'Guiding this agency that saved my life': executive director on how Agape Table rescued him

He had a good job at a bank. A house. A car. A girlfriend. At 33, Dave Cunnin had all the things he thought he always wanted. But there was something missing.

"I realized I was in trouble because I had attained everything that I had set out to attain, but I felt hollow and empty inside," said Cunnin, now 51 and the executive director at Agape Table — a soup kitchen nestled inside All Saints' Anglican Church at the corner of Broadway and Osborne Street.

On Friday morning, Agape will serve its annual holiday feast to over 400 guests.

First arrived as Agape guest

Cunnin recalls a cold winter day 18 years ago when he first arrived at the soup kitchen — not as a volunteer, but as a guest.

"From the moment I walked in here the way they treated me, the way they greeted me, they showed me that there is something right with me, and that no matter where I am in so-called society, I'm still a human being and I still have value," he said.

Cunnin credits the organization and its volunteers with saving his life, after he says things spun out of control for him.

Going from homeless to healing

8 years ago

Duration 2:11

Dave Cunnin shares his story of how Agape Table saved his life.

Anxiety and addiction

Despite having what others thought was a successful life, Cunnin struggled with anxiety and alcohol addiction, and on a few occasions he attempted to take his own life.

"It led to complete exhaustion and complete mental and emotional collapse, which left me not able to function," he said.

At 33 years old, Cunnin left his job at the bank and ran from his family. He says the weight of the identity he had created for himself was just too much.

"The relationships I had, the possessions I had, all of those things that I had been taught and society teaches us all to use to define ourselves, those were all stripped away," he said.

"I had the clothes on my back, I had 35 cents in my pocket and a few changes of underwear."

Cunnin was homeless for the next year. He says while he always managed to find a place to rest his head staying at various shelters and rooming houses, it was more than just his physical being that was displaced.

"Everything that I had been taught, that defined myself as a human being, was erased," he said.

Cunnin says it was an odd experience to realize that even after he had lost everything he still existed, he still kept breathing.

That's when Cunnin says he began a healing journey. He says through the support of volunteers at Agape, he was able to give himself a break and stop letting expectations rule his life.

"When I first arrived, being homeless I was struggling to get back, get out of it as quickly as possible," he said.

"The bottom line was I was trying to hold on to what I had. But I realized, looking back, that I had to let everything go."

Ending up where it all began

Cunnin says he was given a second chance by a complete stranger who offered him a job as a general labourer at a machine shop, work he had never done before. He says the opportunity allowed him to learn things about himself he never knew.

The experience drove him to get involved in social services. He says he worked at Main Street Project for a while, then at a youth centre in Calgary.

When he returned to Winnipeg, he found himself back at Agape and two years ago became the organization's executive director.

"It's amazing how all the twists and turns could bring me back to guiding this agency that saved my life into the next chapter of its destiny," said Cunnin.

He says he hopes to continue offering the same welcoming atmosphere that greeted him all of those years ago.

"It's our connectedness and our interactions with ourselves and with others that really define us as human beings, not our ability to interact by buying and selling things," said Cunnin.

He says his vision for Agape isn't to fix homelessness, but to change the way people look at it, "to expand the box that society uses to define a functional member of society."

He says while many organizations offer resources and programming to help the city's homeless, Agape Table is a place where people can be who they are. Cunnin says the first step to changing a life is letting people know they matter, and they are good enough the way they are.

"No matter how many resources that we throw at people in job training, et cetera, unless those internal beliefs are shifted, as they were in me, little headway will come about," he said.

"If a person believes they are poor, chances are they are going to act poor. Opportunities may come along that they feel they don't deserve."