Turning Point 10th Annual Reality Gala

The joy of Turning Point Recovery Society is it’s success with the clients and the community.  I have friends in health care who graduated from Turning Point Recovery.  More than a decade later they sing the praises of their experience with Turning Point. “I needed a place where I was safe, where people didn’t use,  where people helped me stay in recovery.”  Too many recovery houses lack standards.   Jim Ross, one of a  couple of addicts serious about recovery began this phenomena that continues till today with Brenda Plant as the executive director.  

The Turning Point Gala has been a major event for 10 years now.   Celebrity Speakers have included  Martin Sheen, Katey Sagal, Mathew Perry, Ashley Judd,  John Laroquette. Jim Belushi, David Cosby, Rob Lowe.  This year’s speaker was David Feherty, the famously entertaining golfer and golf show host.

It’s a place where recovery meets the community and the now successful, their families and those friends of friends who support recovery give back as others give forward.  The Four Season’s Hotel is all uptown and glitz with excellent service and great food. I loved tonight’s halibut.

This year with all the epidemic of  tragic fentanyl  deaths in the DTES, the Turning Point Reality Gala  really seemed  a warm place after a very chill winter. Turning Point always has been about hope. 

Every year the dignitaries are there. So often the mentally ill and especially the addict and alcoholics don’t feel heard. They are not alone. The RCMP in red serge from Richmond , the politiicians,  from province and city, the corporations and corporate leaders all gather in support of recovery. There is a way out.   What started as a few recovering addicts wanting to live together in the safety of mutual support has expanded to several large homes where individuals begin their journey home.  Now Turning Point even has businesses where those in recovery can work to help the reintegration with greater society. .  

As the first residential recovery service provider to be accredited by BC Turning Point is licensed by the province and contracted by Vancouver Coastal Health with its high standards. .  Their good management and good name have attracted, over the years,  sponsorship from the community’s finest corporations including Westjet, Global TV, Ledcor, Mayfair, Van mar, Rock 101, Save On Foods,    and so many more.  With the support of government as well they have been able to open recovery houses in Vancouver, Richmond, North Vancouver and now Squamish. There are always the individuals too. 

 Randene Neil is the consumate MC looking younger every year.  She has the most engaging smile and laughter   Howard Bland the auctioneer is a one man comedy routine auctioning off the finest weekend retreats with spa and fine restaurants and flights and rock concerts then throwing in a a Motel 6 night to sweeten the deal. And yes, we all love those Motel 6 extra’s and the nights at Red Rock Casino and thousands more money raised for a good cause,  all the while laughter is the norm. 

This nights speaker,  David Feherty, famous golfer, sports commentator and stand up comic shared personal stories of the highs and lows of his life.  I will forever be affflicted  by his image of how to count sheep.  His joke about his mother asked by his  father, who’d stayed too long at the pub, if she’d kept his supper warm, replied, yes,   in the dog’s stomach.  There was much appreciation for Mr. Feherty  from the golfers. A night of wild golf stories sparked with Tiger Woods tales and inside stories of Jack Nicklaus was a sportsman’s dream come true. I appreciated hearing how at the nadir of his drinking when he was popping pills and not really wanting to live that others had to tell him he was sick .  Addiction is the disease that tells you you don’t have it. His good friends took him to 12 steps meetings and helped him return from the dead.  A decade of life and relapse certainly emphasized the nature of the disease . He said, it ‘waits like a monster under the bed’ .  He described his life in recovery  as joyful even, or especially because of  his wife who he said "came from Alabama where they think Deliverance is a love story.”   The contrast, the world of alcohol and pills, was pure misery.  He was very thankful for recovery.  I can’t do justice to his Irish humor that had everyone on the verge  of apoplexy.  Truly a night to remember.

I was thankful to be with my friends Laura, Anita and Ganesh. Anita and Laura talked about grandchildren. Ganesh and I reminisced about Scotty and Malcolm our friends who are now attending the great big meeting in the sky. Kumar, known for his adventurous life,  actually got Ganesh sharing of his para sailing experiences in Hawaii. At the silent auction I won tickets to Bard on the Beach.  The silent auction at Turning Point has the very best events, restaurants, art, jewelry and shows. After all the applause and laughter the evening came to a close.  We hugged and made our way out.  I was delighted to see Michelle of Avalon Women’s centre as we made our way out of the Four Seasons.  

Another great year for Turning Point and another great gala. 

 

Willi and Anita Gutowski's 50th Wedding Anniversary

I was priviledged to be invited to Dr. Willi Gutowski and Nurse Anita Gutowski’s 50th Wedding Anniversary in their home on Little Mountain, Chilliwack today. Of all their myriad of  accomplishments and the honours they’ve known,  the honorifics they most appreciate are husband and wife, father and mother,   grandfather and grandmother.  Their love is family and family is the lens through which they view the world.
I arrived with Gilbert, my cockapoo who was immediately befriended by one of the many Gutowski grandchildren.  Thanks to Anita and Willi’s love there are lovely daughters and handsome son in laws.  The beautiful house on the hill overlooking (of course) the golf course, was overflowing with friends and family.  Gilbert fit right into the groups of children running this way and that on the large lawn.  Hugged first by Willi then by Anita I had food offered to me by both.  Lots of those dainty girl things that looked ornate and hardly warranted a bite except to taste beside much more manly sandwich fair.  A very good ‘spread’ in the jargon.
I took a seat on the balcony in the glorious sun and was soon hearing story after story from those who’d known Willi and Anita since early days in Minnetonas, Manitoba. There were stories of University of Manitoba,  Africa and tales of British Columbia and California.
In a rough time in my life, following a divorce, following a crisis of direction as a doctor, after too much drinking in Mexico I came to Willi to ask him what I should do next.  Willi thought it was good that I’d stopped drinking and stopped smoking marijuana despite what other psychiatrists had said. He knew too the corruption in the system but didn’t think that I should focus on that but rather look to spiritual ideals. I remembered when I’d had Dr. John White as my mentor in psychiatric residency he’d said the same.  So with Willi’s direction I stayed at church, stayed sober, made no decision further about quitting medicine or giving up being a physician and psychiatrist  but rather focussed  “recuperation”.   He mostly told me that Jesus had said “Do not be afraid.’  I was very anxious at the time and couldn’t help but dwell on Freud’s statement ‘maybe the paranoids are right’.  But Willi, always calm, encouraged me to “not be afraid’.  I’ll be forever grateful.
With Anita he introduced me to the Christian Medical and Dental Society.  I'd met Dr. Lam at the Evangelical Medical Association and soon was among the finest caregivers.   I’d been drawn to medicine after praying in the chapel of the United Church at the University of Winnipeg.  I’d most admired Dr. Albert Schwietzer. I’d sought out Dr. John White in Psychiatry. When I wanted to go off as a missionary doctor in Africa, romantic that I am, Dr. Jack Hildes convinced me the greatest need was with the Northern Medical Unit.  I was happy serving.  Indeed I saw medicine as service.
Thanks to Wili’s sage advice and Anita’s meals I stayed in medicine and returned to psychiatric practice a year later.  That year off was an amazing time of learning.  I spent a lot of time in church and in prayer and met doctors thereafter who I could admire. I remember Dr. Graeme Cunningham telling me, “some people run with the cheetah’s, some people run with the turkeys, sound’s to me you’ve been running with the turkeys’.  It was an amazing life lesson. I had come to believe the little circle of the world I had inhabited at the time represented the greater whole.  I came again to be amongst the finest and best of physicians and psychiatrists and would once again love my career.
Later I  worked with Willi and Anita in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands.  There I met  the greatest of nurses and the best of colleagues on this island where Willi and I were the sole psychiatrists.  Often I’d know the delight of Anita’s cooking and share the generosity of their home. At the hospital we’d share patients and I was so impressed with his consummate skill as a clinician and psychiatrist.  We’d both trained at University of Manitoba and we both shared with the nurses an appreciation of the wholeness of people. There weren't any ‘part objects’ in our care.  Patients were always biological, psychological, sociological and spiritual.
I remember Willi and Anita telling me stories of their early days as missionaries in Africa. One day helping Willi, the consummate handyman, fix something in Saipan, he told me “I learned to fix things as a missionary. Everything breaks down in Africa.” He and Anita sail and I sail.  They didn’t get tattoos, though.
Willi and Anita were very much apart of the the Saipan Pentecostal church. I had a wonderful time getting to know the pastor there and joining in the uplifting exciting Pentecostal worship.  Willi and I studied the Holy Spirit together and meditated together. I remain more ecumenical, a Baptist, who’d become United and finally Anglican who attended the Methodist and Pentecostal church and enjoyed Catholic services as well.  It was Willi though who enlightened me to the Holy Spirit.  My friend, Dr. Bernie Klassen had prayed as well to the Holy Spirit while I’m more likely to called out to Jesus, “ the god within” in a kind of 911 way of prayer. There’s wisdom in the distinctions which I’d later learn more about studying with Dr. James Houston thanks to the foundation that Willi and his minister encouraged in addressing the details and not just the generalities.  
Then we would golf.  Willi and Anita both loved to golf, as happy to haul clubs around the course as to whip about on the little electric moon buggies called golf carts. I’ve golfed more with those two than I have in my life and expect they were practicing Christian patients.  I learned a whole lot about Mulligans.
Late Friday after noon we’d either go golfing or go scuba diving as our ‘staff meeting’.  I loved to scuba dive and Willi was a great buddy. He ‘d carry the hospital ‘beeper’ in a water proof pouch and only occasionally would either of us get called and have to slowly ascend to the surface to call our covering family physician colleague. I’d actually write up minutes about the work we’d discuss leaving out all the theology, philosophy, history and politics that got addressed as well.  I was sorry to leave Saipan.  My mother was sick. I was homesick for Canada.
What was amazing though was learning one day sometime after we’d met that Willie’s family farmed in Minnetonas. That’s where my grandfather’s ranch and logging operation was. Not only that my cowboy uncle, a true character out of Louis L’amour novel,  had worked for the Gutowski farm at one time.  Small world.
Now here I was listening to Willi’s daughter read from a love letter Willi had sent to Anita in medical school. It was so touching. Then the daughters, one from Winnipeg, one from Oregon, and one from Chilliwack with hardly a rehearsal here, sang the most beautiful collection of Christian songs, the favourites of the parents.
It was truly a privilege and an honour to be invited.  Their 50th Anniversary was such a testimony to the breadth and depth of their love.  They don’t just talk Christianity and Christian Love.  They live Corinthians.   Thank you, Willi and Anita.