The John Volken Academy (JVA) recovery centre shut down as of this month, putting the Surrey and Langley-based non-profit in limbo.
The provincial Ministry of Health confirmed that the assisted-living, recovery centre has ceased operating.
"The [assisted-living] registrar can confirm that, per the board’s order, the John Volken Academy has ceased to be a registered assisted-living residence under the Community Care and Assisted Living Act on March 8, 2025."
The province did not provide information on what had happened to clients who were living at the facility up to the date of the shutdown.
"It is up to the individual whether they wish to continue receiving recovery services elsewhere," said a statement from the ministry.
The shutdown was ordered by Ross Hayward, an assistant deputy minister in the ministry of health, following more than two years of wrangling between the government and the JVA over how the residential facility in Surrey, and its farm in Langley, operated.
Interviews with some former clients and employees of JVA confirmed that the issues Hayward's reports identified were widespread and longstanding.
Former clients of the academy described a program that kept people busy, mostly with physical labour, almost from the moment they arrived at the Surrey residential facility. To protect the identities of these former residents who have come forward, Black Press Media is not using their real names.
William, who spent more than two years at the facility, said he'd struggled with alcoholism throughout his young adulthood, and that short-stay programs hadn't worked.
His family was excited when they found the two-year JVA program, which cost a relatively reasonable $5,000 for two years, when most similar programs cost thousands per month.
He said he was not told that clients began work immediately, whether they were detoxed or not.
"I got there at the end of the working day, and I was working the following morning," William recalled.
He was operating a meat slicer in the deli of the Surrey grocery and furniture store attached to the Volken Academy, and went through alcohol detox there.
Another former client, Mary, reported a similar experience.
"I thought that I was going to a ranch," she said.
After arriving at JVA, she filled out paperwork, had dinner, and was given a room.
"I got woken up at 4:30 in the morning," Mary recounted.
By 7:30 a.m., she was working the dairy department of the adjacent store.
"I passed out," Mary said. "I could barely walk, I threw up."
She was sent to sit in her room and no one talked to her.
"Then they get mad at you and ask 'Is this going to be common?'" she recounted.
William also confirmed that residents had very little contact with the outside world early on, during what was called the "blackout period." They slowly received privileges of communication with family, starting with permission to write letters.
Mary noted her cellphone was taken away, and said she was told to forget about her family.
In 2023, government regulators banned the JVA from using "the bench," "the horseshoe," and "speaking bans."
In the 2024 shutdown order, Hayward noted that speaking bans had continued despite the ban.
William said during his time there, total speaking bans were imposed for at least three days.
"I'd seen as long as a month," he said.
And those under a speaking ban had to eat alone, he remembered.
Hayward's shutdown letter also noted that individual clients were "strongly discouraged" from speaking to members of the opposite sex, or to anyone outside of their internal "family" groups in JVA, unless it was directly related to work.
William said the bench was a similar punishment, a literal wooden bench off the side entrance to the furniture store. Someone having second thoughts or talking about leaving the program would be told to sit there for hours out of their day, doing nothing.
"I saw people spend days there," he said, with people returning to the bench day after day. "It's a form of ostracization."
The use of the bench ended during William's time at JVA. The ministry banned its use as a punishment.
The horseshoe was often used on people who had walked away from JVA and were seeking to return. Everyone else in the program would sit around them in a horseshoe shape.
"It's essentially everyone versus you," in what William described as an aggressive grilling that could last an hour or two, as long as the community felt necessary.
"It's like an hour or two hours of people just ripping into you," William said, who saw it three or four times during his stay at JVA.
"If we didn't get the sense that they were sad enough, we wouldn't let them back in," he said.
One of the other key issues raised by Hayward in his shutdown order was the lack of "psycho-social supports" for clients, which emerged from interviews with residents during 2023 and 2024, he wrote.
"While there are 'family meetings,' these do not provide structured psycho-social supports that are intended to provide resources for residents to help them to achieve/maintain sobriety," Hayward wrote. "Furthermore, family meetings are not led by employees of JVA; rather, these meetings are led by 'family leaders' who are senior residents."
He noted that a resident compared the "family meetings" to complaint sessions where residents tattle on one another like high school students, rather than sessions focused on recovery.
Both Mary and William spoke about the main evening programming, a form of group therapy often called encounters, which took place a few times a week.
"These are full-on confrontational throwdowns, where people try to tear you down with their words," said Mary.
William said the main feature of the encounters was that people would bring up rule violations or bad behaviours by others, including things as small as failing to push in a chair after getting up from a table.
Anyone confronted with their behaviour in an encounter would have to explain him or herself. The group might accept that it was a mistake, or the person would have to write a letter about the importance of manners, for example.
"The problem is that we were given quotas," said William.
Everyone had to bring five behaviours by others, or they could get into trouble themselves. This resulted in everyone watching out for little things to report, or simply making things up, he added.
There would be lengthy sessions devoted to things like leaving a toothbrush on a counter, William said.
Broadly, former clients and staff confirmed that there was very little in the way of professional counselling for people with addiction issues.
A former employee of JVA, "Carrie," said that clients learned to be sober by exhausting themselves, and being given no time to think about anything else.
"There was no robust care," Carrie said, who has worked in other recovery settings.
She said other programs offer classes and counselling that were not available at JVA.
Mary, who left JVA after two months and managed to get into another recovery program at a different centre, said the difference was extreme.
"It wasn't even in the same league," she said.
At the new centre, medication was dispensed from a pharmacy and she could talk with professionals.
"I had my own room with a lock," she said of the second recovery facility.
That gave her privacy, and a space to be alone.
However, Mary said she felt guilty about leaving JVA.
"I felt so bad I cried," she said. "Because I felt like I was just saving myself."
Another key issue raised by Hayward's reports was "holdbacks."
"One of the biggest punishments they can give you is the holdback," said William.
A holdback is an extension of the time you spend in the JVA program – working for one of the JVA businesses – imposed for an infraction of the rules.
William was given a holdback after it was discovered that he had been doing an online college course without permission, he said.
"I was lucky, I only had one month added to mine."
He said holdbacks were always measured in months, and some people had a year or more added to their term.
The provincial criticisms of the program also included issues with injuries, and mentioned several incidents, such as cuts requiring stitches, a crushed finger, one person who was allegedly gored by a water buffalo on the Academy Farms site in Langley, and another who broke a hip after falling off a ladder.
Carrie, the former employee, remembered the incident where the client broke a hip, and multiple other incidents in which clients working on the farm were in danger.
"Lots of students were chased by animals, lots of students had a close run in," Carrie said.
That is part of working with farm animals, she noted. But with high student turnover, few clients were properly trained or experienced enough, she said. And many of the staff members were former clients.
William said that many people wound up taking jobs at JVA after they graduated from the program, simply because it was available. Otherwise, they would have had a two-year blank space on their resume, he noted.
Overall, the former clients Black Press Media spoke to did not think highly of their time there.
"I hated it," said William.
All of the clients and former employees spoke of the relentless pressure to work that seemed to come before everything else.
It is unclear what will happen to the JVA following the shutdown.
The society was appealing the shutdown ruling, and the appeal was scheduled for a nine-day hearing to start on May 5.
The Langley Advance Times has reached out to John Volken Academy for comment on the issues raised by former residents and staff, but a spokesperson said a reply could not be provided before press deadline.
