Sealight Sisters Joins Harmony Community

Harmony Centre is pleased to welcome its newest resident organization, the SeaLight Sisters Society, a federally registered charity that supports women+ working in Canada’s maritime industry through education, mentorship, professional development, and community connection.

The organization is dedicated to helping mariners build successful careers while promoting safe, respectful, and supportive workplaces throughout the sector.Through a variety of programs and initiatives, SeaLight Sisters provides networking opportunities, peer support, educational resources, and advocacy for those entering or advancing within the maritime profession. The organization also works with industry partners to encourage best practices and strengthen workplace culture across Canada’s marine community.

By establishing its headquarters at Harmony Centre, SeaLight Sisters brings a unique national perspective to Owen Sound—a community with deep maritime roots and a long-standing connection to Georgian Bay.

Whether you are an experienced mariner, a student exploring a career on the water, an industry professional, or simply someone interested in Canada’s maritime heritage, SeaLight Sisters Society offers opportunities to:

Learn More & Get Involved: Visit sealightsisters.org or stop by their new office at Harmony Centre.

June marks the beginning of our summer schedule at Harmony Centre—a season filled with special events, community gatherings, and opportunities to connect. While some regular programs take a summer break, there’s still plenty happening throughout the month.

Be sure to check out this month’s featured events, including the Discovering Confidence meditation retreat, and Kindred Kids Music’s presentation of The Cat Came Back.

We’re also pleased to welcome the SeaLight Sisters Society as Harmony Centre’s newest resident organization and invite you to learn more about their inspiring work in this month’s Profiles feature.  

Thank you for being part of our community. We look forward to seeing you at Harmony Centre this summer!

Please note summer hours kick off this month, continuing through August (Tuesday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.)

Amy Stewart, Operations Manager

info@harmonycentre.ca

Summer Office Hours: Tuesday – Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Thank you to dedicated supporter Harriet Nixon, who hosted a rummage sale last month in support of our Raise the Floor campaign and to raise awareness for Harmony Centre❤️

Interested in hosting your own event? We’d love to hear from you.

For many area children, the festival is more than just a performance — it’s a milestone. From first-timer piano solos to confident ensemble pieces, participants experience encouragement and pride alongside skill-building.

“The energy at our festival comes from the kids,” says Regan MacNay, Festival Administrator. “We see hesitation turn into excitement, and young performers leave the stage with a sense of accomplishment they’ll carry with them. That’s the heart of this event — celebrating every child’s musical journey.”

In 2026, Harmony Centre plays a key role in hosting festival events, especially piano classes and recitals. It’s a meaningful partnership: Harmony Centre’s welcoming atmosphere mirrors the supportive community spirit the festival creates, and the Centre’s spaces come alive as a stage for young talent.

The festival’s roots in Grey County go deep, supporting opportunities for constructive feedback, scholarships, and provincial recommendations, all while connecting youth with peers who share a passion for music.

Whether it’s a seasoned vocalist or a nervous first-time performer, the Kiwanis Festival of Music proves again and again that the real score isn’t in rankings — it’s in the joy, confidence, and connections found along the way.

The Grey County Kiwanis Festival of Music runs April 13–17 and April 20–24, 2026, with selected piano classes and performances taking place at Harmony Centre, supporting our young performers.

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! 

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

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.