Sunshine House is a place where people can grow! Sunshine House traces its roots to 1983, when a group of volunteers came together to provide home care for Brian Taylor, who became the thirteenth person to die of AIDS in Manitoba. Through the turbulent years of the 1980s and ’90s, the Kali-Shiva AIDS Society worked to provide care and outreach during the HIV/AIDS crisis, trailblazing harm reduction practices in Winnipeg on minimal budgets.
In 1999, a house on Maryland St. became a homey drop-in for community members and a home base for Kali-Shiva’s outreach work. About 30 people were at the meeting that decided to name the place “Sunshine House,” after Dione Sunshine, an Indigenous trans woman who was dying of AIDS at St. Boniface Hospital. Sunshine House became a welcoming place for folks to hang out, obtain basic services and meet some of their social and recreational needs.
Sunshine House found its first permanent home in 2006 when the building at 646 Logan Ave was purchased. A few years later, long-time board member Margaret Ormond became Sunshine House’s first Executive Director. Margaret was a nurse practitioner who worked in community health for decades, and was known for her no-nonsense effect, small stature and boundless compassion and tenacity. Her passing in 2022 was a personal loss for all of us, and now we esteem her as a founding mother of Sunshine House.
Levi Foy, who had been the coordinator of the Like That program, took over for Margaret as Executive Director, and has led Sunshine House through a period of massive growth. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified and widened existing inequalities, and Sunshine House has made multiple pivots to best serve the community in these chaotic, extremely challenging times.
In 2022, we created Manitoba’s first-ever supervised drug consumption space, the Mobile Overdose Prevention Site (MOPS) and in 2025 we opened Kelly’s Corner, a transitional residence for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks exiting encampment living. Sunshine House is a responsive organization that is willing and able to fill gaps and meet unmet community needs when they arise.