Recovery centre tenants find new home after being forced from Winnipeg condo development

Recovery centre tenants evicted in Winnipeg now have a new home in Brandon to help continue their sobriety journey. Joseph Bernacki reports.

Antonia Roulette has found a new home where she can continue her road to recovery after she was uprooted last year.

Roulette and her daughter were among dozens of families who had to relocate after a judge ordered them out of a Linden Woods development in November 2024.

“This place has helped me a lot,” Roulette said.

“I used to be a very broken person. I never used to smile. I used to be a grouch. That’s why I had this little line on my forehead, but now I smile a lot. I’m almost 300 days sober. It means a lot because it’s the longest I’ve ever been sober.”

Roulette initially joined the privately owned centre in July 2024 to seek treatment for drug addiction.

ARC owned 23 of 24 units in the Waverley Street development. Known as the Aurora Reunification Village, it was created to reconnect mothers like Roulette with their children while in recovery, offering counselling, support services and financial aid.

Roulette and the other tenants were ordered to vacate the premises after a Court of King’s Bench judge ruled in favour of a cease and desist issued by the condo corporation. It argued the development was being used for business purposes, which was against the condo’s rules.

In the aftermath, ARC purchased the former Redwood Motor Inn in Brandon to house those forced to leave the Linden Woods facility.

According to owner Michael Bruneau, they are at full capacity with 150 clients with demand still growing well beyond Manitoba.

“Right now, we’re opening up in Estevan next week because if we didn’t get beds in Estevan next week, we’d have to start turning families away,” Bruneau said.

“We have no more beds in Gimli or Brandon right now. We’re full.”

Bruneau is now selling the units he owned in the Winnipeg condo.

‘Its like a family’

Resident Rebecca Kennedy said she doesn’t know where she’d be if she hadn’t found ARC.

“That is scary to think about. I probably would have been alone out there with no home and nobody to lean on.”

She came to the Brandon centre in August 2024 to recover and reunite with her family.

“It has been hard, being away from my partner and my kids, but it motivates me to keep going,” Kennedy said.

Staff said it’s a unique approach to help families reunite.

“We call it a village here because the workers here, it’s like a family,” said Tara Campbell, knowledge keeper and clinical counsellor at Aurora Recovery Centre.

“The kids here see what they feel as aunties and uncles. They all work together here in recovery parenting programs and childcare.”

Bruneau said they already have plans to add on to the existing 150 beds at the Brandon Aurora Recovery Centre. An expansion for a second building is in the works and is expected to be built in the near future.

Province creating recovery programs that keep families together

CTV News Winnipeg reached out to Manitoba Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith to ask if the province has plans to offer a similar reunification model in its addictions strategy.

In a statement, Smith said the province is working to build more transitional housing and to create recovery programs that keep families together and help parents get their children back.

“(The province’s) Our Your Way Home strategy includes funding to provide wraparound supports and transitional housing so folks can access the supports they need to get their children back, including primary care, mental health supports, recovery programs,” she said.

She also pointed to recent provincial funding for the Anne Oake Recovery Centre and the Rubin Block.

“We’ll continue to move forward in creating more spaces so Manitobans can access the support they need during their path to recovery.”

-With files from CTV’s Alexandra Holyk