Volunteer Profile: Tom Bilenkey
Some think of volunteering strictly in moral terms. While that is indeed an important part of the volunteer experience, it isn’t the entirety of it. Volunteering can be about helping others, but it can also be about helping yourself. There is nothing shameful about that. Investing in your own mental health is important, especially when doing so benefits other people. This theme resonates throughout the story of Tom Bilenkey, one of our most dedicated volunteers, who has been with Harbourfront Centre for decades.
“It has nothing to do with nobility. To me, it was a matter of re-socializing after my marriage broke down. It was a very practical thing,” he says. When his marriage effectively dissolved in the late 1980s, Tom was living in Brampton, where he’d spent 20 years raising a family. After moving back to Toronto, he needed to find ways to move forward, to foster connections with other people. Initially, he volunteered at the National Ballet. When that quieted down, he saw a notice in NOW Magazine advertising volunteer opportunities at Harbourfront Centre. “I’ll do one in the winter and one in the summer, when I have time,” he thought to himself.
Our volunteer program’s flexibility suited him. Tom worked at the CBC, starting as a technician before moving into location sound recording. He’d work on documentaries all over the place, meaning that he’d often travel for work. Even when he was at home, the film industry was a kind of cocoon, occasionally demanded gruelling hours from him. It left him feeling a little removed, isolated from public interactions. In the summer, he’d have six weeks of vacation — time that he needed to fill up.
In the early years, before coordination shifted online, volunteers would actually have to come on site to sign up for jobs. This would happen in the early summer. All of the programming would be more or less set by then, so programmers would give volunteer coordinators their requirements which would then be printed on sheets. Volunteers would enter a room with multiple tables, each table covered in sheets that lined up available opportunities. Everyone wanted to volunteer, so it was hectic and congested. The coordinators had to manage the flow, giving people little numbers as they entered the room or organizing them by alphabetical order. It was beautiful madness.
Much of the time, Harbourfront Centre needed people to hand out brochures around the premises, enticing visitors to come see the programming. Then there would be times when the campus would come alive with special programming. The Milk International Children’s Festival, as well as HarbourKids, both of which have since been replaced by our Junior festival, stood out to him especially. Fondly, he remembers a group of face painters who’d set up shop and transform visiting children. Their work was exceptional and very popular. There’d be long line-ups, sometimes two hours long despite a nominal fee charged to control the flow. Mothers would come with their daughters at the very beginning of the day, so their kids would be face-painted the entire time they were at the festival. One year, while volunteering, they gave him permission to photograph them. He still has those photos of the kids and their painted faces.
Another time, he was asked to help out with School Visits. The program taught art classes to children and it needed volunteers to help prep the materials. This particular task was normally handled by a regular group of womenfor whom this was a social gathering as much as it was volunteering. Together, they’d cut materials down to their proper sizes — little by little, large sections of paper or fabric would be reduced to something workable for children. He felt included. It became as much a social gathering for him as it was for everyone else.
Perhaps the most important gift that volunteering gave him, aside from socializing, was a revitalized passion for photography. Given his work in the film industry, Tom had a long relationship with photography. He’d grown bored with the images he was producing, though. He volunteered as a photographer at Harbourfront Centre, which then inspired him to upgrade his equipment and reapproach the art form with new creativity. Whereas beforehand inspiration wasn’t readily available, at Harbourfront Centre he was hunting for moments, looking for something usable. Then he’d see his photographs used in brochures and it was gratifying, motivating him to further sharpen his skills, to be more aware of his surroundings and react to flashes of beauty more readily. Over time, he created thousands of images which now sit in his collection.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed things. With programming either on pause or shifted online, traditional forms of volunteering have temporarily evaporated. Harbourfront Centre has shifted towards a system that focuses on providing digital supports for volunteers, launching workshops and wellness check-ins. Tom, though, remains anxious to get back to doing things in person. He wants to be hands-on. The purpose of volunteering is to be there, to move around and do something. His loyalty to Harbourfront Centre is unwavering and he looks forward to when he can come back on site, especially to resume helping out with the School Visits program, because it’s given him the most sense of belonging for the past few years. When things go back to normal, he’ll have a place with us — then and always.
