The Mount Community Centre is a Miracle on Monaghan Road

Rosemary Ganley
The Peterborough Examiner
May 29, 2019

High school students from the Youth Leadership in Sustainability (YLS) program prepare a meal with local ingredients at the Mount Community Centre. CLIFFORD SKARSTEDT/THE EXAMINER

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I went by the other day to visit the old convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph, which has dominated the landscape along Monaghan Road north for over 150 years. It was almost unrecognizable on the inside, confusing me about where I slept during retreats in the '80s, and where we visited when a Sister had died. But it's humming with new life, renovation, activity and smiling faces.

In a very few years, Peterborough's best qualities of daring, generosity and hard work have come together with remarkable results at The Mount Community Centre.

Three leaders met me for a walk and talk. It was edifying. Kate Ramsay, a local philanthropist, co-chairs the newest campaign for funds: a goal of $4 million by 2020, more than half of which has come in. Ann Farlow is with us, a Mount Community Centre board member from the earliest days, whom I remember in 2013 as making an appeal at a service at the new convent for people to make a social investment in a newly forming, non-profit group renovating the old building for housing.

It seemed somewhat like a pipe dream then, but Father Leo Coughlin stepped forward with a $5,000 loan, and within three months the group had raised $300,000. Two years later the Mount board was able to offer these investors their money back, if they wanted it, and 3% interest. What a story.
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