Founded in a waiting room
In the spring of 2014, four people found themselves in the same waiting room at Guelph General Hospital. Each was there because of a mental health crisis, their own or a family member's. They didn't know each other.
They started talking. They exchanged numbers. They kept meeting after their time at the hospital ended: at a coffee shop, then a library meeting room, then the basement of a church on Woolwich Street. And slowly, they realized that what was helping them most was each other.
Those four people, Dominique, Kenji, Miriam, and Luc, incorporated Steady Ground Peer Support Services that October. Within a year, their Thursday evening group had grown from four to eighteen. Within three years, they had their first grant, their first dedicated space, and their first paid staff member.
Today we're a team of five staff and 35 trained peer supporters, paid for their sessions. In 2025: about 1,200 people supported, 400 peer support sessions, programs at 8 sites across Guelph-Wellington. We still do what those four people did in 2014: sit with each other through the worst stretches.
