At 66 years old, Peggy Shaughnessy is well aware she should be spending her weekends at the cottage knitting or doing pottery, but she just can’t seem to stop doing the lifesaving work she does through her Peterborough-based organization Right to Heal.
“I’m not ready to let it go yet,” she says. “My job isn’t finished yet, and I don’t know if it ever will be.”
That’s because with a resume that includes being a nurse in Peterborough, working with Indigenous men coming out of incarceration, founding WhitePath Consulting, operating the Whistle Stop Café — a place she says was “a hub for people of all walks of life” — and developing the RedPath approach, she has dedicated her life to proving people have the right to heal in whatever capacity they need.
But when the time comes for her to take a much-deserved retirement, she can be assured she will have set the foundation for others to follow closely behind her, beginning with her daughter Liz Shaughnessy-Rowe.
“My mom’s gift is creating the RedPath program and helping see what’s within you and getting to the root of what you do, which I can also facilitate because I watched her create it,” says Liz. “But one of my gifts is creating community, and so when we came into this building (the former St. Andrew’s United Church), I was the one who ran the basement in the beginning.”
That community she is referring to is one dedicated to helping people find their path to wellness. With Peggy’s research-based RedPath approach, which has seen more than 20 years of success, the hub offers free outpatient addictions services, nourishing meals, and community events like moon circles.
VIDEO: Liz talks to Daisy at Right to Heal
“We got the money for addictions treatment, but we realized that wasn’t good enough,” Peggy says, referring to essential mental health and addictions funding from the Government of Ontario. “If we ran programs and sent Joe back out onto the street, Joe is just going to get some fentanyl or something. So we created the hub downstairs so people could come and build community.”
“People who come to Right to Heal want to change their life, and that isn’t just ‘We’re going to do this work and we’re going to be better’,” adds Liz. “We have to think about the mind, the body, and the spirit to heal all aspects of the person. I believe that what we do here is we build community and connection, and through that connection they find the different healing modalities or the different tools that help them. Each of us needs different things.”
Peggy is proud to say that in two years, Right to Heal hasn’t had a single overdose or a needle on-site and hasn’t been visited by the police, “other than for coffee.” And yet, she says, “the mayor (Jeff Leal) has never reached out and said, ‘How can we duplicate this across the city?'”
“In response to the local opioid crisis, Right to Heal was created to bring the RedPath Program to Peterborough,” Liz adds. “A program that was developed right here in her hometown wasn’t even being able to be used in her hometown. She’s recognized across the country and for some reason our city won’t look at her for the expert she is.”
Liz believes being seen as an expert is one reason her mother is pursuing the PhD she will soon be defending, something Peggy agrees was initially a motivation.
“At first it was just to say, ‘Well, if they call me Dr. Shaughnessy, maybe people will look at me a bit more seriously’,” says Peggy. “But I think for my own journey I needed to do it as well. I think you can learn an awful lot of your own self during that process, and it’s very humbling.”
As for other approaches to helping people with addictions, Peggy singles out harm reduction for criticism — not because of the original concept, but because of what it has become.
“It wasn’t brought forward originally (as) a solution — it was to get you to a place where you could then go to treatment,” Peggy explains. “As soon as harm reduction became the solution, then we’re telling addicts it’s okay to be an addict, and that isn’t a very good thing to be telling a high school student coming out of a pandemic that isn’t functioning. So now we’ve created this mess and we’ve lost control of our cities.”
“We have the solution to get back on our feet,” she says, referring to Right to Heal. “And so that is my fight.”
“The system isn’t set up for you to move out of it, and it creates a dependency,” adds Liz. “I think that’s the most frustrating thing that we face all the time: not being looked at, not being asked to help when we’re willing to.”
While it might be tempting to call Peggy and Liz “passionate” about their cause, that’s a word they are tired of hearing. Liz points out that’s usually how the letters they receive from the government begin.
“It’s always ‘Thank you for your passion’,” she says. “We look at passion almost as an insult. It is my passion, but as women our passion is our strength and we’re supposed to listen to it, but the way that we get treated in this patriarchal society is ‘Thank you for your passion. Now sit down. You’re showing your emotion’.”
As a Christmas gift from Liz to her mother, the women have begun a project of creating a documentary film that will share Peggy’s truth. It will include interviews with Peggy, Liz, and other community members who have found healing through Right to Heal.
“I want my (descendants) to hear her voice and know why she did what she did,” says Liz. “The documentary is finally the space for her to speak her truth — and maybe someone will listen to it.”
Whether or not a lot of people watch the documentary when it is completed, Liz is certain her mother has created a legacy that’s built to last.
“She has the seed and she’s the only one who can plant it. And in order for it to grow, it’s our jobs as the people who walk beside her and as the clients who are being put on our path right now — it’s our job to care for and nourish the seed. Even when she’s not here, it will continue.”
As for Peggy, she’s not sure she will ever be finished her work, because there will always be more people in need of healing.
“It’s about getting people to a space where they live to the fullest,” she says. “That’s what everybody should have the right to do, and one of the reasons everyone has the right to heal.”
