Bridges began by a group of citizens in Truro, Colchester County and East Hants gathered together because they wanted to stop intimate partner violence. The community players who came together included the local women's shelter, the probation office, Addiction Services, Child Protection Services and the local Mental Health department at the local hospital. The staff were trained initially in Dulut
h, Minnesota in the "Duluth Model" by Pence and Paymar (1993). This work remains important to the organization in terms of focusing our conversations on men taking responsibility, a gender analysis of intimate partner violence and having conversations with men in the context of a coordinated community response. Toward the end of the 1990s, Bridges staff was introduced to Narrative Therapy and the ideas of Michael White and Alan Jenkins. This approach moved the organization away from an oppositional approach with men to a more invitational approach. Further, this approach allowed staff to recognize the multiple stories of men's lives and, in turn, allow staff to join with the men's values that are inconsistent with using violence. Since that time, staff have also adopted a restorative justice sensibility to the conversations with men. These conversations are characterized by listening to female partners and finding out what they want to address the harms their (ex) partners have created. These conversations also empower men to take responsibility to address these harms. Sometimes these conversations involve facilitating a conversation between the woman and man, while often it does not. Staff began publishing the work in 2001 and presenting the work internationally the following year. Bridges Institute is also a co-founding organization of the Canadian Domestic Violence Conference, which happens every two years in Halifax, Canada.
