Alcoholics Anonymous History In Your Area
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
http://www.aatoronto.org/btimes.html
St. Clement’s Turns 50!
They told me to find a group. They said it would provide me with a place full of people who would understand my problem. they will see beyond my, “FINE” (fouled-up, insecure, neurotic and enjoying it), and help me to stretch beyond my capacity. They will provide me a safe place in which to learn how to tell the truth, trust in my fellow man and know, “I am no longer alone.”
What they didn’t tell me was that when I joined the St. Clement’s Group I would learn how to be part of a family, with its “faults and blunders, its aches and pains,” to be a part of something that was neither my responsibility – not rithe – to control. I didn’t now that in this group (in this family), I would learn to accept people and myself just as we are. I didn’t realize that I would be given a place to celebrate our victories, mourn our defeats, and grieve our losses, such as the loss of our dear friends, Don and Arlene.
There are those giants, upon whose shoulders we rest – Jack H.s and Jim P.s – who built a place for us. The New Generation Group, amalgamated with the St. Clements Group 20 years ago to give birth to our Monday night discussion at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. To all those who have gone before us, we say, “Thank you.”
We also say thank you for the foundation of acceptance, during a different kind of Toronto, when many of our members in the gay community were able to find a home at St. Clements’s. We are grateful for a place that accepted us, beaten or bountiful, and as one long time member suggested, “…the happiest group in Toronto.”
The St. Clements Group invites you to help us celebrate 50 years of service with gratitude for our wins, our losses, and YOU!
Wednesday, September 25, 8 pm, St. Clement’s Anglican Church, 59 Briar Hill Avenue at Duplex Avenue off St. Clement’s Avenue.
Deb H.
Copyright © August, 2002, Better Times, GTA Intergroup, Toronto, Canada
http://www.aatoronto.org/
