Glassworks Coop Says thanks

Glasswork Coop is one of the many groups that use Harmony Centre regularly for events and gatherings. This week they kindly posted a thank you to Harmony Centre. We so appreciate hearing when we succeed in filling a community need.

Glassworks posted:

We’re so grateful for the support from the Harmony Centre Owen Sound! They’re always there when we need a space for our larger in person events and they’ve always shown us lots of support and solidarity! And they’re a truly amazing hub for community initiatives, organizing and gathering! 

Shawna Banville Art Therapy is among the many creative residents who call Harmony Centre home. Later this month, Shawna will be hosting a unique creative experience called The Art of Seeing. Running from 10:00 to 3:00 on November 29, this Expressive Art Retreat will guide you on a journey of mindful self-exploratio

Cost: $150

AWAKEN YOUR SENSES

Get out of your head and step into a day of presence, creativity, and mindful self exploration. Nurture your body, mind, and spirit through art, sound, and movement.

Explore and play in a safe, supportive and confidential space and leave with practices and insight to integrate connection and awareness into your everyday life.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• Guided mindful journey inward
• Reflective Art Therapy exercises and art materials (sensory processing, drawing, watercolour, journaling)
• Exploration of what gets in the way of seeing ones truth
• Sound/frequency healing
• Opportunity for group sharing
• Catered lunch and refreshments

YOUR HOSTS

Shawna Banville, BA, RP, Registered Art Psychotherapist,
nature lover, mother, artist, dancer, private practice owner, and
guide in creative mindful self discovery.

Mike Merrit, MSW, Clinical Logo therapist, Ex Naval officer,
2nd degree black belt in Karate, dabbler in the arts, and
mindfulness practitioner.

Contact Shawna to Reserve
1-519-374-9850
shawnabanville@gmail.com

Harmony Centre celebrated a major milestone at its Annual General Meeting held on September 9. Board Chair Jeff Elie announced that the charitable organization had exceeded 1,500 bookings in its fiscal year ending March 31 – breaking previous records.

“This is an incredible achievement,” Elie said in his report to the board. “It speaks to the resilience of our organization and the efforts of all the people who make Harmony Centre work.”

According to Elie, more than $17,000 was granted in rent subsidies to not-for-profit users during this period of growth, fulfilling Harmony Centre’s mandate to provide affordable short- and long-term rental spaces to community groups.

Elie also highlighted several solutions-based and community-oriented events produced recently by Harmony Centre, including this year’s flagship Small Communities Solutions Conference, which drew speakers and attendees from across the country, and its popular ChangeMaker Pub Nights, which showcase local groups and organizations.

“These events not only highlight the capabilities of Harmony Centre, they also strengthen our bonds with community members, partners, and sponsors,” Elie says.

The report noted how February’s installation of new stackable chairs in Greaves Auditorium has expanded the functionality of this impressive venue. The space is already being used for in-the-round assemblies, facilitated discussions, and workshop-style events – this summer a full-sized trapeze was installed there for the circus camp, and even more innovative uses are in the planning stages.

Harmony Centre’s annual strategic planning meetings have proven useful for consolidating a shared vision of the organization’s direction. According to Elie, planning workshops have guided the organization to focus on more home-grown events that position Harmony Centre as a leading supporter of local positive change. “This is a strategic goal that we have embraced as an organization,” he says.

“Harmony Centre remains steadfast in its goals – to ignite creativity, foster connections, and nurture growth. As we move forward, we do so with pride, optimism, and a sense of purpose,” Elie concluded.

Hello friends! We’re looking for (at least) two web based volunteers – we need help posting to our wordpress website (copying over content from our newsletter, approving events) and we’d also like some help with Facebook – creating posts and sharing content from our amazing residents and user groups.

If you’re looking for a way to help from the comfort of your home and become part of a great team dedicated to this special social enterprise/registered charity please get in touch!

info@harmonycentre.ca and 519-376-8880

One of the newest residents at Harmony Centre is Margaret Curtis. Her business, Margaret Curtis Landscape Design, was formerly based out of Meaford, but after welcoming her baby a few months ago she decided the time was right to move the office to Owen Sound to be closer to home. She and her husband share studio space (Jesse is the founder of the local magazine Rrampt), and the arrangement is ideal for both of them.

Margaret has taken an interesting and expansive route to landscape design. She studied fine art at university and that led to a career in floral design in Toronto, which led to work in film as a set director, and then to starting her first business, as food stylist for TV and print (her childhood dream was to be a chef). 

An Unexpected Evolution

She loved floral design working on weddings and big events but she sought something more challenging, something on a bigger scale. Margaret headed back to school to study landscape design and was hired by a well respected designer in Toronto, Joel Loblaw Inc. After graduating, she remained with his firm for five more years and continued to hone her skills. Although her evolution as landscape designer is unexpected, the path to reach this point has been logical and has given her the skills to utilize all her experiences in her design work.

After spending ten years in Toronto, Margaret was ready to head closer to her childhood home. She settled back in Owen Sound and established her business in Meaford, developed some contacts with local architects and builders and found a niche for her skills mainly in the Muskoka-Collingwood-Thornbury-Meaford areas. She works independently and occasionally calls upon a freelance artist to help with some of the computer generated renderings that she uses.

Margaret takes her responsibility as designer very seriously, “landscaping is a luxury, and people are putting a lot of faith and trust in me,” she says. “I want to make sure that people love their outdoor spaces and [that the spaces] are going to function well for them and their families.  The designing is about creating something that is beautiful now but will also look beautiful in 15 year’s time.”

Design a Lifelong Interest

Margaret measures success in terms of her client’s happiness, and also in terms of pushing herself to be a growing and creative person. I asked her what it is that makes her good at her job. “I’m a good listener,” Margaret explains. “My clients might not know exactly what they want, so I have to suss out through our conversations what would be most appealing to them. As well, I have been interested in design for a very long time, since I was a little kid,” she adds. “It’s been a lifelong interest of mine.”

Check out Margaret’s designs on her website at margaretcurtisdesign.com, reach her at hello@margaretcurtisdesign.com, or pick up a copy of this summer’s July/August edition of House and Home where her designs are displayed on the cover of the magazine.

This profile provided by Harmony Centre board member Lorraine Campbell. Each month Lorraine writes about the people and the community groups that make this remarkable facility what it is today.

The final report of Harmony Centre’s Small Communities Solutions Conference is now available. Read it here or contact us to receive a digital copy.

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.”

Lori Pyne will be addressing Harmony Centre’s Small Communities Solutions Conference on the topic of Reframing Community Relationships. Lori has worked as a socially responsible leader, convenor, and community builder.

She currently is the Executive Director at Squamish Helping Hands Society, having worked for over a decade at Whistler Community Services Society. She has managed multiple projects, while maintaining passion and integrity for the impact that she has on her surroundings. 

Lori enjoys creating strategic perspectives while generating positive opportunities and outcomes for her staff, clients, and family. She currently collaborates on community housing solutions around the Squamish Community Housing Society board table with a lens for accountability, balance and commitment. Her term on the Vantage Point Board of Directors, Transforming BC’s Non Profits, is where she learned the importance of diverse relationship building and the importance of transparent governance. 

Gwen Patrick will be sharing her experience in holistic economic development at Harmony Centre’s Small Communities Solutions conference with her presentation: Economic Nutrition for the Place We Live. Gwen is the Financial Innovation Lead at the Shorefast Institute on Fogo Island, overseeing program execution and financial and economic toolset development.

Like Harmony Centre, the Shorefast Institute is a social enterprise, in fact one of Canada’s largest, working to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, a 400 year-old outport fishing community critically impacted by the decline of the cod fishery and the related moratorium established in 1992.

She grew up on Salt Spring Island, BC, where she founded the Foundation of Youth, a youth advisory committee of the Salt Spring Island Foundation. While earning her Bachelor of Commerce at Queen’s University, she received the Kehoe Fellowship, enabling her to intern with Shorefast on Fogo Island. After graduation, she obtained her CPA designation and worked in public accounting at a Big Four firm before returning to Shorefast.

For more information on the Small Communities Solutions Conference, click here.

The Small Communities Solutions Conference being held at Harmony Centre on March 29 will learn of a pilot project undertaken by the Grey Bruce Public Health Unit. Heidi Lucas will outline the project which uses Drug Test Strips as an aid in Harm Reduction. Harm Reduction is part of a spectrum of services that supports people to achieve optimal health and wellbeing as they navigate their journey with substance use.

Heidi is a public health nurse on the GBPH Harm Reduction Team and has experience in harm reduction in urban and rural settings and enjoys opportunities to work directly with clients, as well as on population-level initiatives.

For more information on Harmony Centre’s Small Communities Solutions Conference click here.