Great Strides

Nick Saul, Food Champion

THE EXPERIENCE OF SEEKING OUT FOOD WAS NO LONGER ABOUT CHARITY, IT WAS ABOUT EMPOWERMENT.

“I use running to knead over whatever’s happening in my work life,” says Nick Saul. “My wife and kids know exactly when I haven’t been out. They’ll say ‘Could you please go for a run?’” The Torontonian is president and ceo of Community Food Centres Canada ( cfcc), a fast-growing, not-for-profit dedicated to eradicating hunger. Considering that more than 1.7 million Canadians used a food bank last year, he has a lot to knead over.

But Saul’s approach is not about making people stand in line for handouts, it’s about instilling personal pride and building community around food, in inviting spaces. The recipient of both a Queen’s Jubilee Medal and a Jane Jacobs Prize, he pioneered a three-pronged response to food insecurity which revolves around growing food, cooking and sharing meals and advocating around food and poverty issues.

In his bestselling Random House memoir, Saul describes transforming The Stop – the founding community food centre ( cfc) in Toronto – where he was executive director for 14 years. It went from being a food bank, where users walked through the doors, eyes to the ground, to becoming a light-filled neighbourhood hub, with a subsidized farmer’s market, gleaming kitchen and dining room, gardens filled with global vegetables, and an outdoor bake oven for community gatherings.

This new style of centre offered sit-down meals, where people came in and were served at tables, restaurant-style. Everybody from children to expectant mothers to seniors, of all different cultural backgrounds, could partake in gardening, cooking and nutrition workshops there, too. And peer counsellors were available to advise on everything from dealing with an unresponsive landlord to accessing medical resources. The experience of seeking out food was no longer about charity, it was about empowerment.

The Stop model proved so successful that in 2012 Saul started taking it across Canada. “We’ve opened six community food centres in the past two years and there are two new ones soon to open in Calgary and Hamilton,” he says. Each is adapted to the needs of its unique community, and a great deal of planning goes into both the building and program design, before a new cfc launches.

While food is at the heart of his work, water inspires his runs in prospective and new cfc cities. Saul grew up on the water in Tanzania and finds it calming. Favourite routes on his most recent work trips include: the forking Red and Assiniboine rivers of Winnipeg; the boardwalk along Halifax harbour; and the public-art-punctuated river trail on Calgary’s Bow, “I love the views looking out to the foothills and mountains.” The ceo uses indoor running to do casual recon, too. “If the weather’s really cold, I’ll check into the ymca and get on a treadmill – it’s a way to catch the local news and get into the zeitgeist of the city.”

The former University of Toronto basketball player began running as a student athlete to build his oxygen capacity. Today, running gives him “unadulterated time” to think, dream and plan, so he can build a more compassionate society – one in which nobody ever has to run on empty.