Christmas at our houses

The residents at our recovery houses are feeling festive and getting ready for Santa. All the trees were decorated by the residents and all are very different, we love them all! We had an artificial tree and some decorations donated to us this year, and of course, ou...

Thank you Banyan Construction!

A huge thank you to our friends at Banyan Construction for donating meals to the residents in all of our houses. The Vancouver Island Construction Association hosted a virtual Christmas lunch today and the great people at Banyan Construction bought a meal for each of ...

Wreath Making

Our weekly house meeting at Hudson House was a little different last night. Umbrella's Louise, and Practicum Student Emily spent the evening with some of the ladies making Christmas wreaths. The weekly meetings are really important, but it is nice to have a break and d...

O’ Christmas Tree!

Our friends at Anawim have hooked up Umbrella with the biggest, fattest Christmas tree we have ever had! This massive beauty was delivered to Foundation House, inspected and approved by Lyca and is ready to be decorated by the residents. Evan, our in house Christmas e...

Umbrella Swag

It is our 20th anniversary and we were trying to find some COVID friendly ways to celebrate. COVID is a real concern, but so is the overdose and addiction crisis we are working in. COVID is making things much more challenging for our folks, isolation is not good for mo...

Thank you Sovereign Order of St John

Umbrella is grateful for the support from The Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller. which will help fund a project we are starting. This "Coffee and Connection" project is an opportunity for Umbrella to reach out and connect with some of ou...

Birthday Doughnuts!

November 20 was Umbrella's 20th birthday and well, we couldn't celebrate as we had hoped, so we decided to do what we can and spread a little joy and some delicious doughnuts from our friends at Dynamite Doughnuts! The great team at Dynamite Doughnuts, located in Uptown,...

Happy 2 Years Erik!

Today is a very special day at Foundation House. Erik, our amazing senior resident, is celebrating two years of sobriety! A couple of the staff popped over to the house to surprise him and bring an ice cream cake (with his name spelt wrong- lol). Erik's role at the hou...

Time Travellers

Every day when we go to work, we never know what we might find, and yesterday was no different. It appears some of our team are time travellers! We found this odd collection of vintage photos of some of our team members at one of the sites we work at.  

Recovery Capital Conference

Today a small group of Umbrella staff got together to virtually participate in the Recovery Capital Conference. Typically a couple of team members head over to New Westminster to join the conference, but this year, as with most things, it was virtual. Umbrella took adv...