Nick Saul - The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement

THE STOP

Copyright 2013 by Nicholas Saul and Andrea Curtis

First Melville House printing: September 2013

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Cover photographs: iStockphoto.com/flyfloor (spoon);
iStockphoto.com/MarkSwallow (pitchfork)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Saul, Nick.
The Stop : how the fight for good food transformed a community and inspired a movement / Nick Saul and Andrea Curtis. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-1-61219-350-2
1. Food banksOntarioToronto. 2. Community gardensOntarioToronto. 3. Food securityOntarioToronto. I. Curtis, Andrea. II. Title.
HV696.F6S28 2013

2013026867

v3.1

For Cliff Gayer and the Davenport West community

The fundamental job of the imagination in ordinary life, then, is to produce, out of the society we have to live in, a vision of the society we want to live in.

NORTHROP FRYE, THE EDUCATED IMAGINATION

A LTHOUGH WE WROTE THIS BOOK together, it is written in Nicks voice, as the story that follows charts his fourteen years at The Stop Community Food Centre.

In Canada and the U.K., food bank refers to both the smaller organizations handing out donated food, as well as the larger distribution centres that organize, store and dispense this food. In the U.S., these smaller organizations are often called food pantries; the larger distribution hubs are known as food banks. For the purposes of the book, food bank is used to refer to all interchangeably.

HES LATE AND THE GREEN BARN is buzzing. Sunlight streams in the big south-facing windows as kids chop mangoes and cucumbers, giggling and chatting with the staff and each other. TV crews and radio hosts wander the refurbished industrial space, checking their cellphones and hunting for the best position to set up.

Finally, a big, black SUV pulls up. I leave the frenetic energy of the Barn and head outside. The fall air is crisp but clear. Moisture clouds the windows of the car. When one of the worlds biggest celebrities unfurls himself from the back seat and puts out his hand to shake mine, I hardly recognize him.

Jamie Oliverinternational superchef, restaurateur, TV star, activist and entrepreneurlooks exhausted and a bit puffy around the eyes, his purple hoodie faded, his bed-head perfectly mussed. We walk toward the Green Barn making small talk. Hes charming, down to earth and immediately likeable. But hes been up half the night battling jetlag, so hes not quite ready to face the cameras. In fact, hed like to chat out here for a bit before he meets the children and the media.

We sit on a fence in the community garden outside the greenhouse. I tell Jamie how the Green Barn is one of The Stops two locations, a satellite of our main centre. The Barn is part of the historic conversion of an old transit-vehicle maintenance site in the heart of Toronto. The buildings lay derelict for some twenty yearsuntil proposals for reimagining them were requested and The Stop threw its hat in the ring with several other organizations. Of course, as he can see, the Green Barn is not a barn at allits a long brick structure built to fit streetcars inside. Today, our weekly farmers market, sustainable food education programs for kids, bake oven, greenhouse, outdoor gardens and food enterprisecatering and fundraising dinners served beneath the stars in the greenhouse, among other thingshave made it one of the citys favourite destinations. When The Stop opened the Green Barn doors in 2009, it seemed like an overnight success, but it was a project nearly a decade in the making.

This garden where were sitting is one of the newest initiatives here, a program in which downtown seniors and youth connect by growing plants that represent their diverse cultures. Weve got a Latin American plot filled with corn and squash, a South Asian plot planted with bitter melon and okra, a plot devoted to tomatoes and basil and garlic for the substantial Italian contingent. The young and older people get together to plant and tend the gardens and learn about each others lives. Every week, one cultural group cooks a meal for the others. The gardeners recently held a big harvest festival where they shared the fruits of their labours.

Jamie listens carefully and seems genuinely interested. In fact, he quickly turns the tables and puts me on the hot seat: What do we do at the farmers market? Who uses the greenhouse? How much government support do we receive?

The truth is, its not hard to get me talking about this place. Im proud of it. It wasnt easy for a relatively small antipoverty organization to jump through all the hoopsincluding raising five million dollarsto get here. But operating the Green Barn is only part of our work. I tell Jamie that next time hes in Toronto, Id love to show him our other site; its not too far away, but in a much different neighbourhood. You dont really know The Stop until youve been there. The Green Barn is the pretty face of the organization, new and fresh and bright, drenched with sunlight and goodwill. But our main space, a sprawling community centre in the bottom floor of Symington Place, a public housing development in one of the citys poorest and most underserviced neighbourhoods, is the gritty heart of The Stops operations.

Its there that The Stop does the tough slog of emergency food programming, engaging thousands of hungry, isolated people who need food, a friend, a referral or a safe place to land. We have a big outdoor garden, communal dining and cooking initiatives, a weekly health and nutrition group for low-income pregnant women, breakfast and lunch drop-ins, civic engagement projects and the program that started it all: a food bank.