Allyson Proulx wants people to know that she and Andy Cadotte do not speak for all of the volunteers in Forest City Food Not Bombs. They are just two people in a collective looking to create change in London, Ontario.

Forest City Food Not Bombs is a volunteer collective addressing food insecurity, poverty, and homelessness by providing free meals to those in need. On the last Saturday of every month, the group shares free soup with the London community. All of the soup is handmade by volunteers, using food that would otherwise be thrown out or freshly grown vegetables donated by Urban Roots London. Initially, they set up a table at London’s downtown Victoria Park for people to pick up their meals. But when volunteers saw how few people showed up in the winter, they started going mobile, hand-delivering food to encampments along the Deshkan Ziibi.

“Food Not Bombs, for me, is mutual aid…We’re not a charity,” says Proulx, who has volunteered with the group since the summer of 2023. “We’re not just ‘going to feed homeless people’, it’s ‘how do we work with people who are unhoused?’”

The Forest City group is one of many Food Not Bombs chapters worldwide. The U.S.-born collective was started in 1980 by a group of anti-nuclear activists in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Each Food Not Bombs group is a completely independent organization that operates according to their community’s needs. The groups are non-hierarchical, meaning that there are no leaders—everybody is a volunteer.

Previous iterations of London Food Not Bombs groups existed in 2008 and 2012, but fizzled out due to activists moving cities and pursuing different projects over the years. The current London chapter started in June 2023 by a crew of activists who were interested in seeing a movement like this come back to the city. “It’s such a powerful, beautiful thing to feed one another on multiple levels, like spiritually, emotionally, intellectually,” Proulx says.

In 2023, between 1,700 to 2,100 people were unhoused in London, according to a “snapshot” published by the city earlier this year. The data comes from the City of London’s “By-Name List,” which allows them to track the changing size and composition of their unhoused population. Over 350 people lived completely unsheltered, meaning they never stayed in emergency housing. In November 2023, there were 103 active encampments. This was the highest number of active encampments during the year, though it does not reflect the total number of tents in 2023.

“The thing about London is that everybody knows everybody,” says Cadotte, a current volunteer who was also part of the 2008 group. “There’s a real opportunity to come together as a community and decide a different path to take in our lives, rather than keep pursuing this path of capitalism.”

Cadotte and Proulx both say that the size of London and its geographic layout helps activism thrive. People live and work in close proximity with each other—plus, they are sharing similar lived experiences as working Canadians. “We’re all together in the sandbox,” says Cadotte.

Proulx also points to the land which London’s activism happens on. “The land itself dictates the activism on the land,” they say. “[There is] Deshkan Ziibi—the river that we live along—the nations that are here, the knowledge that we gained from them about what it means to decolonize and what it means to be in relationship with the food that grows from the land.”

On top of end-of-month meal services, Forest City Food Not Bombs has become a mainstay at advocacy events in the city, standing in solidarity and providing food in the process. As crowds filled the steps outside London City Hall to protest a proposed police budget increase in February or took to the streets of downtown London as part of ongoing Palestinian resistance, Forest City Food Not Bombs set up a plastic folding table with a cardboard sign advertising “free soup.”

Most recently, Food Not Bombs volunteers stood at the front gates of London’s Western University alongside striking graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). GTAs, represented by the Public Service Alliance of Canada Local 610, are seeking a livable wage in the context of the maximum 10 hours per week they are allowed to work. “If you’re going to have collective resistance ongoing, you need to feed people so that they can continue to show up to these protests,” says Proulx.

Coming up on the group’s one year anniversary, Cadotte and Proulx both said they want Forest City Food Not Bombs to be sustainable as it continues to make change in the London community. “I don’t want to see the standards of success, like exponential growth—it’s not a stock market,” Proulx says. “I want it to grow into the ground.”

As Forest City Food Not Bombs moves into its second year, the group hopes to build its volunteer team and increase its activism, using the present to make change in London.

Illustration by Caitlin Taguibao

Inside food banks’ controversial no junk food policies

Controversy erupted in August after Ottawa’s Parkdale Food Centre announced it would stop accepting junk food, such as Kraft Dinner and hot dogs, effective immediately. Some wholeheartedly agreed with the centre’s stand; others virulently opposed to new restriction. Those in favour felt, like Karen Secord, Parkdale’s co-ordinator, that food bank users’ health is worth as much as anyone’s, and Parkdale should strive to provide healthy food. Those opposed to the move, however, asked why the food bank felt it had the authority to restrict people’s diet choices. Some former food bank users shared the opinion hotdogs were better than nothing, while others pointed out they didn’t have refrigeration to store so-called healthier food. Yet, for or against, and whether the commentary was rooted in personal experience, politics or stereotypes, the public conversation revealed something essential: our own attitudes toward those using food banks.

Parkdale isn’t the first or only food bank to restrict food donations. Founded more than 30 years ago, Toronto’s The Stop Community Food Centre, has made it the centre’s policy to only accept healthy food—a policy created after the community members it serves told the organization they wanted it that way. “We started as a food bank in the traditional sense, and over time our community members told us the food that we were providing was not enough,” says Kathe Rogers, The Stop’s communications manager. “It was not healthy enough, it was not meeting their dietary needs. And so over time, we became a healthy food bank. Because that is what people really need when they’re struggling. When they’re out there on low incomes, or they’re living in poverty, these are the items that are beyond their means.”

“I often joke that the folks at the food bank in The Stop have, without question,  more organic food than my kids do,” adds executive director Rachel Gray. “And that’s one of the things we think is really important.” Her philosophy is people can’t get or be healthy without healthy food. Heavily processed food loaded with sugar, salt or fat is unhealthy no matter how you slice it, she adds. Gray says people can debate whether it’s nice to have a box of macaroni and cheese, but if that’s all a person has to eat it becomes problematic: there’s no choice; it may be culturally inappropriate or irrelevant; and it’s not a balanced diet. “It’s not the way to good health,” she adds. “And if we’re not supporting people to get healthy, what are we achieving?”

Ideas such as “any type of food helps”—which goes hand-in-hand with the assumption that low-income people should be grateful for whatever they get—can belie fundamental assumptions about people’s worth. Stigma that blames the economically disadvantaged for their situation is often included in conversations about food banks, as are the stereotypes “poor people don’t like to cook” and only like junk food. A report from Washington, DC-based organization Cooking Matters, found that while assumptions about the eating habits of low-income Americans were rampant, the reality is poor families most often cook dinner at home, mostly from scratch, and are highly interested in making healthy meals. The stumbling block for many families is the price. An article by Jesse Bauman entitled “Poor People Can’t Cook and Other Myths,” published on Food Secure Canada’s website, reflects similar data for Canadians. In a small survey that asked low-income people about their food skills, Bauman found those who have to carefully budget a meal plan simply can’t afford to eat out. Instead, he writes, people “have developed many of the skills necessary to make the best of their situation.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the food bank discussion will go away anytime soon. Every month, more than 830,000 Canadians access a food bank, according to HungerCount 2013, a report created by Food Banks Canada. Of these 37 percent are children. And, despite being once envisioned as a short-term solution to economic crisis in the ’80s, food bank usage is on the rise. “Within the food bank network,” HungerCount 2013 reports, “crisis has become the norm. Canadians continue to give generously, and food banks continue to stock, give, and re-stock.” While Gray would like to see food banks become obsolete—The Stop advocates for increases to social assistance and minimum wage that would put solid safety nets in place—she agrees they’re double-edged swords. “Food banks are still around because people are still hungry,” says Gray. “Our food bank is busy and thriving because food banks don’t work as a means of addressing poverty and hunger.”

Not Far From the Tree volunteers picking serviceberries in the city. Illustration by Lindsay Campbell.

When it comes to eating locally, it’s tough to beat food that’s growing literally in your own backyard. Since 2008, Not Far From the Tree, a volunteer group in Toronto, has been helping people do just that. Founded by New Brunswicker-turned-Torontonian Laura Reinsborough, the group picked more than 19,000 pounds of fruit from some 200 trees last summer. The bounty was split between the volunteers, the trees’ owners, and local food banks and shelters.

Reinsborough began picking fruit almost by accident in 2007, when she was asked by her local farmers’ market to help harvest the apple trees growing at Spadina Museum, a historic house in downtown Toronto. “I had never been to Spadina Museum, I hadn’t even picked apples before. It was something I had to Google the night before,” she says.

While selling the apples she helped pick, Reinsborough realized that many Torontonians were eager to find help picking fruit growing on their own properties. Fast-forward a year and Not Far From The Tree was born. In the last three years the group has picked everything from apples and pears to gingko nuts and grapes.

This last winter, the group also kicked off Syrup in the City, a program that demonstrates the quintessentially rural tradition of making maple syrup using trees in the city. “People are so excited that this is happening in Toronto,” she says. “It brings attention to an urban ecology, a richness to the city that I don’t think we think about.”

Gillian Flies of The New Farm. Photo courtesy The New Farm.

The first time I visited The New Farm, Brent Preston and Gillian Flies’ bucolic 100-acre spread near Creemore, Ontario, the barn was kitted up with twinkle lights. Bundles of hay provided seating for a play and, later, for listening to the foot-stomping tunes of the Sunparlour Players. Professional chefs cooked up a delicious dinner with veggies fresh from the fields, and we hung around a campfire as the stars popped out of the big sky. It was every urbanite’s fantasy of rural life.

Of course, after five years working the land, former city dwellers Preston, Flies, and their two young children don’t have many illusions left about the tough daily reality of organic farming.

“It’s gotten easier as we’ve gotten smarter, but it’s taken longer, been harder work, and cost a lot more than we ever expected,” says Preston with a laugh.

Still, the couple, who met in Malawi and spent nearly a decade working to strengthen democracy movements in Africa, South America, and Indonesia, aren’t going anywhere. In fact, despite the challenges, The New Farm has become a leader in Ontario’s food movement. The family sells over 75 varieties of its heirloom organic veggies at farmers’ markets and to top restaurants—all while advocating for small producers, their rural community (where Preston was recently elected councillor), and engaging young people through farmer training internships.

But the most innovative partnership they’ve forged is with the least likely place: a Toronto food bank and community food centre called The Stop. Still, the fit seemed natural. “We love our customers, but we didn’t get into this to only offer our food to the wealthy,” explains Preston. “And The Stop does more than just hand out food. Like us, they look at the whole food system.”

In fact, The Stop has become The New Farm’s single biggest customer. Farm fundraisers like the one I attended (proceeds go to The Stop, which buys New Farm produce for its many food programs) are the biggest money generator for the partnership. But an entrepreneurial venture called Grow for The Stop—New Farm veggies are sold at independent grocers with 10 percent of proceeds going back to The Stop, which spends the money on more fresh produce—is gaining ground.

It’s a win-win situation. The Stop gets healthy organic veggies for its low-income neighbourhood—where diet-related health problems are rampant—and the New Farm has a ready market for its produce, and its values.

“The potential for collaborations like this is huge,” says Preston. “In fact, we think this holistic approach is the only way to change the food system.”

Seasonal philanthropy is as much a part of the winter landscape as bearded men in red and white suits. And one charity you’re sure to hear from at this time of year is the food bank. Holiday campaigns are a key part of any food bank’s donation strategy, and with good reason. Canadian food bank usage is up and the need for donations is urgent.

This had us wondering about other food bank facts. Using data from Food Banks Canada we decided to sort through food-bank-fact and -fiction.

Food banks are an inevitable part of modern life.

The first Canadian food bank was established in 1981 as a temporary relief measure for people facing economic hardship. Almost 30 years later, more and more people are turning to these “temporary” services. But Food Banks Canada believes that we can see the end of food banks if governments get tough on poverty by providing equitable access to social assistance and unemployment insurance programs, and by addressing other problems with the welfare system.

The need for food banks is decreasing.

According to HungerCount 2009, Food Banks Canada’s annual report on food bank use, March 2009 saw an 18 percent increase in use compared to March 2008, the largest year-over-year increase on record.

Most food bank users are homeless.

Actually, only five percent are. According to 2009 numbers, 87 percent of food bank users live in rental housing, with 60 percent paying market rent and 27 percent living in social housing. Six percent reported owning their own homes.

It’s mostly adults who use food banks.

But a large number of children need them, too. Food Banks Canada’s March 2009 count found that 293,677 Canadian children were eating food that came from a food bank. Families with children comprise 49 percent of all users, with 25 percent being single-parent families. Of users without children, 39 percent are single and 12 percent are couples.

Food banks are able to provide enough groceries to last a week.

Two-thirds of food banks provide five days’ worth of food or less per visit. Fifty-five percent provide help once a month or less.