Fire at St James

Last Monday morning, in the early hours, a fire broke out at the St-James Drop-In Center. The center is located, right next door to the MCM offices and our Just Solutions Legal Info Clinic on the 3rd floor of St. James United Church. Fortunately no one was present in the building at the time. 


Our offices are currently off limits for an undetermined period. The MCM staff is carrying on with work from home, picking up phone messages and holding some meetings at our transition home for refugees in Rosemont - Project Refuge.


We will post new information as it becomes avaialble.  A heartfelt thank you to all of our supporters who have contacted us with offers of help and words of concern. We really do appreciate it as we endeavour to re-organize and maintain all of our services.

MCM Presents!

I chose to do a clinic course at the Just Solutions Legal Clinic in an attempt to learn the intricacies of immigration law that I cannot learn from my textbooks. I am lucky, because I am getting so much more than that. Not only am I learning law and helping people, but the clients also have a lot to share with me on the human level. 

At the Clinic, I get to interact with people who face the threat of returning to a country where their life or wellbeing is in danger. Many of them have to deal with mental or physical health problems. If we were not there to help them, many of our clients simply would not fill out the simple form they need in order to receive what is rightfully theirs or would not know which procedure they need to undertake to remain here with their family. 

While I do help clients with both simple or complex legal work, this is also an opportunity for me to learn from people facing difficult obstacles in their lives – people who have developed the strength and resilience necessary to go through yet another set of taxing proceedings. We at the Clinic really do bond with our clients and we share their joy or their grief over the outcome of the proceedings. Sharing those moments is what this placement is all about.

Myriam Larose

BCL/LLB student at the McGill Faculty of Law, 3rd year

Special New Residents at Project Refuge

Nansen is the feline mascot at Project Refuge – MCM’s community residence for refugees. One day a few months ago, a lovely stray cat requested shelter and we couldn’t refuse.  So we took her in to the delight of all the residents and named her Nansen, in honour of Fridtjof Wedel-Jarlsberg Nansen, appointed the first High Commissioner for Refugees.

Instituted in 1954, the Nansen Refugee Award is given annually to an individual or an organization in recognition of extraordinary and dedicated service to refugees and is the most prestigious honour conferred by UNHCR. In 1985, the PEOPLE of Canada received this Distinction and that’s why we named our cat Nansen. And as you can see Nansen wasn’t the solitary individual  we had first thought – she definitely had a male companion at one point  - and now she has given birth to litter of junior Nansens – a reminder that under the most difficult circumstances, it is always  possible to extend hospitality to the ‘stranger’ in our midst.