How Toronto feeds a child
This is a story about how a mother in Toronto gets some food to feed her son.
It starts with a mother going to the grocery store and buying a can of tuna. It ends with a mother taking that can of tuna home. If this was a story about many families in Toronto, that would be the whole tale, without much to tell in between. But this is also a story about poverty and how we collectively attempt to deal with it in 2014, so there’s a bit more to it.
In this story, over the course of two weeks, the can of tuna travels more than 50 kilometres, to one corner of the city and then to the other. More than a dozen people from different walks of life from all over the city play direct roles and the cast of supporting characters in the background numbers in the thousands.
It’s not a unique story — in fact, it’s exactly the kind of story that millions of residents of the GTA have participated in, many without knowing exactly how it ends or what happens beyond their own small part.
This is a story about how a single donation to the Daily Bread food bank gets from a shelf in the store to the cupboard of the person who will eat it.
CHAPTER ONE: DONATION
Laura Swan, a 40-year-old stay-at-home mother and founder of the Junction Project neighbourhood group, leaves her brick house near Keele and Dundas West to go to the grocery story on a Monday morning in November. About four or five times a year she donates to the food bank, “like most people,” she says, usually during Christmas or Thanksgiving food drives. “It’s a good opportunity for our family to express our values, that a community should take care of its other members.”
Today she goes to No Frills on Pacific Avenue near Dundas West. Wandering the aisles, she gets beans, two tubs of peanut butter — she has been told that Daily Bread always needs proteins—and some Chips Ahoy cookies, a treat for someone she imagines can afford few luxuries.
Swan has been on the other end . As a student at the University of Toronto, she visited the food bank. “It was the difference between eating and not eating, it’s as simple as that,” she says. She thinks about that when donating. “I think about how grateful I am for my greater financial stability, and how precarious my situation was then. I was just one person. I imagine that situation, if you had a family and children that you needed to help feed, how much more stressful that would be.”
She picks up a can of Gold Seal Solid Light Tuna and adds it to her bag, then takes her purchases to the checkout.
Toronto Fire Station 423 on Keele Street is a quick walk away. Walking past a toy fire engine hanging on the wall to an alcove where a filled-up plastic collection bin is surrounded by boxes of donations, Swan places her bag on the floor.
Swan says she’s sometimes frustrated at recognizing “how minuscule my contribution is” to such an overwhelming problem as hunger and poverty. But she welcomes the opportunity to do something. “It is a good feeling to be part of something larger,” she says.
CHAPTER TWO: FIRE HALL
On Wednesday afternoon, the “Fighting Hunger” truck — one of five in Daily Bread’s fleet — backs up to the Fire Hall doors. The four firefighters on duty come to help out.
The black bag carrying Swan’s donations, including the tuna can, is emptied into a box decorated with pink and blue construction paper by local schoolchildren. The truck driver sets up a wooden shipping pallet and begins unfolding large boxes on it, placing the smaller donation boxes inside.
Timothy Green, a firefighter who lives in Mississauga, lifts the pink and blue box onto the skid.
“We’re here to help out,” Green says . “It’s part of our community service, in addition to the community service we already perform as firefighters.”
Green says the role he and his co-workers play is nothing much to talk about. “It’s very small. At various times of the year, trucks come by and we pitch in to load them, that’s our part. It’s always a good feeling to help out — as a firefighter, that’s our job anyways.”
CHAPTER THREE: THE DRIVE
Paul Huckvale uses the truck’s hydraulic lift to raise the two full pallets from Fire Hall 423 onto the truck, where they join the donations from the other eight stops he has already made that day. He was supposed to make a 10th, but the city’s first snowfall of the year is just beginning as the evening rush hour starts, so he drives straight back to the Daily Bread warehouse.
Huckvale has worked full-time at Daily Bread since June, making four to six pickups and six to eight deliveries most days. “The company I worked for did pickups at fire halls on weekends, because we had these trucks. I’d suggested years ago it was something we could do, to bring our kids along and show them what giving some of your time back to the community was all about.” Earlier this year, the company where he had worked for decades moved to the U.S., and he was hired on as one of the agency’s five full-time drivers. Huckvale and his family live near Bloor West and Royal York, in normal circumstances, a fairly easy trip to the warehouse.
He backs the truck up to one of the 10 loading dock doors at the Daily Bread Warehouse on New Toronto Street in Etobicoke and unloads. The tuna can, the box it’s in, and the rest of the donations Huckvale brings into the large warehouse loading area are wheeled over to a weigh scale embedded in the floor. Huckvale notes on a form the origin of the load, its weight — 1,021 pounds on the pallet from the Junction fire hall — and affixes each individual box on the pallet with a bar code label to track its progress.
CHAPTER FOUR: SORTING
Production Assistant Tanya Gotman came to the Daily Bread food bank in 2011 through “Investing in Neighbourhoods,” a program that helps welfare recipients gain skills and experience . The single mom, who lives in Long Branch , got a contract through the program, and ended up being hired on full time.
“This place is awesome because it’s like the hub of the wheel. This warehouse services so many agencies,” she says. She explains that Daily Bread is the brain and distribution system for the food banks all across the city that are run by non-profits, churches and community groups.
On this Thursday morning, Gotman wheels the box containing the Gold Seal tuna from the loading dock , through a doorway over to the sorting floor. The best part of her job is seeing all the people who get involved. “There are really hardworking people who come here day in and day out, through blizzards some of them come in and show up . . . It’s incredible, you see so many people who are happy to come in, happy to give of themselves, they understand we’re all walking in this world together so we give of ourselves. I feel like I’m getting paid 10,000 times over when I encounter some of these guys.”
This day, Gotman is co-ordinating students from Blythwood Junior Public School near Yonge and Eglinton — one of four school groups in the warehouse .
The kids are laughing and running as they remove tins and packages from boxes at one end of an aisle to find the appropriate box along a row of tables. Some are for pasta sauce, others for canned vegetables, others for cereal.
Reese Mencke, 10, picks up Swan’s can of tuna from the pink and blue box and examines its label. She walks down the aisle, eyeing the signs over the boxes.
“I’ve learned they sort everything very specifically,” she says. “I feel really, really special being here. It’s a really good opportunity. I think I might come a lot more to help make the world a better place.” She comes to a box marked “canned fish” and places Swan’s tuna inside.
CHAPTER FIVE: PALLETIZING
Eventually the box of canned fish is full and Gotman asks “almost-10”-year-old Cole Dumanski, another Blythwood fifth grader, to help. He lifts the full box onto a cart, and they wheel it, with other boxes, over to a weigh scale. Cole records the weight — 168 pounds — and the two wheel it over to where the box will be placed on a pallet .
“This is fun. It’s cool,” Cole says, turning his thoughts to the people who will get this food . “I think they’ll be happy that they get the food, and I think they’ll really enjoy it.”
Once the pallet is full, Gotman uses a pump truck to move it to the “picking row,” where it is placed with other full skids of canned fish, ready to be selected .
CHAPTER SIX: PICKING
Kyle MacIntyre has a scanner gun with a digital display on it. Standing on picking on Tuesday morning , he shows placed by the Agincourt Community Services Food Bank — 15 cases of pasta sauce, 12 cases of canned beans, and so on. The order represents a wish list of what the agency needs to serve the clients it expects this week.
MacIntyre and two volunteers wander the aisles piled high with pallets. MacIntyre will scan the label, automatically adjusting his digital shopping list and simultaneously the inventory tracked in Daily Bread’s system. A volunteer will lift the box onto the pallet of Agincourt’s order.
MacIntyre, who lives in Malvern, has been a warehouse associate since January 2014 — beginning with a seven week placement arranged by Youth Employment Services, a non-profit agency that works with disadvantaged and vulnerable youth. Daily Bread, they kept him on, and he has been here on picking row ever since.
“I knew coming in that it had a lot to do with helping feed hungry people. But as I started working here, you see how big it really is,” he says of both Daily Bread and the problem it aims to address. “I may have my bad days — everyone does — but at the end of the day, we do something really good here and I’m happy to be a part of it.”
MacIntyre turns to a box of canned fish containing the tuna we have been following and scans it, and volunteer Al DeMatos picks it up and places it on the Agincourt pallet.
DeMatos has been coming to Daily Bread from his home near Christie and Bloor to help out — often three times a week — for 12 years. He hasn’t worked since he left a job way back then in a print shop, and he says volunteering “breaks up the monotony of being at home.”
DeMatos wheels the now full pallet to a rotating turntable embedded in the floor. The pallet starts spinning quickly , until it is entirely wrapped in cellophane.
Then MacIntyre wheels the skid into the shipping area where it will be held until tomorrow. It is the first of 11 pallets that will make up Agincourt’s order.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE LONG DRIVE
Bruce Robinson lives right around the corner from the Daily Bread Warehouse, and it’s a good thing, since his workday starts before the late November sun rises. “It’s not that early,” he says, “just 7 a.m.”
For more than six years, he has been working at Daily Bread, driving a truck. “This is a little more than just a job,” he says. “If you don’t have the right attitude, you’re not going to do well. You never really know how many people need help until you’re out there helping. And there are thousands involved in helping. The people in Toronto are very generous.”
Robinson double checks Agincourt’s order along with orders for the other agencies where he will deliver this morning, 9,396 pounds of food in total.
A few small birds fly around inside the warehouse as Robinson hefts milk, Halal beef patties, fresh bread and buns, and the rest, packing it all onto his truck parked at Dock 7 . He uses expandable poles to try to secure a load stacked high with wooden crates of green beans that he’s certain will fall over. And he loads the pallet containing the box that contains that tin of Gold Seal tuna.
At 9 a.m., Robinson’s truck is full.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE HUB’S HUMAN ASSEMBLY LINE
The Dorset Park Community Hub — a sort of one-stop shop for community services — was established as part of the United Way’s priority neighbourhoods strategy almost a decade ago.
For the past several years, it has also been home to the Agincourt Community Services Association Food Bank.
Just after 10:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning, a crew of about 10 volunteers and staff are waiting when Robinson pulls up with the truck.
Robinson lowers a pallet and, as while he returns for another, the volunteers carry boxes into the hallway for temporary storage until the items can be sorted. They stack fresh vegetables — including that intact tower of green beans — near the door of the kitchen, where volunteers will sort the bushels into smaller bags . Milk and meat immediately go into the fridges in the pantry . Canned and boxed non-perishables — granola bars, chocolate cake mix, Dole Squish ’Ems — are stacked along the walls down the hall for now.
Brent Shakleton grabs one of the boxes of canned fish, containing the can of Gold Seal tuna, and marches it down the hall , past a classroom where women are taking a sewing class, and places it on the floor.
Shackleton has been volunteering here three days a week for the past five years. He was homeless and using the drop-in program Agincourt Community Services runs on Sheppard Avenue. He had 11 years experience working as a cook, so when the program needed volunteers in the kitchen, he was happy to put his knife skills to use. That led to him helping with the food bank program.
Today, he lives in Agincourt, though not employed, and continues to volunteer. . “The city of Toronto helped me out when I needed it so much, and I’m just returning the favour,” he says. He’s sometimes client of the food bank. “This is one of the best food banks I’ve seen. The people are so nice here. How can you go wrong? If I have a problem to be solved, they can help me out,” he says of the supportive Agincourt Community Services team. “If you can’t find help through this organization, you’re never gonna find it,” he says.
CHAPTER NINE: SHELVING
Pirrette Praden, a retired cheese importer who lives in Scarborough near the Hub, has come by the food bank once a week for the past eight years. She answered an ad in the Scarborough Mirror during a Christmas food drive, and has been helping ever since. “I might be a little drop in the ocean, but I think we need to return to society what society gave us — that makes me feel good, and it keeps me meeting people,” she says. “In a city as big and as rich as Toronto, there shouldn’t be a place like this, it’s unfortunate.”
Praden takes the box of canned fish from the hallway into the pantry and puts the cans, including the Gold Seal can, one by one, onto a shelf.
CHAPTER 10: BASKET MAKING
Thursday is one of three days that the Agincourt Community Services food bank is open. At 10 a.m., clients begin arriving, so bright and early volunteers are buzzing around — bagging fresh food into individual servings, setting up tables where food will be picked up and where people can exchange items for others they prefer, and preparing baskets.
Gemma Rodrigues works from a list of items every client will get in their basket . Rodrigues moves the box she’s filling in a circle , stopping every few feet to take cans off the shelf, checking items off the list.
Rodrigues, a retired BMO IT worker who lives near Pharmacy and Huntingwood began volunteering a decade ago. She was simply walking past and wandered in to ask if they needed help. It keeps her active — “no need to go to the gym!” — and social.
Rodrigues says that it can be sad to confront the level of need in Toronto, to see how many people are having trouble putting food on their tables, but that the work is good for her and helps put her life in perspective. “I have so much to be thankful for.”
Rodrigues takes the can of Gold Seal tuna off the shelf and places it in the box. Completing the list, she takes the box into the hallway, and places it on a table just outside the door.
Here, Alice Liu adds fresh items to the box. There’s milk, fruit, bread, and — this week — frozen meat patties. Liu has been volunteering for about four and a half years since retiring as a business analyst at IBM.
She moves the now full box to the end of the table, ready for distribution.
“There’s a great demand for the food bank, there’s quite a lot of families that need the food,” she says.
CHAPTER 11: DELIVERY
Christine Markwell, a lifelong Guildwood resident, is the staff co-ordinator of the Agincourt food bank. She walks the box over to the central hallway where food bank recipients are picking up provisions.
After more than seven years at the job, Markwell says that she feels she’s in touch with the needs of some of the most disadvantaged people in the city. “What the work has really shown me is the appreciation people have for getting something like a food supplement. But also that we’re only able to reach certain members of society. For every person who uses a food bank, there might be three or four more who are food insecure.”
She says there should be a bigger shift, to a better system to make food available to people — through schools or community events, or through better services to impoverished people. Her organization, drawing on vast resources of volunteer labour and charitable donations, is only able to provide emergency help. They can’t address the underlying problem.
“The food bank system is not an effective system. It would be great if there were other government or corporate initiatives to provide better food at affordable prices to people.”
She hands the box, containing that can of Gold Seal tuna, to Keema Roberts.
CHAPTER 12: BRINGING IT HOME
Keema Roberts is a 39-year-old single mother who lives in an apartment at Victoria Park and Sheppard with her 10-year-old son, Avery. She has a community work diploma from George Brown College that she completed in her 20s, and in 2012 she finished a bachelor’s degree in social work from York but she’s been working contract to contract throughout her adult life. She’s living on EI, but her benefits expire in a few months, and she may wind up in the social services system if she doesn’t land a job.
She and her son have relied on the food bank periodically since he was a baby and she was a student at George Brown. Back then, she went to the student food bank at the college, and after she graduated she found Agincourt Community Services online.
On Tuesday morning this week, she called Agincourt Community Services to make an appointment, and today a friend drove her to her 10:15 allotted time. After filling in a form on which she requested canned fish , she has been waiting in the line. .
Now, she takes the box from Markwell and transfers the items from the box into reusable shopping bags she’s brought with her. She takes a can of tomato soup over to the trading station and exchanges it for a box of macaroni and cheese.
When the particular can of Gold Seal tuna is pointed out to her, she smiles. To the person who donated it — and all those who donate to the food bank network — she says, “I’d just express a big thank you.”
Roberts says that her situation, a mother who is educated with lots of work experience, but still fighting a lifelong struggle with poverty, may be more common than many people think. It’s a situation she’s studied in school, worked to deal with professionally, and continues to live first-hand.
“It’s sad. We should be able to help out those in need in a better way than we do now. There are so many people in my position — if they get sick and lose their job, they could be literally living on the street. It’s really hard, it’s confusing, it’s sad that a better safety net hasn’t been developed.”
Still, the safety net that does exist, in the form of the food bank, has made a huge difference in the lives of Roberts and her son.
“Outside of just feeding us, it’s helped me to budget better. If I had to use money to buy food, I probably wouldn’t have a roof over my head. It’s a big deal. It helps feed us, but without it we’d lose other things that are really important. It’s a lifesaver.”
She carries her bags out the front door to her friend’s car. At her home finally, this can of tuna will become filling for a sandwich for a mother and her son.
That is the story of one ingredient for one meal for one family: Purchased in the Junction. Processed in Etobicoke. Handled by children from midtown, parents from Bloor West Village and retirees from Agincourt. Distributed in Scarborough. It is a story about how it takes a city to feed a child.
It’s a story that’s repeated millions of times in Toronto every year, with millions of food items, tens of thousands of donors, many thousand more hungry recipients. It’s a story that involves all of us. And it goes on.
