By Joe Mancini
Published in June 2021
Though it has been many months since we lost Ron Doyle, we still walk around wondering when he will show up. Ron’s heart was so big that he could fill a room with ideas and then follow through on those ideas with unrelenting energy. We couldn’t help but miss Ron intensely in May and June as we looked for a new location for his beloved A Better Tent City (ABTC). It was only in mid-June, when the City of Kitchener offered the Battler Road site, that ABTC had a place to go and it was easy to imagine Ron hardly able to contain his joy. He would have loved watching the organizational precision of the volunteer crews dismantling, insulating, and loading the tiny homes on to trucks to move them to their new location.
ABTC, like many of Ron’s projects, is a complicated story. It was only possible because Ron saw an opportunity when the pandemic closed much of the city in April 2020. He gave Nadine Green the keys and invited her to support a group of homeless folks at Lot 42. Ron was putting into practice a concept he and Jeff Willmer had been working on for several months previous. They had had no luck finding a willing landlord and now Ron was the landlord to his nascent project and he fully embraced it.
Last summer, Stephanie and I were continually enlivened by Ron’s weekly stories and experiences as he gave glowing detailed descriptions of the goings on at ABTC, usually with a hearty laugh.
It was always my impression that Ron Doyle lived his life balancing opposites. From the first time I met him, walking through the weeds of the empty lot at the back of the Hacienda Sarria, he vigorously proposed a community gardening project while making it clear that he was only interested in a productive project that would add to the beauty of the Hacienda. He had designed and created one of the most unique buildings in Kitchener-Waterloo and the gardening project, at a minimum, would have to extend that vision.
During the next 10 years, there was always a project that had to be followed. Ron was constantly advocating public-good enterprising ideas that people could learn from. He could wage a battle for the good of any project and cut a wide swath out of anyone who got in the way. He could fearlessly flout social and legal conventions that most people would not dare to challenge. In the middle of one of these encounters he would effortlessly tell a charming morality tale of why things needed to go the way he was thinking and then he would back up the challenge with resources, especially when there was an opening that could be taken advantage of. During discussions like these, Ron was not an intemperate successful person trying to get his way, he was following a deep social imperative to make his community better.
After Ron died we sat down and considered all the projects we had worked on together in the last 10 years. There was easily a project for every year. The first was establishing the two-acre market garden at the Hacienda Sarria. It is a work of beauty and production. Adding a windmill structure so he could tilt at it, was the kind of artistic touch that we came to expect from Ron. He liked nothing better than to watch the effort and skill of the gardeners growing food. The next project did not go as well. We debated whether we should develop a coffee-roasting partnership but TWC decided that we should install our own fluid bed roaster, which disappointed Ron, but he was often at the Commons having coffee, even if only with a jovially suspicious eye.
Soon we were off to Toronto to discover mushroom farming and indoor vertical hydroponic farming, which resulted in many years of experimentation. Ron found what he called, “a hippy commune engaged in enterprise” in an industrial part of Toronto. He loved learning about alternative ventures, always looking for a germ of an idea that could be replicated in Kitchener.
Ron had an abiding interest in reusing shipping containers. He was always working on a laneway container project that would integrate eco ideas for saving space, material, water, and energy. The two bunkies at St. John’s Kitchen were built at Lot 42 under Ron’s supervision and for 5 years have been used as temporary housing. They were a forerunner to the tiny houses that emerged at ABTC.
Out of the blue Ron offered TWC a house at a time when many Syrian refugees were arriving in Kitchener. A family found a home and all we had to do was cover basic costs. As well, for three years we put on a fundraising concert at the Hacienda that featured John McDermott.
The conversion of the Ardelt industrial land into Lot 42 was always germinating in the early years of our friendship. His main idea was to create an art colony. He pleaded with the city to allow zoning to create a work/live container housing project but the factors never lined up. In the meantime, he built an industrial-themed convention facility that hosted hundreds of large gatherings. In his mind, installing the 42-foot-high Mirror of Babel art structure in the Lot 42 entrance said everything about his ideas on cultural harmony and nurturing big, beautiful ideas that change the way we think.
All these projects and ideas were part of Ron’s so-called retirement years. He gifted Kitchener-Waterloo with two examples of stunning and inspired property reconstruction, but only after fighting hard to overcome bureaucratic and zoning obstacles that can dampen creative effort. In many ways, the determination and entrepreneurship that created the Hacienda Sarria and Lot 42 were never fully recognized. Yet when he opened his door to people without housing at Lot 42, people came out of the woodwork to join or support his crusade. Ron’s final year was a mysterious roller coaster ride as he lived the meaning of the Gospels and brought care and shelter to those left on the outskirts of the larger community. It was a year most people can only dream of. Ron’s spirit and legacy will live on in K-W for a very long time.
