Introduction

The Story
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A Few Personal Stories
Francis
Faith
Anne
Silva

From Palaces to Prisons to Pooches

By Silva Battista
Silva runs Best Friends programs in Los Angeles - and the greenhouse at the sanctuary.

I'd graduated from college in England with a degree in Fine Art, but one of my first jobs was as one of the Queen's gardeners at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth would often come by to see our work, and we'd talk briefly about dogs. She obviously loved her dogs a great deal.

I also arranged the flowers at the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, and at Kensington Gardens for Princess Margaret.

I had moved to Canada, and was working in the Toronto Parks Department and at City Hall - it's funny where gardening can get you - when, in 1977, I met a group called The Foundation Faith that was doing humanitarian work.

They had a drop in center / coffee house on Toronto's Young Street, and offered classes in communication and self-awareness. The Young Street location also served as a base of operations for the various social programs that the organization ran.

The people who ran the center were gracious, confident, and eloquent. They lived a disciplined community life style. Devotion was expressed through service to those in need. The Golden Rule… "Do unto others…" was the guiding principle. The dogma of most religions was absent. My late father, a WWII veteran, whom I greatly respected, said it best when he called The Foundation Faith a religious workshop. "You'll never have a big congregation," he told me when I'd become a member, "because when people come to a church they are looking for answers, certainty, and a clearly defined dogma. If you're searching for the truth, and willing to be wrong and to make changes, that's never going to get you a big following."

I wanted to be part of it, but it was a big change. What to do? I called my mother in England! She came straight away to Toronto and hung out in the café too. Then she told me, "This is what you've always wanted and searched for."

Over time, I began to orient towards The Foundation's prison ministry. I don't know why, but "tough guys" never were a problem for me to handle. I guess it was a combination of innocent optimism and faith. Having done a brief stint as a British nanny came in handy more than once. Like naughty children, the inmates were always pushing and probing for weakness.

Each week we would go to the Don Jail in Toronto for a discussion group with a collection of con artists, rapists, murderers - some angry, some devious, and some seriously committed to getting a handle on their own condition. It was always well attended and the main topics centered on the inescapable fact that people make their own choices regardless of what life, or anyone else, throws at them. Before too long I led the prison ministry, often going alone - sometimes with a volunteer or a converted ex-con. You always had to be ready to deal with whatever happened. Occasionally a fight would break out or some other challenging event, but always the discussions were real. Of course I was out of my depth, but I had tremendous faith in God that whatever I needed to say or do to stay on top of the situation would be given to me, and I was never left without that ability.

Personal responsibility was the overriding theme, and the one thing I would never tolerate was allowing the discussion to dissolve into blame or self-pitying complaining. I remember a guy getting into a terrible spiral of wallowing in pity over what had been done to him. I told him that there was plenty of time in the cells to go into all that but that this discussion was about getting oneself above that to see what changes could come from within and from God. He wouldn't stop spreading an atmosphere of whining and complaining, so I asked him to leave. Everyone except two men got up and left with him. But the discussion that followed with those two men was one of the most powerful, life-changing, and real we'd ever had. The following week the room was crowded out. Word had gotten out that it was not a bull session and the program only got stronger from there.

From the Don Jail we went out to the penitentiaries and to other jails in the province and across Canada. Many of the other churches working within the prisons came together and we formed a working partnership with many other churches of which I was the chairperson for a time.

My work in the prison ministry was one of those "Daniel In The Lion's Den" experiences, after which I was unlikely to encounter anything that would be more personally challenging.

My loving companion through all the ups and downs of that period of my life was a sweet little brindle whippet named Brodie. He was a reject from a breeder and I intercepted him on his way to the pound. He fit into the palm of my hand and looked more like a seahorse than a dog! I like to think I rescued him, but he did at least as much for me.

And then he found Ellie! One day when I was living and working with The Foundation in Texas, Brodie did a rescue of his own. He was enjoying his usual wild whippet romp in a field near to where we lived, when all of a sudden he started doing an imitation of Lassie, trying to get my attention and obviously leading me to a particular patch of tall grass, where I found a sick, matted, and dejected little terrier mix, who became the love of Brodie's life and a wonderful friend of mine for years to come.

Ellie and Brodie both lived to be 17. They are buried at Best Friends and they opened a door in my heart to the plight and the beauty of homeless pets and helped me to commit years of hard work to the creation of Best Friends.