Certainly there were quite a few more organizations that existed prior to the famous cutbacks of the mid-1990s. We used to have a very well-articulated network of what were called global learner centres across the country, and easily 75% or more of those, once the CIDA funds were cut, evaporated. The same was true for the coalitions. KAIROS is the result of an amalgamation of coalitions. There used to be 13 independent coalitions. PLURA--Presbyterian, Lutheran, United, Roman Catholic, Anglican--was the domestic social arm. Cutbacks over time have forced them to rationalize into one structure, the KAIROS structure. It's been collapsed down rather than expanded out.
Certainly when you look at Yukon history, the first hospital in Yukon was built by the famous Father Judge, a Jesuit priest in Dawson City in the gold rush era. The first schools were church-based. The first emergency relief structures outside of the traditional networks that existed in the first nations communities here were church-related. They played that role consistently over time. The first women's shelter, I think, was probably Maryhouse, which was set up here in 1954. So those were all church-related structures, but they often became disarticulated when they entered into funding relationships with higher governments and that funding was removed.
So you have that yin-yang often of people becoming engaged, establishing organizations, seeking to grow, getting funding, and becoming reliant on that funding, and then that funding is removed and those organizations are reduced or gone. But certainly when you look at it, there has been continually in the Yukon a wellspring of community sentiment such that when there's a family in despair or when there's a disaster of some kind or the ongoing reality of poverty, the generosity of folks is really quite impressive. I've seen it in the annual food drives here, and we'll be beginning Christmas drives soon for folks. Churches often play a part in that, as do other non-governmental members of civic society in general. They range all along the continuum of charity through justice towards solidarity.