Robert Kinghorn

When we first met in a downtown shelter, she was only sixteen and had been sent to Toronto from northern Canada for treatment at a health clinic. Soon she was on the streets of the city with drug and emotional problems and ended up in the shelter where we met.

I have often wondered as I walk on the streets of downtown Toronto on Thursday evenings what memories the streets would leave with someone who is experiencing this area of the city for the first time as darkness descends.

Some evenings I sense there is unrest on the streets even before I get there. This was one such evening. 

By all worldly accounts much of the ministry of The Church on the Street seems like a total waste of time. However, in my more reflective moments I realize that the answer lies somewhere in the mystery that on the street I am constantly surprised by holiness in the midst of addiction, violence, and poverty.

It was a momentous day in history. May 8th 2025. My wife Ria and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.

Students from Marshall McLuhan High school, led by their chaplain Linda Izzo and accompanied by several teachers and helpers, joined Prakash Lohale OP and me for a street retreat in downtown Toronto. They brought food to distribute to the homeless on the streets.

I have always been a night owl. Even at university I felt that 11 o’clock in the evening was a good time to start cramming for exams the next day. Later I learned that this was not a good way to study, and often the results confirmed it.

The Canadian communication expert Marshall McLuhan made famous the phrase, “The medium is the message" by which he meant that the way a message is delivered has a significant impact on how it is received. But what if the medium is one of the people of the beatitudes: the poor, the addicts, the isolated, and the homeless?

It was one of those evenings when the streets of the city were in deep freeze. I arrived downtown and when I got out of the car, I instantly decided that this was an evening for four layers of clothing.

In the years I have had a ministry to the street people, I cannot say I have cured a single person. But I do believe that with the presence of Jesus, many have been healed and have managed to get off the streets because they have received new hope and courage to fight their addiction.