A Q&A with Welcome Hall Mission’s Sam Watts: Minding your business

Born and raised in Montreal, Sam Watts and his five younger siblings spent most of their pre-adult lives on Connaught St. in Ville Saint-Laurent. A proud graduate of Cartierville’s Malcolm Campbell High School, Class of ’77, in 2016 the Beaconsfield resident took his years of business experience across the hall to lead a venerable not-for-profit organization that since 1892, has been helping Montrealers in need. The Suburban recently spoke to Watts, CEO of the Welcome Hall Mission. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

The Suburban: What were your parents’ occupations?

Sam Watts: My father worked his entire life at CN, in the Montreal yards, and my mother was a laboratory technologist at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. My mom was 43 and my dad was 51 when they each passed away.

The Suburban: Did you have any career plans while at Malcolm Campbell High?

Watts: A little while ago I looked back in my high school yearbook, and apparently the plan was that I was going to do something in the area of business, journalism, or politics. Interestingly, if I look at myself today, I spent most of my career in the business world, I’ve written a book and a lot of published articles; and whether I like it or not, being the CEO of Welcome Hall Mission puts you square in the middle of politics.

The Suburban: What came after high school?

Watts: I went to Vanier College. Then, since both of my parents were ill, I thought it prudent that I get a job to help support the family. I worked for Dominion Textile for a number of years and progressed through that organization and then was recruited by one of my customers to be his VP of marketing and sales. Then I launched my consulting practice, which I did for 14 years before I got a phone call from a headhunter who said, “They’re looking for a CEO for Welcome Hall Mission.”

The Suburban: What did they think you brought to the table?

Watts: I think I got on the radar because I’d done a number of things with a number of not-for-profits in the city, where I did some pro-bono work, helping with strategic plans for boards and so on.

The Suburban: How has the Mission evolved since you came on board nine years ago?

Watts: One of the first things that we did was go up to Montreal North. We noticed that we had roughly 400 families who were coming downtown to our free grocery store, an hour and a half one way by bus an hour and a half back, and we said to ourselves, ‘Why shouldn’t we go to where they are?’ Now we’ve got service points in a number of different locations around the island: seven different buildings and multiple services; we’re about to open a women’s mental health unit; and we’ve developed deeper partnerships with the province’s health services network.

The Suburban: How many employees and volunteers do you have right now?

Watts: We have 200 full-time employees and around 400 volunteers. Just running the two free grocery stores — one here, one in Montreal North — takes about 50 volunteers a day, and then the back end of the grocery store is such that you need a lot of people doing triage and things like that. We give away about 1.8 million kilos of food every year, and I’m not even counting the 1,400 meals we make and serve every day to people experiencing homelessness or are in transitional housing.

The Suburban: What do you wish people were more aware of?

Watts: Charity and the charitable reflex that we have should not be an excuse for us to turn a blind eye to the need for policy change. There’s a number of things in our social contract that I think we ought to be paying attention to. For example, Canada is one of the only countries in the world that has legislated the human right to housing, so there’s no reason in the world why everybody shouldn’t be able to have a place to call home. Now that’s not going to happen by organizations like ours helping people get back into housing exclusively. We’re doing it, but it’s got to be more than that. It’s got to start at the policy level, and it’s also got to start upstream with prevention.

The Suburban: What’s the best part of your job?

Watts: Seeing smiles on faces. We just did our whole back-to-school event in the last week and it’s just incredible to see little kids come in and feel like they’re going back to school with their head held high, equipped the same way as everybody else. The other thing that gets me excited is when I see somebody getting back into housing. We house approximately one person every day here at the Mission, and it’s great when you give them the keys. Sometimes, it’s the first time they’ve had keys to their own place in a couple of years. That’s a moment when it’s hard to hold back your emotions.