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FROM: The Toronto Star ~
By Catherine Dunphy http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1095631809405&call_pageid=993550047134&col=993550046695 (w/photo) June Callwood remembers a "shy, so very shy" man of 25 coming to one of the first planning meetings for Casey House, the world's first independent hospice for people with AIDS. But back then, in 1985, it was nothing more than an audacious dream held by a disparate group of people who believed people with AIDS deserved to die in a place of beauty and peace. Jim Shea stayed to become a crucial part of what Callwood calls "the Casey House gang," a valued program committee head and invaluable liaison with the Ministry of Health. "As our representative of the gay community, he carried a lot of responsibility," she recalled. He was so impressive that he was recruited for a government job working with local agencies, helping to start up community health centres after Casey House was up and running. "He was just so competent," said Celia Denov, who was executive director of the ministry's community health division at the time. "He was very loved and very positive. Often these people (at the agencies) could be antagonistic to the civil service, but in the case of Jim, the people at the agencies adored him." Mr. Shea died Aug. 30 at the Toronto General Hospital of an embolism. He was 43. He was rising fast in the ministry when he decided to go out into consulting on his own. On one of his last projects, he worked with an old friend, John Flannery, now executive director of Surrey Place Centre, which provides services for developmentally delayed people. Flannery was the first director of nursing at Casey House. Mr. Shea was hired to help set up a provincial network of regional autism programs. "In two meeting days, he pulled together a framework," Flannery said, noting that many previous meetings of the group hadn't been at all productive. "Jim was a great facilitator: non-threatening and with a subtle sense of humour." It was honed working 24/7 to start up Casey House. Callwood is always hailed as the founder of the Casey House hospice, which is named after her youngest son, who died at 20 in a motorcycle accident. But she said it was Mr. Shea who mapped out the concept of how a hospice should be. It was not an easy job during a time of prejudice and fear of the disease and those who had it, and of fierce resistance to funding a sanctuary to house and nurse them. Adding to the overall resistance was the Casey House concept. It was to be a beautiful home filled with lovely, and expensive, things - from leather couches to the donated Joyce Weiland art on the walls. The price tag for the purchase and renovation of the Victorian house on the corner of Huntley and Isabella Sts. was about $1.5 million, an almost insurmountable fundraising challenge. In fact, according to Rebecca Bragg, a former Toronto Star reporter who was on the fundraising committee with Mr. Shea, the future of Casey House was staring at disaster as they scrambled to find money to pay for the building after making the down payment. "We had to come up with a whole lot of cash in a short time or all our time, effort and money would be down the drain," she said in an e-mail. When a glum Bragg showed up for a meeting, Mr. Shea greeted her with a huge grin on his face, waving a cheque in front of her. Bragg thought it was for $25,000. "But Jim waggled the cheque in front of my face again and said, `No, Rebecca, look at it again. You are missing a zero.' And then we both started screaming, laughing, crying, dancing all over the room because this gift of $250,000 put us safely over the top." Mr. Shea then moved on to head the committee that oversaw the organizational structure and created the partnership proposal that was sent around to local hospitals. It was a crucial document because the government didn't fund hospices on their own, so Casey House had to find a hospital with which to team up. After St Michael's Hospital signed on, the province eventually announced $2.3 million in annual funding. In the last few years, Mr. Shea started a new career in digital photography and even more recently as a successful oil and watercolour artist. Growing up in Montreal, he and his brother Rick had shared a love of black-and-white photography and a darkroom in the family's home, but it was while living on Toronto's Jarvis St. that Mr. Shea returned to his childhood hobby. He watched - and recorded on his new digital camera - the demolition of the CBC broadcasting tower across the street from his apartment. His photographs were exhibited at a 2002 fundraiser held by the National Ballet School. It was called "The Eiffel on Jarvis." Mr. Shea was also the official photographer of the gay community for Barbara Hall's most recent campaign for mayor, and last year was the chair of SNAP!, a huge photography and art exhibit/auction that raised $58,000 for the AIDS Committee of Toronto. This year he was also working on the event. Mr. Shea had also been on the board of the Sherbourne Health Centre and involved with numerous volunteer groups in the gay community. In fact, Callwood said he first heard about Casey House when he approached the AIDS Committee of Toronto with an idea for starting a compassionate hospice for people with AIDS. They told him that a woman named June Callwood had already come up with the same idea and where he could go to attend a public meeting. "Typical Jim. He didn't ever say he had the same idea, he just plunged in," Callwood said. Mr. Shea met Doug O'Neill, a freelance writer who was his partner for several years in the 1980s and his friend forever after that, at a service for gay Roman Catholics in a meeting room at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. The room was called Lynch Hall, and O'Neill said he and Mr. Shea laughed about the name for years. Hundreds of people attended his funeral. His friends were quick to note that Mr. Shea, who had once studied for the Catholic priesthood, was memorialized in an Anglican church in a service led by a United Church minister, with a eulogy delivered by a Wiccan and a reception at a Quaker meeting house. As O'Neill said in an e-mail sent to many of Mr. Shea's friends: "I daresay give us a Jewish comic and we'd be all set! Jim couldn't have organized this better himself." GO CUBS!!!!!!!!!
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