Pat Nixon receives Order of Canada
by Doris Fleck

On September 9, one of Calgary’s former street kids received the country’s highest honor, the Order of Canada.

Over the past 20 years, Pat Nixon, the Executive Director of the Mustard Seed Street Ministry, has mobilized thousands of volunteers from local churches and businesses to provide their time, talent or cash to help street people get back on their feet.

"Pat’s extremely deserving," said Rick Tobias, executive director of Toronto’s Younge Street Mission. "Across the nation there’s hardly a street ministry that hasn’t benefitted from Pat’s learning."

Nixon is a dreamer who believes in miracles and as far as he’s concerned, he’s just getting started solving "some big problems for the street folks in our community." His method is to "care for the whole person, the way Christ cared for us." And his means is to mobilize the Church to do it.

Nixon said that when he was a law-breaking teen, he could have never fathomed his future as a husband and father of six sons, a leader in the community, a public speaker and award recipient. "I had no concept of what I could be," he remarked. "Other people had it for me."

As a 15-year-old street kid Nixon found himself lonely, stinking and constantly sick from drinking cheap wine and Lysol. He was begging for cash in the downtown core when four young men came by and offered to buy him a meal. These men, from Calgary’s First Baptist Church, took him to their house and gave him food, clothing and his own room.

"These guys are still the people I look at as the heroes of my life," Nixon said. "For me, there were the right people there at the right time. I believe this can happen for every one of these street folks."

When the Mustard Seed started, Nixon was the only paid staff member. Now with 65 full-time and 35 part-time employees and close to 10,000 volunteers, an average of 1,268 meals are provided each day. But Nixon’s vision was never just to "hand someone a sandwich."

Pat Nixon

Since 1999, the development of the Creative Centre has provided viable employment for hundreds of street folk who would otherwise never have had a chance. People can complete their Grade 12 credits, take college level classes, learn a trade or deal with emotional issues. But Nixon’s dreams don’t stop there. "I want to build a town," Nixon said, "a place where we can pull people out of the inner city and give them a new environment where we can literally work with hundreds if not thousands of people at once." Currently researching the possibilities Nixon explains, "So many of our folks, if given a new environment, a new chance, just like I was given…I believe they’ll make it."