Annual Report 2022

Calgary Counselling Centre has been a part of the Calgary community for 60 years. But this milestone is not about us. It’s about the couple that learned to communicate and re-connect with each other again. It’s about the girl who learned to love herself. It’s about the man who learned to feel hopeful for the future.

Over the course of our first 60 years, we’ve worked with over 1.1 million people that have shown us the meaning of resiliency. We’ve had the privilege of witnessing how they faced challenges, overcame obstacles and transformed their lives. We’ve been a part of their journey and helped them uncover the skills they needed to thrive.

We began humbly in 1962 in the basement of the Central United Church under the direction of Reverend W.E. Mullen. We’ve grown from delivering a few hundred hours of counselling a year to over 40,000 hours a year, from teaching a couple of students in counselling best practices to training over 120 social work and psychology students each year and gaining the recognition of being the largest training centre of its kind in Western Canada.

“Good counselling means walking with troubled people through deep water, helping them to discover the strength they have and develop it so they can fly on their own again.”

— Rev. W.E. Mullen, PhD, founder of Calgary Counselling Centre

60 years have passed since our founding and we, like our clients, have evolved a great deal over the years. Our 60th anniversary is an opportunity to look back, reflect, and see how far we have come and most importantly, where we’re headed.

Looking back on our 60 years of service to our community, we can’t help but be proud. We’re proud of our accomplishments: ground-breaking research resulting in innovative and highly successful counselling programs; our many collaborations with community partners; but above all, we are proud of our clients and their work in transforming and reshaping their lives. They inspire us and drive us.

Although this is a milestone to celebrate, we recognize that 2022 was another challenging year for our community. War and conflict around the world, the lasting effects of the pandemic, and financial pressures all impacted the well-being of individuals and families. These challenges resulted in anxiety, relationship problems, and depression as the leading reasons that people sought our help in 2022.

Life will always have ups and downs and although we can’t predict what challenges our community will face in the future, we can continue to make the promise we started 60 years ago: when you need us, we’ll be there.