local paper was coming to do a story on it, and he almost missed us because we had done already. And I'd been able to call him—we were given some office furniture for the church. And so we were able to call that same group of people and say, Hey, I got some furniture. Any chance that I could use your help? And they come with their pickup trucks, again, off the seventh floor it went and into the church and set up. That's community. Now we roll forward. That's our new reality for now. We're in a space that is four times smaller. Because we were in about 13,000 square feet of space, and now we are in about 2,500 square feet of space. So, how you do things is a whole lot different. Where you had the commercial stove now you have two household stoves that sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. You have a commercial dishwasher and dishes; now you don't. Everything's washed by hand, and we're back to paper plates because we're not putting dishes for 100 people through the sinks. It would take too long.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, it's a huge, huge adjustment, and it sounds like you've done amazingly well, and just have this incredible support network there. And we've talked a lot about the community services aspect. I'm also wondering, how has the corps been affected, and what was the response in the church, and how have people adapted?

Ed Dean

Well, and some of them very much called me the night that the fire happened. We took the following Sunday off because nobody knew where our heads were, where our heads were. We're the pastors. We're supposed to have it all together. Sorry to say, we're human. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah.

Ed Dean

This has been a real ministry, and we roll up our sleeves, we get our hands dirty, but we hurt. The following week, we came together on New Year's Eve, as a church, to see the building, and we were supposed to have a New Year celebration, so we went out for dinner as a church. Following Sunday, we met at the other church. It's got a beautiful chapel, sound system is there, the stuff that we need. They meet at 10. We meet at 12. So, a minor adjustment. But you know what? That minor adjustment is OK. And we're seeing people come. For people that have been around a long time, for some of them, it's an adjustment. I've had people say to me, I was working there when they bought the building. The church family have rallied, and we're seeing some new faces, and that's the exciting piece. I counted a few weeks ago, and out of the 22 people we had in service, nine of those were new within the last year. That's God at work. 

Kristin Ostensen

Amen. 

Ed Dean

And I'm a grassroots, God will allow it to happen, as it does naturally, because we can browbeat people with the Scripture, or we can allow God to do the work. God has done the work. We have a couple—the first time they ever walked in our doors was Christmas Eve. They've been there every Sunday. One of the things that was planned before the fire was a Plates of Hope event. We were going to do Plates of Hope in our own building to show some of the work that had been done over the last year. And so, after the fire, we had some discussion as to whether or not it should still go. And our volunteers said, Absolutely, it should still go. And so now, this year, it's Plates of Hope number two in the same facility as what we were in last year. And those funds will go to continuity of services that we presently provide. What the costs are of doing things in different space, in different time, in needing different things is horrendous. And so, it's a plated dinner with entertainment. It's got a silent auction happening. There will be a program. Dignitaries are starting to say, Yes, I'm coming. It's exciting. Public relations has stepped in, and they've helped us with some things. Malcolm Jenkins Family Foundation—once he heard about the Plates of Hope, he put up a $50,000 matching donation that if somebody matched it, then he will give $50,000, and it was more to generate ticket sales to the event. And that has been matched, once, possibly twice. And so, what went from a small grassroots event last year that was supposed to be a one-time thing—and that's what we found out, it was a one-time thing. So, we have a whole new committee this year doing it. To, now it's a goal of $250,000. Each meal costs $5, is what we guesstimate that the meal would cost. And so that night they can come in and they can purchase meals—a meal for a day for somebody. So, their goal is quite large for that as well. I know that that was something that was proposed to the school boards so that the children could be involved in it.

Kristin Ostensen  

Neat. 

Ed Dean  

Tickets are now on sale on Eventbrite, and so we're hoping to sell out. There's 320 tickets for this event. And I know that public affairs has been in touch with me about seeing if we can get some members of Parliament to come. The Grand Chief for the nations—he's talking about coming, so we're reaching far. It's not about us. It's about mission. It's about ministry. The one thing I have learned is we can decorate up. We can make beautiful anything, but the lives that we reach—we reach them one at a time, and some of them have commented on how tragic loss they have felt of our program, because for them—it wasn't just the unhoused that used our program. It was a mom that would bring sometimes five kids with her. It would be the senior. It would be the one that would say, You know what, I just don't have the money for food. I have an apartment, but I have no money for food. Or, This is my opportunity to socialize with people. We had a housing worker that came as part of our warming centres, our afternoon warming centres—they still come to our new space. How we present things is different, but the mission is the same: love with compassion.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, and I did want to ask, how has God been at work in this very difficult time, and how are you still seeing those moments of beauty and transformation? 

Ed Dean 

In the moments when my heart is heavy, I have to realize it's God's ministry. I'm here for a season. It went on before I got here. It will go on after I leave. But what do I do with those moments that I have? I can speak love, I can speak hope, I can speak compassion, and when I speak those words, I've spoken the love of Christ into somebody's life. One of the things that was on the wall of the dining room was a grace. After the fire, I'm out taking some pictures, and I find that grace. It's laying on the sidewalk. It is not burnt. It has a hole in it because somebody ran over it. That’s God at work. The sign that was on the corner that said The Salvation Army Prince Albert Community Ministries—neither of them were damaged. The fire scorched around it, but the light that I have often spoke about remained on. People have called from all over to check in on us, and that's been greatly appreciated. The Salvation Army is a big organization, but yet we're small enough that we're known. I was getting fuel yesterday at the gas station, and one of the young guys there, he says, Hey, you're in the flesh—the real you. Yeah, I said. Usually, if I'm getting gas for my vehicle, I am, yeah. He says, Well, you've been across the paper every time I pick up a paper for the last month. It's still getting the same message out: there's hope in the midst of all of this. Our current reality is we don't know what tomorrow holds. It's too early. But I do know Who holds tomorrow. Ministry will still happen. I joke that my office is now on four wheels, which I love anyways. But that's OK because that's where God has me at the moment.

Kristin Ostensen 

Yeah. Well, it's so good to hear how God is at work in your ministry. As I said, you know, I know I was so devastated to see the news, and I know the folks listening are going to be so heartened to hear how the community has rallied around you, and the mission continues despite everything. And I just want to thank you again, Major Ed. It's really lovely to chat and to see you. And I know I'm praying for your ministry there, and I know all around the territory and beyond—we're here to support you.

Ed Dean  

Thank you. It is greatly appreciated. When nothing else matters, prayer does. And you hear my heart. It is important that the mission and the ministry in this community continues, because there are still lives that need Christ. There are still lives that are deeply lost, and if we can guide them to a warm night, a meal on the table, to an addiction bed, wherever it is, to other agencies that have services that we may not, that is ministry at its finest. 

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, amen. 

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. For more episodes, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.