When
Ric Watson
was planning this year’s Thanksgiving menu for the Ottawa Mission, he only had one goal in mind: to provide a nourishing and comforting holiday meal to people and families in need.
On a warm and sunny Sunday before the holiday, a dozen or so volunteers were working in the Ottawa Mission kitchen downtown to prep for the big day.
Dozens of turkeys sat in the back of the kitchen where a volunteer deboned them before they were to the oven to be roasted or a pot to be boiled.
Cooks stood in front of big industrial kitchen stoves stirring stuff in pots and pans. Others were chopping up vegetables, alliums and aromatics or stirring food in pots and pans. One volunteer was peeling squashes at the kitchen sink.
Meanwhile, Watson floated between stations, helping out and providing instruction when needed.
By end of day Monday, Watson and his army of volunteers will have made around 700 turkeys, 3,500 pounds of mashed potatoes, 2,500 pounds of glazed carrots, 100 gallons of gravy and lots of green beans and stuffing.
This amount of food is expected to feed around 2,500 people at the Ottawa Mission’s downtown location. Meal service will start at 11 a.m. and run all the way until 5 p.m., but Watson said they will not turn people away if there is still a lineup past 5 p.m.
Watson and more than 100 volunteers will start working at 4 a.m. Monday ahead of meal service, and it’s all hands on deck.
“It’s a whole day kind of thing. It doesn’t stop,” Watson told the Ottawa Citizen.
Preparations for the
Ottawa Mission’s Thanksgiving Day feast
did not start in October or September, however. Watson said he and his team have been planning the menu since August.
Watson’s two food trucks have also been delivering around 15,000 Thanksgiving dinners throughout the week.
“It’s just like a factory, where everything is go, go, go. But I’ll tell you, the first meal we make and the last meal we make will taste the same. It’ll taste like how your grandmother used to make,” Watson said with a smile.
Growing clientele and growing food insecurity in Ottawa
The Thanksgiving dinner comes at a time when food costs and unemployment continue to soar nationally.
According to Statistics Canada,
the Consumer Price Index
rose 1.9 per cent on a year-over-year basis in August, up from 1.7 per cent in July. Prices for meat rose around 7.2 per cent year over year, driven by higher prices for beef and processed meet. Fruit prices fell by a little more than one per cent in August after a 3.9 per cent increase the month before.
Meanwhile,
the latest Labour Force Survey
said the national unemployment rate remained at 7.1 per cent. Youth unemployment edged up to 14.7 per cent in September, the highest rate since September 2010.
This is also the third year in a row the Ottawa Mission served one million meals to people and families in need.
“People are hungry all year long. It’s sad that people have to sleep outside in the summertime, or especially in the wintertime. But it doesn’t get any busier. It’s always busy. … Right now, we’re serving 3,200 to 3,500 meals a day to people in need,” he said.
Watson also saw a change in his clientele.
“When I first started at the Ottawa Mission 24 years ago, we were just feeding homeless people. Now it’s not the case. Our doors are open to whole different walks of life. People will come in to have breakfast before they go to work. People will come in right after work or right after school to have a meal. It’s the working poor and students who just can’t afford to survive. We’re in a terrible situation,” he said.
Watson said the most memorable client he served was an old woman who walked down the street to one of his food trucks using a walker. When she finally reached the food truck, she looked up at him and said this is the only meal she was going to have that day.
“It just brought tears to my eyes. Just the idea that we could help her. It really sticks with me,” he recalled.
The rising food costs have also hit Watson’s operations.
He and his team put out a call for turkeys and other food items earlier in the year, but ran into challenges when
Canada Post workers went on strike
, he said.
Despite this, they’ve received community and organization donations. For example, Loblaws donated around 60 frozen turkeys.
“Every time we come up with a Thanksgiving or a Christmas meal, I just pray that we’re going to have donors that are kind enough that can afford to give us turkeys so we can provide these sorts of meals. I always worry it’s not going to happen. The price of turkeys and beef and everything is so expensive,” he said.
He encourages Ottawans to help out if they can afford to. The Ottawa Mission is always accepting food and monetary donations, he said.
He also encourages people to volunteer at the Mission if they cannot afford to donate right now.
“If (Ottawans) can afford to help people in their community, please help. I don’t mean giving to people on the street corner who are begging for money, I mean coming down and volunteering at the Mission, or giving monetary or even a food donation, because we can’t do it without our donors,” Watson said.
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