1. / 35May / June 2005
W
hen Pat Nixon was a
delinquent 15-year-old,
he used to sit outside
Calgary’s City Hall and
“bum”moneyfrompassers-by.Now,as
executive director of the Mustard Seed
Street Ministry, Nixon still “bums”
money, but on a much larger scale.
“God was preparing me for His ser-
vice in His kingdom,” says Nixon, who
now oversees an annual budget of $5.7
million. The ministry served more than
450,000 meals to homeless people in
2004, and put up almost 28,000 over-
night stays. That’s not to mention tran-
sitional housing programs, community
health care, industrials arts and literacy
programs programs, and computer and
job training.
Over the past 20 years, Nixon has
mobilized thousands of volunteers from
local churches and businesses to help
street people get back on their feet.
This fall, the former street kid with
a seventh-grade education who “broke
every rule in the book” will be receiving
the country’s highest honour, the Order
of Canada.
“Pat’s extremely deserving,” says
Rick Tobias, executive director of Toron-
to’s Yonge Street Mission. “He deserves
it on the basis of what he’s done for the
poor in Calgary. Obviously the city rec-
ognizes his contribution by giving him
the Citizen of the Year Award. Across the
nationthere’shardlyastreetministrythat
hasn’t benefited from Pat’s learning.”
Nixon joins a list that includes Cana-
da’s top scientists, artists, philanthropists,
volunteers and business people. But he
doesn’tseethehonourasmarkingtheend
of his work—he’s just 44. “I’m looking at
the next 20 years with more excitement
than I did the first 20.”
“Pat’s understanding is that he is, in
some way, an agent of the Church,” says
Tobias, who has known Nixon for 20
years. “His job is to create an environ-
ment where church and community peo-
ple can connect with low-income people
in meaningful ways.”
God Turned Street Kid
Into Ministry Leader
By Doris Fleck
F e a t u r e P r o f i l e
PHOTO:PETERFLECK
Pat Nixon: Giving street people a second chance
A former street kid and
drug dealer will soon
receive the country’s
highest honour, the
Order of Canada
2. 36 / May / June 2005
Nixon says that when he was a law-
breaking teen, he could have never fath-
omed 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 remarks. “Other people had it
for me.”
DEALT DRUGS BY AGE 14
As a young boy growing up in Vancou-
ver, Nixon was repeatedly beaten by his
father. By the time he was 12, drinking
and drugs became his escape. His father
committed suicide and his mother re-
married. But Nixon and his older broth-
er, Bill, received little attention as his par-
ents practically lived at the local bar.
Just as he was starting Grade 8, Nix-
on was kicked out of school for assault.
His life on the street had begun.
Initially dealers used Nixon as a
“drug wheel” throughout the interior of
British Columbia.
“I would pick up drugs, get on a
Greyhound bus, look cute like I was go-
ing to Grandma’s house, drop off the
drugs and pick up the money,” he ex-
plains. “They called me ‘The Kid’ and
made me feel like a top-end criminal.”
Yet by the time he was 15, Nixon
was a drug addict and discarded by the
dealers. He hit bottom and found himself
thinking about suicide as he leaned over
a guardrail looking into the dark waters
of the river below. Suddenly the image
of a Sunday school plaque he had made,
The Lord is my Shepherd, leapt into hisThe Lord is my Shepherd, leapt into hisThe Lord is my Shepherd
thoughts. Nixon turned away from the
guardrail, clenched his fist at the sky, and
yelled, “What kind of a shepherd are
you? If you are my shepherd, come down
here and prove it.”
Nixon says it wasn’t until much later
that he realized many of the events that
led him off the street were a direct result
of this “prayer.”
Soon afterward, RCMP officers
found an intoxicated Nixon passed out,
once again, on a park bench in Kam-
loops. Fed up with constantly holding
the teen in their drunk tank, the officers
deposited him, semi-conscious, on a bus
bound for Calgary.
A MEAL FROM
WEIRD CHRISTIANS
Lonely,stinkingandconstantlysickfrom
drinking cheap wine and Lysol, Nixon
was begging for cash in the downtown
core when four young men came by and
offered to buy him a meal. When the
meal came and they bowed their heads,
Nixon recalls thinking, “These guys are
worse than weird—they’re Christians!”
The men, from Calgary’s First Bap-
tist Church, subsequently 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
says. “For me, they were the right peo-
ple there at the right time. I believe this
can happen for every one of these street
folks.”
Although Nixon wanted to change,
he quickly fell back into his old drug
habits. He even began stealing from the
guys who had taken him in. Soon he was
arrested for breaking and entering and
auto theft. At 16, he was sent to a feder-
al penitentiary and then to a wilderness
prisoncampinNordegg,Alta.Hefinally
learned things many Canadians take for
granted, such as how to read and write,
how to eat properly and exercise.
SECOND CHANCES
Released at age 18, he went right back
to his Christian friends asking for a sec-
ond chance. Amazingly, they agreed.
“I was given lots of chances,”
Nixon says. “Because of that I’m will-
ing to take a second, third, fourth and
fifth chance on people…That’s part of
“Impossible” Dream
Comes True
K
athie was a typical Calgary street
kid—lonely, hungry, smelly and
unloved. She was 15 when she
first went to the Mustard Seed. The street
ministry was just getting off the ground
and Kathie soon gained enough confi-
dence to begin volunteering there.
Pat Nixon, executive director of the
Seed, remembers the day she came to
him full of enthusiasm and announced,
“Pat, I’m going to learn to speak fluent
Hebrew and I’m going to get a degree in
archeology and I’ll live in Israel.”
Nixon remembers laughing, “because
it sounded so ridiculous,” but he took her
out for pizza to hear her dream.
This past October, Nixon and his wife
Lisecelebratedtheir25thweddinganniver-
sary with a trip to Europe along with two
weeks in Israel. There they had a wonder-
ful tour guide with a degree in archeology
who spoke fluent Hebrew and knew the
lay of the land because she lived there.
“Her name was Kathie and it was the
same Kathie,” Nixon marvels. “The most
impossible dream that you have can come
true, and we’re here to help people’s
dreams come true.” ■ —DF
3. / 37May / June 2005
what compassion is.”
While in jail, Nixon had been writing
toabeautiful,intelligentgirlhehadmetat
a wedding. Already a Christian, Lise’s en-
couragement helped lead Nixon to faith.
HeremembersoneeveninginRevelstoke,
where he had once again turned to selling
drugs. As he watched the sun set, “there
was a clear feeling I was loved by God,”
he recalls. “Right there I committed my
life to Jesus Christ.”
Pat and Lise married later that year.
Nixon credits her with much of his
success. “Lise had great faith in me,”
Nixon says. “She stood by me and said
she saw something in me, things I could
not see in myself. That’s what I do for
people today.”
Nixon progressed from washing
dishes at Calgary’s Burning Bush coffee-
house, in the basement of First Baptist, to
running the establishment.
The first time he haltingly gave his
testimony complete with an awkward al-
tar call, he became “terrified as the whole
front of the stage was filled with people
on their knees to accept Christ.”
After Nixon was sent to Victoria to
observe a street church in action, he went
back to Calgary on fire to see a similar vi-
sion here. In November 1984, Calgary’s
Mustard Seed was born in a three-storey
house near First Baptist. By 1992, the
facility designed to hold 80 people was
regularly attracting crowds of 200.
With the homeless population on the
rise, new digs were desperately needed.
A 27,000-square-foot, four-storey, vin-
tage office building became available in
the shadows of the Calgary Tower.
The day before they were to sign the
final papers for the loan, a private donor
wrote a cheque for the entire amount of
$375,000.
“It was very, very amazing,” Nixon
says.Itwasasifalightwentoninthecity.
Churches began to volunteer their time,
energy and resources to help the poor.
MUSTARD SEED SPROUTS
When the Mustard Seed started, Nixon
was the only paid staff member. Now
with 65 full-time and 35 part-time staff
and over 9,000 volunteers, an average of
1,268 meals are provided each day. But
Nixon’s vision was never just to “hand
someone a sandwich.”
The dining room transforms into a
dorm with 82 mats for the homeless.
Short- and long-term transitional hous-
ing is available for people committed to
getting off the street.
But Nixon wanted to see his street
folk treated with dignity in the workplace
as well. Thus in 1999 the Seed purchased
the two-storey building directly across the
street. The ensuing Creative Centre is now
a buzz of activity. Filled with computer
labs,artrooms,musicrooms,woodwork-
ing shops and craft rooms to make and
sell products, it has provided viable em-
ployment for hundreds of street folk who
wouldotherwiseneverhavehadachance.
People can complete their Grade 12 cred-
its, take college-level classes or deal with
emotional issues like anger management.
But Nixon’s dreams don’t stop there.
“I want to build a town,” he says,
“a place where we can pull people out
of the inner city and give them a new en-
vironment, a new chance, just as I was
given—I believe they’ll make it.”
Nixon will be working over the next
twoyearstomakethistownareality.Itap-
pearsnodreamistoobigforthemanwho
took the smallest of all seeds, the Mustard
Seed, and helped it flourish into one of the
largest street ministries in Canada.
Doris Fleck is a freelance writer in Cal-
gary, Alta.
PHOTO:PETERFLECK
Pat Nixon chats with guests at the Mustard Seed Mission in Calgary
