December 1 is World AIDS Day. This year, we commemorate the AIDS epidemic as we are all surviving a worldwide pandemic. Sunshine House fits its roots in the AIDS epidemic; it originally began as the Kali-Shiva Society, a group of volunteers who gathered in 1983 to provide care for Brian Taylor. Sunshine House was so-named in the year 2000 after Dionne Sunshine, a community member who died of complications from AIDS at the St. Boniface Hospital.
Our beloved former executive director, Margaret Ormond, was there for the darkest days of the '80s and '90s when treatments were nonexistent and information was hard to come by. Current ED Levi Foy got online to talk with her about what it was like back then, how Sunshine House's unique ethos came to be, and what parallels we can draw between that chaotic time and the one we currently live in.