Harmony Featured in the Sun Times today

Harmony Centre is Like a Gift that Keeps on Giving

Author of the article: Scott Dunn

Published Mar 19, 2025 

It’s been about a dozen years since the former Knox United Church, an unused, handsome 19th-century brick building in downtown Owen Sound, was given an important new purpose.

Its dwindling parish had left to join the Division Street congregation, forming Georgian Shores United Church. One developer wanted to convert Knox into condos, using the basement for parking. Another had salvage and demolition in mind.

But church leaders favoured a third option and sold the building to a not-for-profit corporation called Harmony Centre Owen Sound, in 2012. The corporation was founded by Frank and Leigh Greaves to preserve a heritage building for the community’s ongoing use.

They provided the then-nine-member non-profit board with a private mortgage at favourable rates, when no bank financing could be obtained, Leigh Greaves said in an interview. She said Community Foundation Grey Bruce holds the mortgage now.

“I personally think it’s a wonderful thing to invest locally in your community because you set your own community up for success,” she said. “Keeping your money as local as possible is a wonderful thing.”

Greaves said without Harmony Centre, many organizations would struggle to find a place to do their work. Many who would want to try to offer a class wouldn’t find a space elsewhere like at Harmony Centre, and arts groups would struggle to find similar rehearsal and performance space, she said.

The couple originally pursued the now-152-year-old Knox building to provide Owen Sound Hunger and Relief Effort soup kitchen a home, Greaves said. OSHaRE remained there for several years and today continues to provide free meals, no questions asked, to homeless people and others struggling, in other quarters downtown.

Knox, a Presbyterian church at the time, was host for the 50th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1924, when congregations voted to combine most Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregationalist churches in Canada to create what became the United Church of Canada.

Knox’s history dates back to 1846 but in 1873 the main section of the current Knox building was completed, opened and dedicated. It was enlarged in 1886 and at that time was described in a local newspaper as “the most attractive and capacious Christian temple in Owen Sound,” a church history on Georgian Shores’s website says.

Today, Harmony Centre has 30,000 to 40,000 visits per year, sometimes more, Greaves said. It offers subsidized rents to some and competitive market rents for others, depending on the use.

“We saw a need like so many in the community,” she said. The new role for the old church building lined up with Frank’s interest in music, the symphony and the arts along with Leigh’s passion for old buildings and supporting downtown.

“I think it’s actually fulfilling our aspirations. We want that building to be there for the community to use for pretty much whatever it needs at whatever time,” she said.

Today, recurring classes and other gatherings there include an introduction to American sign language, a community song circle, lady solo dancing, Alcoholics Anonymous, tai chi, drumming, square dancing, Queen’s Bush Bluegrass, salsa dancing, community meditation and yoga.

“It’s very exciting to see groups come forward and activities come forward and partnerships develop,” Greaves said. “So it’s serving a purpose, it’s being useful, it’s bringing people together and that’s all we could ask for.”

The centre’s mandate is to provide the community with “accessible and affordable spaces to share, create, educate, and perform.” It has a 700-seat auditorium, a 160-seat commons area, a 190-seat lower hall with kitchen and banquet facilities, and numerous smaller lofts and studios.

Greaves said Harmony Centre has never run a deficit, even through the COVID-19 pandemic. There are discounted community rates for not-for-profits and community groups that are doing community work. But the space also is available to the community, business and municipalities at market rates or better, she said.

“So the regular rates subsidize the not-for-profit rates. And because we are run by a volunteer board and we have a hundred volunteers helping us, we can keep these rates low and provide subsidies.”

Jeff Elie, Harmony Centre’s volunteer board chair, said the centre has about 150 bookings a month. Many are weekly events like the dance and yoga classes. There are also special events, weekly and monthly.

“Harmony Centre is a perfect example of a success story of how a small community can do something and it becomes self-perpetuating,” he said. Rather than scattered across the community, groups and individuals have found a home at Harmony Centre, he said.

“So when you walk in, it’s a workplace, there’s music, there’s meetings there’s dance: practically every night there’s contra dancing, there’s square dancing, there’s ballroom dancing, these are all different groups.”

There are around a dozen studios for rent. There’s some dedicated office space for not-for-profit groups, performance spaces and meeting spaces. Ontario Students Against Impaired Driving, administration for Save ‘n Sound and Georgian Bay Folk Society call it home. Artists rent studios, one space is used for voice lessons, there’s a video production company, mental health counselling for first responders, a home and business cleaning company and more in the centre.

“It’s continually evolving as a social enterprise, as an organization that feeds other organizations,” Elie said. And the board members include Harmony Centre renters, residents and community leaders who have a stake in the centre. “So the board itself is charged with all this energy and vitality from the people who we serve. And so it’s been an organic growth . . . and what we do has kind of taken on a life of its own,” Elie said.

“These days, with what’s going on, it’s important for everybody to pull together as a community and feel like we’re on the same team — especially now. And that’s what Harmony Centre does.”

The 11-member volunteer board is taking the centre beyond a venue for classes, concerts and all-candidates meetings. It’s organizing its first small municipalities conference on March 29, focused on local problems, especially in the downtown, Greaves said. “We just said somebody must be doing something that works somewhere. Why don’t we see? . . . We don’t want to focus on the problem, we know what the problems are. We want to focus on solutions.”

Elie said the idea builds on Changemaker Pubs, held once or twice a year at Harmony Centre. Charity groups and non-profits come in to share what they’re doing in brief presentations and then they all socialize. “And these are the change makers in our community who we feel deserve a chance to talk about what they’re doing and network with other people,” Elie said. “We have live music and there’s breaks. It’s a really fabulous thing.”

Leigh still sits on the board of directors and Frank, a retired radiologist, leads a Tuesday work crew of retired medical folks who do Harmony Centre repairs and maintenance.

“It’s a wonderful facility that represents tremendous capacity for this community,” Leigh said. “So our goal is to maintain and improve that facility, constantly.” The board has put in a new heating and cooling system, windows, and the flooring is next.

“People, they call it a hub, an incubator. That building represents capacity for this community that was built by the community over 100 and some-odd years. So we are maintaining that and we are improving it.”