Toronto community rallies to make sure food bank opens with full shelves

Donations for the Fort York Food Bank in Toronto. (Twitter/@FYfoodbank)

A local Toronto food bank scheduled to open its doors Tuesday for the first time since the pandemic began almost did so with empty shelves until the community, including a city councillor, rallied to help.

The Fort York Food Bank, located near College and Bathurst streets, have been operating delivery programs and handing out pre-packaged grocery bags to clients for the last two years. On April 26, they will once again allow clients to enter their establishment and choose what items they need.

But this big pandemic reopening plan was nearly put on hold when staff realized on Sunday that they didn’t have a lot of the staples.

“We had no pasta, no pasta sauce, no rice, no beans, no canned vegetables, no canned meat, no tuna, nothing to put on the shelves for tomorrow morning,” Julie Lejeune, executive director of the food bank, told CTV News Toronto.

The lack of supply is due to an increasing demand for the food bank, Lejeune said. The last Saturday families came to collect groceries for about 450 people, including a large number of children.

“We always have that many,” she said, saying that an increase in food prices and inflation are creating “a perfect storm.”

“This Saturday was particularly high…and we ran out of food.”

Lejeune quickly put a call out on social media, even enlisting their city councillor to help push the message out—the Fort York Food Bank was in desperate need of donations.

Mike Layton, councillor for Ward 11, told CTV News Toronto that he heard from the food bank around 9 p.m. the day before and was more than happy to help encourage residents to drop by on Monday with donations. He even wandered over on his way to city hall with some items from his pantry.

“You can’t help but feel awful that folks are going to show up and look for food tomorrow and they’re not going to have anything,” he said.

He said that while it may take years to address the systematic issues for why food bank usage appears to be constantly rising, there are small things that people can do to help—including donating.

“You’ve got growing costs of housing, growing cost of living and food as well as our wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living in a city like Toronto,” he said. “It just so happens that we have an election coming up that we can fight for that.”

LeJeune said that between 15 and 20 people stopped by the food bank on Monday with donations, including Layton.

“We’re really grateful today for everyone’s outpouring of support,” she said. “I appreciate that we kind of had this mini-crisis the last 12 hours and people really supported us.”

“Even today somebody came by and said, what are your hours, when are you open? It’ll be their first time. I told them that they’ll get to come back tomorrow to get their groceries, but every day we’re registering new clients.”

Lejeune said that she is excited to open the food bank’s doors and that anyone who wants to donate can still do so on Tuesday.