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Introduction

Meeting Elaine

As Elaine Zeidman Markovic came downstairs from her second-floor office to the foyer of the Scott Mission, her steps were deliberate, unhurried. Each time we met, I’d experience that ethereal aura of serenity that permeated the air around her. It seemed as much a part of Elaine as her thin, elegant appearance.

In contrast, activity at “The Scott” can seem overwhelming, especially on a first visit. A dozen things are going on at once. Counsellors are directing people to different parts of the building depending on their needs. In the dining room, transient men are being fed, while colourfully dressed immigrant families go by with their arms full of groceries and bags of clothes. A women’s Bible study is about to start—it’s not in English. Mothers speaking some unfamiliar dialect are dropping off babies and toddlers for an hour’s respite. In a time when everyone has a cellphone or an e-mail address, a homeless man is asking for mail. This is the only place where his family can reach him.

Elaine moved calmly through all of this. She’d been serving here through six decades. Many of those years were spent at the front desk, receiving people while they coped with every conceivable personal crisis. She would take the first steps: offering a meal, groceries, clothing or a handout. If the Mission couldn’t help, she’d have a referral, making sure the client had the means to get there.

But over the years, Elaine had learned that the most important part of her task wasn’t providing groceries or clothing, urgent as that seemed. What mattered most took place in the first moments of meeting, whether it was an elderly woman needing help to pay the rent or a wide-eyed immigrant stumbling over their English. Each client should feel that they were heard, understood and valued and, despite any awkwardness, a measure of their humanity was restored. With that approach, it’s not surprising that for many, Elaine was the heart of a work known in Toronto as “the miracle on Spadina.”

Since the Scott Mission was founded in 1941 by her parents, Morris and Annie Zeidman, it has expanded exponentially; the services have grown and changed to meet the increasingly complex needs of the downtown core and a growing city of millions. But Elaine’s greatest concerns were the spiritual and personal welfare of the staff and clients around her. Beyond efficiencies and success rates, she expected the Mission to sustain the values taught by her parents decades before.

I’d follow her upstairs, where we settled into her office, a sunlit refuge full of memories around a pleasantly disorganized desk with stacks of projects, books and papers. Pictures of Elaine’s extended family could be seen in every direction: Morris and Annie; her husband, Mica (pronounced Mee’ cha); daughters Lois and Sera; her late older brother, Alex; a vacation picture from Greece with son-in-law Thanasis; another showing her relaxed against the dark blue Mediterranean.

As we cleared room for the laptop, Elaine would prepare to recount the story of the Mission as she’d seen it unfolding over a lifetime. Annie, her mother, had long since warned her, “When I die, don’t let anybody write any books about me.” But Elaine wanted a new generation to understand Morris and Annie’s legacy and to give future ones a glimpse of the divine presence that helped them to establish the ministry.

While the book was still in concept form, a prominent Canadian Christian magazine featured the Mission, noting briefly that it was founded “by a Polish immigrant.” It’s been about 50 years since Elaine’s father was ranked among Toronto’s best-known clergy. Her parents regularly appeared in newspapers and on the radio as models of selfless aid to the poor during the darkest years of the Depression.

Inner-city missionaries are rarely popular figures, but the Zeidmans were revered in their own city and across Canada. Their integrity and determination to meet the pressing needs of the poor, the homeless and struggling new Canadians in downtown Toronto led to the Mission’s expansion over the post-war years from a Bay St. storefront into one of the city’s most highly visible ministries. In 1961 Morris was named a Canadian “Citizen of the Year.” Not bad for an immigrant who arrived in 1912 with no English or high school diploma.

Work began on this book in April 2008 with a series of interviews about Elaine’s personal life, the Zeidman family and the Mission. (In a review of an early chapter she’d been emphatic: “‘Mission’ must always be capitalized.”) Elaine was asked to choose photos or mementoes to prompt her memories and begin our conversations. At the first interview she presented a photo of Annie, hair swept up in a kerchief, emerging from an outhouse, broom in hand. It was taken around 1942 or ’43, when the Scott had taken over a new camp property north of the city. The state of the outhouses was of great concern to local public health authorities, and Annie was convinced that no one else could do a better job of cleaning up after the campers. Elaine recalled how her brother Alex circulated the photo among the Mission staff after he became the director. It came with a reminder: “In case you think any job is beneath you…”

Elaine eventually showed me other treasures, including her father’s passport from Czarist Russia (Poland was a subject state). She even suggested that the disorder in her office was a kind of memento. “The Zeidmans are notoriously messy, as you can see by my desk,” she said. “We try, but we don’t do a very good job of it.” She punctuated that comment by pulling out a rusty three-hole punch, dropping it emphatically on the desk. This, she said, exemplified the Mission’s true character as well as her parents’ motto: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do.”

Memories of her family and her Mission stories unspooled easily in our afternoon meetings, and Elaine hesitated only from an effort to be certain that details were correct. Some recollections dated back to early childhood. All of the Zeidman children helped out at the Mission, but she was the first who would choose to work there full-time after graduating from high school in 1953.

No institution, not even one identified with miracles, perseveres for so long without innumerable financial and administrative crises. Elaine knew every one of its successes and trials, some more intimately than others, because for more than half of the history of the Mission it was led by a member of the family. Leadership began with Morris, and at his passing in 1964, her brother Alex took the helm until his sudden death in 1986; afterwards, Elaine’s younger brother, David, stepped into the breach as director for about a year. Since 1989, the Mission had been led by others, although family members have continued on staff and on the board. In recent decades, she’d been an interim Mission director a few times until a new one was appointed.

That close involvement through the years had engaged her in many stages of the Mission’s development and transition. All this was in addition to her exhausting responsibilities of making sure that services were available for thousands each week. Add to this, her daughters reminded me, the endless duties on evenings and weekends: meeting donors and coping with any number of minor crises and unexpected problems at the various Mission sites.

The more I heard, the more I wanted to know about her personal and spiritual motivation. What kept her going? What were her aspirations? After numerous interviews, Elaine was still finding it painfully hard to reflect on her own life. She spent weeks searching for the text of Alex’s poetic mission statement and made sure that I had all of Annie’s published songs and poetry. She didn’t once mention her own sensitive poems; I received a portfolio much later from her daughters. They also provided a sheaf of more than 25 songs with the byline “Words & Music by Elaine Markovic.” Early on, she’d revealed that learning to pray for herself had been one of the greatest challenges in a life of prayer. Putting herself at the centre of a book about the Mission was going to be just as difficult.

I had to press further. How did she come into an authentic faith? What were the origins of her maturity, a turning point? At last it was revealed: a startling moment of clarity, lying in a hospital bed close to death. Having begun with good intentions and a youthful sense of duty she was destined to discover far greater treasures—“something more” that we’re all seeking from God. In time, her spiritual confidence and convictions were so deeply rooted that she had a transforming effect on many who knew her. When she spoke or prayed, people sensed that she was saying the most important things for them to hear.

The original interviews were supposed to be a first round with many more details to be filled in later. She received some initial drafts but wasn’t well enough to receive the edited versions. Soon, illness made it impossible for her to continue reading any of the material. We spoke only once more, briefly, while she still anticipated getting the project done. One year after we began meeting, in late April 2009, when we had hoped to have the manuscript ready, Elaine passed away.

Afterwards, her daughters, Lois and Sera, and I agreed that the book would be more comprehensive. There is no way to fully acknowledge the full array of remarkable individuals whose efforts sustained the ministry. This book will focus on some unique individuals in the Zeidman family who took part in the ministry. Each one saw the remarkable grace of God at work and gave themselves to the cause. Along the way, each one confronted tough questions: What does it mean to live by faith? When your family is committed to a mission, how do you separate their expectations from your personal calling? How do we keep pressing on in a ministry, and at what cost? When do we let go?

Elaine liked this quote from the 19th century missionary to China Hudson Taylor, no stranger to determining his own unique path of ministry. It goes a long way to revealing her faith: “What God has given us is all we need; we require nothing more. It is not a question of large supplies—it is a question of the presence of the Lord.” ¹ Her life reflected that yearning for His presence, from which she expected that every need of the Mission would be met. It takes a lifetime to acquire this quality—not just the hope of miracles in impossible situations, but an unconditional faith that no matter what we encounter, God will provide. All that we require is learning more fully, day by day, how to wait on Him.