A buzz of excitement filled the dining room as the line outside stretched down the block.
The Ottawa Mission served a few thousand free turkey dinners at its downtown Ottawa dining room on Monday, bringing the total number of Thanksgiving meals handed out by the charitable organization over the past week to a record-setting 17,257, the most in its 118-year history.
While most of the meals were distributed by the Mission’s food trucks earlier in the week (more about them in a moment), Monday’s dinner offered companionship as well as turkey with all the trimmings prepared by the Mission’s esteemed chef, Ric Allen-Watson.
A buzz of excitement filled the dining room as the line outside stretched down the block. At 11 a.m., volunteers opened the doors and began showing clients to the tables, while other helpers, including several local politicians, poured water and handed out bottles of juice.
The meal included turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, a dinner roll and dessert. A vegetarian option was also available. Clients could enjoy a second helping as long as they went through the line again.
Most of the folks in the room were middle-aged men like Colin, 55, who declined to give his last name. He found himself in the shelter system after a breakup more than a decade ago, and stayed at the Mission for two years.
“We come here for the meal and for the community,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize how much of a community it is if you look at the homeless. We look out for each other, stand up for each other. People help each other.”
Another man who lives in the neighbourhood said he eats at the Mission every day. “I’m one of the regulars,” said 58-year-old John O’Hara, who’s known as Cowboy John. “I don’t know how to cook so I always look forward to Chef Ric’s meals. I like his cooking.”
Evening Update
The Mission helped John find housing 10 years ago, and took care of his medical and dental needs.
Joining John was 60-year-old James Phelan, an Indigenous elder in a floral-patterned jacket who survived residential school and the Sixties Scoop. He said he was on the street for two years before the Mission helped him find a place to live.
“I came down to have a meal with everybody because I’m alone,” he said.
One of the younger people in the room was a 29-year-old woman named Liza Morris, her platinum-blonde hair in two pigtails. She took the bus downtown from her Ottawa Community Housing building in the city’s south end.
Liza said she used to be an aerial ballet artist for an international circus company until she was injured in a fall. She receives support from the Ontario Disability Support Program.
“Everybody here is on a pension or disability, and it makes you wonder what’s going on financially that you can’t afford to live on it,” she said. “Food is a luxury now.”
The steep cost of rental accommodations in Ottawa is also a big factor in the affordability crisis, observed Aileen Leo, communications director at the Mission. The average rent in Ottawa is pegged at more than $2,000 a month.
“If you’re a senior on a fixed income, or you make minimum wage, you’re having a difficult time making ends meet because there’s basically no affordable housing in Ottawa,” she said, pointing to a recent report stating that 10 per cent of people who live in Ottawa’s homeless shelters have jobs. “They just can’t afford rent,” Leo said.
Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden said he’s noticed a couple of changes in the shelter’s clientele during the six years he’s been volunteering. Today, refugees and asylum seekers are also part of the mix.
“It’s not only folks who are chronically homeless or suffering. It’s newcomers to our city, too, and they deserve better,” Harden said. “It’s our country’s story that people come here to make an opportunity for themselves and their families, and we need to do a lot better to support them.”
As mentioned earlier, most of the dinners this year were distributed from the Mission’s two food trucks as they made their rounds of the city in the week leading up to holiday Monday. The mobile meal campaign ran from Oct. 7-13.
The food-truck program started as a temporary response to the pandemic in 2020, when many food banks were closed, and grocery stores and public transportation were considered risky.
“Let’s not forget the panic at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Peter Tilley, executive director of the Mission. “People were suffering living in marginalized places so we started a food truck program because somebody donated a food truck to us.”
At first the truck made five stops a week. Today, there are two trucks making 38 stops Monday to Friday, mostly at Ottawa Community Housing locations and seniors’ residences. They serve 8,000 meals a week, Tilley said.
“It saves people from being booted out on the street when they can’t pay their rent because they bought groceries,” he added.
The program costs $900,000 a year, and the Mission is looking to the city for help with funding after its board of directors voted to continue operating the trucks.
“Our board voted and said we need to carry it on for at least another year,” Tilley said. “We can’t pull it away.”
