Portage closes Elora facility after nearly 40 years of youth rehabilitation

Provincial funding cuts led to closure: Portage officials

GUELPH – A youth addiction rehabilitation centre in Elora has closed its doors due to financial shortfalls. 

The Portage centre stopped accepting new youths to its residential drug addiction treatment program a few months ago, communications director Seychelle Harding told the Advertiser.  

And in early January, the three youths still living at the Elora facility were transferred to Portage centres outside of Ontario, she said.  

Portage is a Canadian non-profit organization that offers specialized drug rehabilitation programs in Quebec and New Brunswick. 

The Elora location was its only residential centre in Ontario, providing addiction treatment to youths aged 14 to 18, free of charge.

In May 2023 Portage opened an office in Guelph to provide additional support. This office closed along with the Elora location. 

More than 5,000 youth attended Elora’s Portage facility throughout its history, Harding said.   

Youth completing the treatment program spent six months living at the centre, followed by at least 18 months of aftercare services. 

Portage also provides support services for family members. 

Harding said Portage is “committed to ensuring all of our residents complete their treatment plan despite the closure.” 

Youth and their families will be able to access aftercare services virtually until they complete their treatment plans, she explained.    

And for the last three residents, Harding said Portage offered to connect them with resources in Ontario, but each of them opted to finish their therapy with Portage centres instead.

She said 25 staff members were let go as part of the closure. 

All Portage staff at the centre were given the option of relocating to Quebec or New Brunswick, she said, and two or three of them accepted the offers. 

There were also five Upper Grand District School Board teachers working there full time, Harding noted. 

Funding cut

When Portage Elora first opened in 1985, it was a youth offender program for boys, Harding said. 

“But over the years, we changed. We accepted girls to the program,” as well as youth who were not involved with the criminal justice system, she said. 

Residents were referred by parents, schools, family physicians, hospitals, other addiction-treatment and youth-servicing agencies, the Children’s Aid Society and Youth Justice. 

Harding said the majority of funding for the Elora centre came from Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS),  with private sector contributions and fundraising efforts making up about 10 per cent of the total. 

Until 2021, MCCSS provided funding for 16 of the 28  spots at the centre. Ontario Health provided funding for the other 12.  

But in 2021, “changes to MCCSS’ open custody program led us to lose eight of our 16 youth justice beds,” Harding said. “That’s when things really went south.”

It was a funding cut of about $800,000 annually, from which the centre was never able to recuperate, she added.

“Private fundraising was not successful in making up that big shortfall,” she said. “It became more and more difficult to bridge that gap in funding.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic also impacted Portage, Harding noted. 

“We had to make the very difficult decision that we tried to avoid for so long, and unfortunately had to close the centre. 

“But it’s not to say we won’t be back,” she noted. “Maybe in a different model, maybe out-patient or something, and obviously not for right now.

“There is a huge need in Ontario, as there is everywhere in Canada,” Harding said. 

Kathleen Pronk said she has worked at Portage in Elora since 2008, and the facility had “hundreds of youth on our waiting list.”

She called it “mind boggling” that the centre didn’t receive the funding needed to remain open. 

“As a mother who has lost her son to an overdose of carfentanil, I know the importance of these facilities,” she said.  

“I just hope all the [youth] that were waiting to get in have found another place to go and have not overdosed or given up.” 

Facility’s impact

Portage announced the closure on its website and social media platforms on Jan. 31. 

Hundreds of people have shared and commented on its Facebook announcement, including former staff, residents and family members. 

Many of those residents, including Aurora Hahn, credit portage for saving their lives, but Harding said “they saved their own lives,” Portage just gave them the tools they needed.

Hahn received treatment at the Elora facility twice, around 2017 and 2020, when she was 15 and 17 years old.  And from 2023 until the centre closed, she worked at Portage as a clinical case worker. 

Hahn told the Advertiser she was “absolutely devastated” when she found out the centre was closing. 

“The program definitely saved my life,” she said. “I was going down a very dangerous path … if I didn’t go there I truly don’t think that I would be here right now.” 

Hahn described Portage as an inclusive and helpful environment.

“Experiencing addiction, you do feel alone. You are very much in your own head, and that gives you another excuse to keep doing it,” she said. 

But at Portage, Hahn said she no longer felt alone. “I never felt unheard, or that I couldn’t be helped.”

The centre’s location is ideal too, she said. 

It was a short drive for her family to visit from Guelph, and she, like many other youth, felt she needed that support, Hahn said. 

“And being in nature was amazing. The property was, truthfully, incredible.” 

She said her fondest memory of her time there as a youth was meeting her friend, Emily. 

“That would be 100% the highlight of my experience there – getting to meet a beautiful soul,” said Hahn.

“We were very close when I had left the program, and she ended up having a son.” 

But Emily’s story takes a different direction than Hahn’s. “Unfortunately she left early, and did actually pass away due to an overdose,” Hahn said. “I have a tattoo in her memory.” 

Hahn expressed deep gratitude for the impact the program had on her own life, adding she was able  to take what she learned and use it to help other youth.

“Having the opportunity to help pass my knowledge on to other people is something I’m very grateful for.” 

If someone had told her at 15 that in less than 10 years she’d end up working as a case worker at Portage, living in her own house and owning a car, she said she never would have believed it. 

“To see where I’m at now, I am eternally grateful, and all of that is thanks to Portage.”

Reporter