By Kellah Lavoie

Manville Bay reopened by Revivalist Church

Oct 30, 2010 | 2:01 PM

In the last year and a half Manville Bay received a face lift.
The five townhouse style buildings were bought by the Canadian Revivalist Centre. They are being run by Kevin and Theresa Tabuchi. Kevin is the centre’s pastor in Prince Albert.
Theresa said they moved to Prince Albert eight years ago. They heard statistics that about one third of the city was below the poverty level.
“My husband Kevin said, ‘I think we can do something about it. I think we can do more than just renovate houses. I think we can provide homes, but we can help stabilize families so that there’s not the same transience and instability,’” she said.
“We’ve seen families just totally changed around and the stability of life has come into them.”
Since then their tenancy has mostly changed.
“When we see high unemployment rates, I think they were 95 per cent here (Manville Bay), that 95 per cent has turned around and so the ongoing process of having those people employed and training them is an ongoing task and it involves a lot of people,” said Kevin explaining the majority of their tenants attend the Canadian Bible Institute. It is the school run by the Revivalist Church in Prince Albert.
“We do put a high emphasis on lifestyle living. We are with them seven days a week we have a very, very high voluntary support system with the children and with the parents…They’re more than a church family, the people who are living here today and the young people,” said Kevin.
He said he and his wife “are kind of like moms and dads, parents to them.”
Theresa said the majority of the people who now live in Manville Bay are members of their congregation and/or attend their training centre. She did not say if it was mandatory.
“A lot of them may have come from different situations and saw that there is hope and they saw their future in a whole different light and even if there has been victimization or abuse or wrongful situations in the past they saw that we can get past that and innocents and honour can be restored,” she said
Darryl Hickie, MLA for Prince Albert Carlton, had nothing bad to say about the “revitalization” project
“I see young children here, I never saw young children here when I was a police officer,” he said.
The provincial government gave the $120,000 to the project and another $105,000 through the Saskatchewan Home Energy Improvement Program.
“Our government looks at this – it’s a partnership – if a church group, if a community based organization, if a non-profit organization comes together like this,” Hickie said.
“As long as they meet the criteria involving, the permits and their project has viability and sustainably and they come with dollars as well, it’s not just us giving money as well, it’s not just us giving money, it’s an opportunity for us for a change as what’s happen.”
Randy Hoback, MP for Prince Albert, felt the same way.
“We work with a variety of different groups, as long as the objectives are honourable, the goals are honourable, we’ll work a variety to people to get positive end results,” he said.
The federal government contributed $360,000 towards the $1.2 million project.
“If you look at this are now compared to what it used to look like even a couple of years ago, what a difference,” he said.
klavoie@panow.com