Something Beautiful: Supporting adults with disabilities in Stonewall – Winnipeg

It’s a busy lunch hour at Something Beautiful, a cafe and gift shop in Stonewall.

Gary Lawson makes a fresh pot of coffee. Kyle Soroka washes dishes in the kitchen. Darrell Dempster helps set a table set aside for a reservation.

They’re all clients of Community Living Interlake (CLI), an organization that supports adults living with disabilities. They’re also staff at Something Beautiful, a social enterprise CLI opened in 2016.

“We’re doing everything around here,” said Lawson. “Working in the kitchen part, doing food and cakes and all that stuff.”

CLI offers day programming for adults with disabilities and operates six houses where clients live with support.

“Community Living supports adults living with disabilities to live normal lives in the community, lives like everyone else,” said Executive Director Tracy Fidler. “Coming to work, doing jobs, living daily lives at home… what anybody else would do.”

The Something Beautiful gift shop opened in 2016, and the cafe opened in 2019. The two businesses and the organization’s offices are in an old Home Hardware building in downtown Stonewall, which CLI bought and began renovating in 2014. Fidler says the central location allows for more interaction with the community.

“You see your friend that you went to school with and wondered where you were all these years, and now they see you working in a meaningful job,” she said.

Dempster came up with the name “Something Beautiful.”

“I always thought about people, that’s why I called [it], ‘Something Beautiful,’” he said.

Joan Auger has been a client with CLI for 40 years, and takes care of laundry for the cafe.

“Washing them, drying them, folding them up and then getting them back on time,” she said.

“It makes me feel good to know that I can do it.”

“Our other goal is for people to gain skills working at Something Beautiful, to be able to go out in the community and be able to get a job there. So we’re a training incubator,” Fidler said.

CLI was started in 1965 by a group of parents of children with disabilities in the area. They focused on securing an education, and later on, housing and living supports for their children. Fifty years later, the organization is supporting approximately 50 adults and employs about 80 staff.

In September, CLI also began running the canteen at Stonewall’s Veterans Memorial Sports Complex. All funds from the three social enterprises are invested back into CLI’s operations and services. CLI is also leading a campaign as they enter Stonewall in the 2025 Kraft Hockeyville contest, where the winning town wins $250,000 and an NHL game played in the community.

“The arena is an inclusion point of the community. It brings everybody together, and so that’s why everyone got together and put in this nomination,” Fidler said.

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