CMHA Ottawa celebrates 70 years of service with open house event

Oct 26, 2023

The CMHA Ottawa 70th anniversary open house—held the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023—was a great success. Together with our local community, we celebrated 70 years of service to the Ottawa area, and officially welcomed outside guests to our new home at 311 McArthur Avenue in Vanier for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. (We’ve been working in the space all along—a party was overdue!)

We would like to thank our dedicated staff who brought the event to fruition, our MCs Dania Versailles and Paul Blahey, our Board of Directors, and all of our wonderful guests for celebrating 70 years of CMHA Ottawa with us.

We would also like to thank Randy Kakegamick, who blessed and welcomed CMHA Ottawa’s home at 311 McArthur to the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, and Beverly Cummings for the poignant poetry reading.

Additionally, we would like to acknowledge our esteemed guest speakers, Nabanita Giri, President of the CMHA Ottawa Board of Directors; Camille Quenneville, CEO of CMHA Ontario; Sarah Kennell, Director of Public Policy at CMHA National; and Jen Biscope, member of the CMHA Ottawa Peer Engagement Advisory Council, who, along with our Executive Director, Dr. Susan Farrell, shared inspiring remarks about our community-based agency’s past, present and future.

Additional thanks go out to the generous donors, bidders, and organizers of the silent auction benefiting Recovery College.

The event had a “poster alley” describing the past and present of the myriad innovative community-based services we offer, as well as each team’s vision of the future; a slide show of CMHA Ottawa staff and peers over the years; and much more.

Check out the photo gallery on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=CMHAOttawa&set=a.1079880616699470