Lac-Brome Men’s Shed: Breaking isolation and getting community involved

Pictured is Williams working alongside his grand-daughter. The Lac-Brome Men’s Shed hopes to start up a new youth program once they find a permanent space. Photo courtesy of Danny Williams.

By Taylor McClure
Townships’ Daily News Bits
CIDI 99.1 FM

Danny Williams decided to kickstart the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed in 2020 to help senior men break from their isolation.

After Williams’ mother passed away, he witnessed his father become lost and seclude himself from picking up any new activities and interests.

Before his passing, Williams’ father sent him a magazine with an article about a Men’s Shed.

Recognizing that there were mostly likely senior men that were in a similar position in his local community, Williams saw an opportunity to to start up a Men’s Shed to bring other men together around different projects and activities. It was also an opportunity to learn, share, grow, support one another, and get community involved.

The Lac-Brome Men’s Shed has been on pause since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is getting set to pick back up again with many plans in the works.

“I basically put a couple of announcements out there. I was skeptical about whether anyone would show up. I was at the Dépanneur Rouge and I called the meeting there for 6:30 p.m. At 6:25, not one person was there. At 6:30 on the button, the doors opened and about 25 guys showed up,” said Williams when recounting how the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed got started.

The Lac-Brome Men’s Shed found a space at the community centre in Knowlton and it started a workshop before the pandemic put everything on hold.

After losing the space at the community centre, Williams transformed his garage into a workshop and members of the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed worked on their projects there.

Now they’re looking to get back into the swing of things and to collaborate with the community at large.

“Basically, we are almost starting from scratch again. What I’m realizing more and more as things go along, it’s just critical to get a space. We almost can’t function without a space,” emphasized Williams.

One thing about Men’s Sheds is that there is no real function behind it, no real organization behind it, every community is different, explained Williams.

“We are basically just out there to work the community and to work with each other. What I find is that everybody is benefitting in ways that I never could have expected. It’s not just about Men’s Shed anymore,” he noted.

Heading into a new year, one of the most important tasks on the agenda for the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed is starting up a youth program.

“I think there is a great opportunity for youth to work with the older guys. I’m hoping the older guys can share a lot of wisdom. I think the youth need some guidance and they’re not getting it; they’re just sort of floundering out there,” mentioned Williams.

Once the group finds a space, Williams said that he wants to bring the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed and the youth together through different projects and activities, like holding tournaments for example.

“I don’t want to lecture, I want to actually have a relationship with them. There’s not structure for them. (…) There has got to be something that grabs their interest. I know some of it will be carpentry programs, teaching them how to work with tools, playing games with them, stuff like that. It’s going to be a mentorship,” he highlighted.

Williams also wants to get a cooking program up and running for the members of the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed.

“I talked to the community centre because they have quite the extensive kitchen over there. (…) Maybe once a week we will go out and buy the groceries, prepare the meals together, eat the meal together, do the cleanup afterwards,” mentioned Williams. “I think it will be a lot more fun cooking together than just sitting down to a meal. The community centre is behind us 100% that way.”

Making a critical difference in the lives of the men he has worked with, Williams said that he hopes to see future generations continue with the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed and other groups pop up around the region.

“Somebody got a hold of me from Farnham and asked me if I would be interested in starting up a Men’s Shed in Farnham. (…) I think it’s going to become a situation where there are more and more of them; other communities trying to figure out how they can implement it in their own community,” he noted.

The Lac-Brome Men’s Shed first meeting of 2023 will be taking place on Jan. 31 at 6:30 p.m. at the community centre in Knowlton.

For more information on the Lac-Brome Men’s Shed.

Listen to the full interview below:

Lac-Brome Men’s Shed