If this blog post sounds like a humble brag to you, congratulations, you’re right.
But I’m super proud of being a member of a team that had the ability, opportunity and willingness to contribute to charities in Ottawa, Canada in 2025.
Downtown Ottawa. I used to work in at City Hall which is the building in the bottom left of the picture. In the upper middle of the picture are Canada’s Parliament Buildings. In the distance are the Gatineau Hills. I spent 30 years in Ottawa.
I wasn’t born in Ottawa, but it sure shaped me for the better, and it’s literally still my base of support with roughly 50% of our guests here at Amazing Abruzzo Tours coming from the city and its surroundings.
I arrived in Ottawa after 12 years living on a farm in the hugely famous Heckston, Ontario, pop. 13.
I attended Nepean High School, sporadically and academically underwhelmingly, then got traded to Glebe Collegiate for my last year where I managed to pull off a pass.
After a year of bouncing around Canada, I failed out of Carleton University – not once but two years in a row.
I was 21 and for the next few years, I limped from bar job to restaurant job to joe job to no job. I was on the margins of life and if it wasn’t for my family, I would have needed social services.
I was lucky, and now I understand how lucky I was. I was born to Canadian parents, and I grew up in one of the most stable cities in the world in one of the most peaceful periods of human history.
I had a roof over my head always. Nobody ever put a gun in my hands to order me to kill another human. I was hungry a couple times, but I could have walked down the street to a food bank or a soup kitchen or called my mom. I had a decent education despite my efforts at sabotage. Even the couple minor scrapes with the law I had didn’t condemn me like they would in other countries. Instead, they identified some issues I needed to address and helped me get in touch with people who could help.
Just by being where and when I was, put me squarely in the top one per cent of lucky people to have ever lived in the world. To use sport analogies: if life is a 10-kilometre race, I was born with a nine-kilometre head start on most of the world.
I was born standing on third base. I did not hit a triple.
But that’s not everybody’s experience – even in a place like Ottawa.
After getting myself together thanks to the base of support the city and my family offered, I took the journalism program at Algonquin College, which is often a place of second and third chances for people like me. Quickly, I got a job as a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen where I mostly covered local crime and justice stories.
Here, I saw the difficulties faced by people who were not lucky like me: the struggles of immigrants; the anger of guys who knew they never had a chance and wouldn’t be getting one any time soon; women suffering abuse at home; homeless and hungry people charged with stealing food; and formerly successful people whose lives plummet due to addiction or forced unemployment.
For these souls, the lifelines offered often didn’t come from governments. They came from charities.
Now, I know there is a serious question of whether charities can, or should, be a substitute for governments when it comes to meeting societal needs and problems or resolving socio-economic inequity. I actually think governments should do a lot more in these areas and stop relying on the goodness of strangers to address societal problems.
But currently they aren’t, people need a hand up and charities give that hand up. Those are facts. I also think people who can contribute to closing the gap between those born lucky and those born unlucky, should do it.
That’s why this year, the Amazing Abruzzo Tours team contributed three all-inclusive, one-week, two-person vacations to organizations in Ottawa that are making a real difference in people’s lives.
One trip was donated to the Ottawa Mission’s Blue Door Gala Fundraiser, which supports the Mission’s Food Services Training Program. For those of you not from Ottawa, the Mission started in 1906 as a place providing shelter to homeless men. It has evolved over the years to provide a wide range of services aimed at helping people become self-sufficient and easing the strain of tough times.
Joanne and Bert Hendricks at the Blue Door Gala Fundraiser that raising money for the Mission shelter and its Food Services Training Program. They were the highest bidders on our donated package.
They provided a hospice bed and service to my Aunt Viola. She was a wonderful happy spirit who was born into extremely rough circumstances and struggled to leave them behind. The Mission allowed her to die with a degree of dignity that would not have been possible otherwise.
The Food Services Training Program is a four-month, five-days a week free program for people looking to start work in a commercial kitchen. You learn chef skills, food theory and receive all the government certificates in food handling, health and safety, and first aid to be day-one qualified for work. Ninety per cent of graduates have found work in the food service industry.
A big shout out to Joanne and Bert Hendricks for being the high bidder on the package.
The Amazing Abruzzo Team also donated a package to Salus Ottawa. This group is dedicated to helping people living with mental illness get the most important thing they need, and too often don’t have – a home. The importance of this cannot be underestimated.
As a reporter in the early 2000s working at the courthouse, I became aware of people with mental illnesses who committed minor crimes – like stealing a cup of coffee – were being held in the Ottawa detention centre for months, sometimes because they didn’t have a home and/or the local mental health hospital didn’t have a bed for them.
Susan Smith and Rob Ferguson on the night of the Salus Soiree where they were the highest bidders on the package we donated. Thanks to Susan and Rob for helping us give back to Ottawa.
These people needed help, and instead they were jailed because they didn’t have a home. Many deteriorated badly. One committed suicide. Their crimes were generally minor and if they had a place to go they would have been released from jail. It was cruel in the extreme.
And this kind of thing continues today. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that many homeless people are living with mental health and addiction issues. Jails are still full of them.
Since the 1970s, Salus has been helping these people. The organization stepped in to fill a desperate need and have changed thousands of lives.
A big shout out to Susan Smith and Rob Ferguson for being the highest bidders on our package at the Salus Soiree.
Our last donation to a charity in Ottawa in 2025 was to the Big Brothers Big Sisters Ottawa. This organization is dedicated to pairing adult mentor volunteers with young mentees in need of friendship and direction in life. The idea is that by providing children with role models who teach the benefits of respect for others, education, giving back, and positive societal participation, these young people can become productive members of the city and overcome any obstacles they may face.
The mentees are often from under-privileged backgrounds, and this program gives them a leg up and launches them in the right direction for life. This doesn’t just benefit the mentees; it benefits us all. This organization deserves support.
Joey and Carolina at Lago San Domenico in Abruzzo in September 2025.
We donated a package to Big Brother Big Sisters Ottawa in 2024 too, and the high bidders on that were Joey Correia and Carolina Hernandez. They were enjoying a week in our Villa location in September when this year’s Big Brothers Big Sister Ottawa fundraiser was held.
The day after the auction, I met them at the Villa and Carolina asked if I knew who’d won the package I said I didn’t know. Joey smiled:
Carolina and Joey in front of a Trabocco fishing platform on Abruzzo’s Adriatic Coast on the day they were the highest bidders on the package we donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters Ottawa for the second year in a row. See you in September guys!
“We did,” he said.
Turns out they had co-workers go to the fundraiser to bid on their behalf, and they won again.
Big shout out to Joey and Carolina. They are great people, and I look forward to seeing them again next year.
So, ya … was this blog one big humble brag? Yup. Damn right it was.
It feels good to give back, and I don’t care who knows that.
My home city gave me a lot, especially it provided me with a couple of second chances.
I got lucky.
When I see a homeless person begging or a clearly drug addicted person struggling to get through the day, I remind myself that without the blind luck of being born when and to whom I was coupled with the privilege of spending my formative years in a wonderful caring city, that person could be me.
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