The Heritage Home Team
At Heritage Home, we carefully choose the members of our team in order to provide you with specialized treatment. Our staff members are your partners in your sobriety.
Far enough to remove you from your problems but close enough for comfort. We’ll come pick you up!
At Heritage Home, we carefully choose the members of our team in order to provide you with specialized treatment. Our staff members are your partners in your sobriety.
Catherine Cosgrove is an addictions-specialist psychotherapist with 15 years experience in the field. Prior to founding Heritage Home, Catherine was the Clinical Director of a residential substance-abuse facility for seven years, where she treated federal inmates prior to release into the community. While there, she also led specialized groups dealing with in female substance abuse, and was responsible for conducting counseling sessions with family members of the residents.
Catherine believes in treating the whole person. She teaches meditation to the residents of Heritage Home as a means of finding self-awareness. She believes in the benefits of relaxation and stress reduction techniques as a substitution for self-medicating with drugs.
Addiction Therapist Laurie Bedard, M.A.C., heads up both the individual and group therapy sessions at Heritage Home. She works primarily in the areas of cognitive-behavioural and exposure-based therapies. Laurie’s focus, especially during the first phases of your sobriety, is to provide a cognitive and behavioural reframing process. In her former life, Laurie worked as a private counselor for children with anxiety disorders, adolescents with substance abuse and/or oppositional-defiance disorders, and as a teacher for troubled youths in a transitional program. Her areas of specialty include neurobiology of affliction, positive psychology, mood disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and relapse prevention.
Laurie believes dearly that a counselor must, above all else, be supportive, directive, and action-oriented.
Portia Dahl, M.A., has worked as an addiction therapist and mediator for restorative just cases for over seven years. At Heritage Home, she provides both group and individual therapy for clients, specializing in restorative justice, post-treatment recovery, conflict resolution and anger management, anxiety and stress management, family of origin issues, and other such relationship issues as co-dependency, domestic violence and dysfunctional family patterns.
For Portia, the use of creative art therapy is a way of illustrating material and enhancing the therapeutic process by promoting catharsis, leading clients to experience insights, creating long lasting change. Although many can be apprehensive participating in creative art therapy, Portia’s soft approach relaxes new clients, allowing them to learn, open up, and, most importantly, have fun.
Kathleen Rattigan, M.A., Heritage Home’s Meditation and Spiritual Therapist, also specializes in grief counseling. Through the use of meditation, guided visualization, positive affirmations, and other advanced and modern teachings, Kathleen facilitates the development of becoming mindful, reconnecting with one’s inner self, learning to be comfortable in stillness and reclaiming the ability to unwind in a natural way. Kathleen’s focus is natural relaxation techniques to relieve stress and/or anxiety, and to develop effective communication skills to explore negative family dynamics.
Meditation teaches clients to transform fearful and negative thoughts into a positive and life enhancing energy. Group mediation sessions with Kathleen provide a forum for open-minded discussions on how spirituality enhances feelings of physical, emotional and mental well-being, and creates a healthy and easily-maintained life practice that clients can carry with them post-treatment.
Before becoming an addiction counselor and group facilitator for Heritage Home, Luis Rino was a missionary for the Oblates in Alberta. Luis worked with First Nations communities, exploring the effects of generational trauma on drugs and alcohol abuse. Luis specializes in exploring interpersonal conflict issues within the family unit. His goal is to facilitate clients’ development of effective communication and problem solving skills, especially within the family unit.
At Heritage, not only does Luis counsel clients but also organizes and runs workshops that Heritage Home clients have always found informative and fun. Previous to work at Heritage, he created a communications skills training program for men and women in halfway houses, teaching more appropriate and effective ways to communicate—a skill that benefits not only client, but families as a whole, particularly post-treatment.
With over 15 years of clinical experience specializing in psychodynamic therapeutic work, Karyn Robertson brings to Heritage Home a clear and grounded sense of the work required in understanding oneself. Karyn specializes in the psychodynamic interpersonal psychoanalysis, with a focus in addiction, Posttraumatic Stress Response, Acute Stress Disorder, and clinical depression. She also works with such phase of life transitional issues as divorce, grief, sexual identity, Post-Partum Depression, and anxiety management.
While not at Heritage Home, Karyn maintains a private practice in Montreal, Quebec that includes a clinical focus on the post-treatment recovery process.
Sky Bellefleur, our Native Spritiual Counselor at Heritage Home, having been trained by Elders, was worked with a sweat lodge and healing circles for 20 years. Prior to joining us, Sky was the Director of PAQ—a sheter for Aboriginal and Inuit People with severe and chronic addiction problems. Her areas of specialty are healing conjugal violence, family dynamic issues, lateral violence and the effects of living in residential schools, generational trauma, and addiction and recover
Sky’s experience with addiction began as a personal one. “My family had generational alcoholism and I myself am 22 years in sobriety,” she says, “so my approach is from this perspective.” She approaches clients through a Healing model, based on Traditional Aboriginal Medicine Wheel teachings with emphasis on self-care, respect, honouring the self, families, truth, and ethics.
Tim Campbell comes to us as our new Activities Director. Tim specializes in personal training, outdoor activities, all-season sports activities, and team building. With his work at Heritage Home, he provides opportunities to experience sober fun, with a focus on recreational and sporting activities suitable for all ages. Tim has over ten years of experience, previously working as the Sports Supervisor and Activities Director for a number of well-known American cruise lines and hotel resorts.
Julie’s approach to a hatha yoga practice is gentle-heart with a focus on cultivating inner peace and clarity. Students at Heritage are encouraged to work at their own pace, learning to honour their bodies. A typical practice includes breath work, strengthening and stretching postures, and ending with deep relaxation. Along with the obvious physical benefits of building strength and increasing flexibility, yoga also helps detoxify the body, improve immune function, foster psychology equanimity, and promote spiritual well-being—naturally complimenting other forms of treatment.
At Heritage Home, through his physical training, Leslie educates clients about positive leisurely activities, thereby teaching alternatives to drug and alcohol use. His instruction assists clients to achieve healthy balance their lives, between work, family, friends, and leisure. Before coming to us as our Fitness & Leisure Counselor, Leslie has also worked as an adult addiction counselor, a youth-at-risk counselor, and fitness instructor. Leslie specializes in therapeutic recreation, leisure studies, and health and fitness training.
Leslie-Ann Hine is a certified massage practitioner and member of the Fédération Québecoise des Massothérapeute, having studied in Montreal at the Dragon and Phoenix Shiatsu School and the Natural Health Consultants School.
Shiatsu benefits clients by helping them achieve deep relaxation, thereby allowing the body to rest and heal, build the immune system, releasing endorphins, and speeding up the detoxification process. Massages are personalized to the individual’s needs.
Reflexology, a relaxing foot massage with firm pressure, melts away stress and anxiety.
Leslie-Ann provides quality massage treatments with respect for each individual’s unique needs. Insurance receipts available.
After her daughter became very ill in 1993, Brenada investigated and sought out alternative treatments, having had very little luck with the traditional. This experience with her daughter has led Brenda to become well adept in Food Combining, Healthy Cuisine, Adapted Diets, Detoxification by Ionization, Reiki Master, Colour Therapy, Enneagrams and Reconnective Healing Practitioner, and has even organized conferences and events on these subjects.
Ion Cleansing, similar to a footbath, uses water as the conductive medium. The Ionizer acts as a magnet to draw heavy metals and other toxins from your body toward your feet and through the skin by osmosis, where they enter the water. Benefits may include: heavy metal removal, faster recovery times, increased oxygen levels, pain relief, improved sleep, and more.
Melissa was trained in Montreal at the Kine-Concept. Massage can be therapeutic, promoting relaxation and stress reduction. Benefits of massage on Heritage Home clients include the elimination of toxins and the promotion of circulation.
To find out more about how we can assist you or your loved one to get help, please call us toll free at 1-877-777-4386
