FRESH START IN N.D.G.
Catherine Martel helps pack food baskets at the N.D.G. Food Depot on Tuesday. The organization opened at a new location on Somerled Ave., Katherine Wilton reports.
After searching for a new home for almost a year, the N.D.G. Food Depot opened its doors on Tuesday at its new location on Somerled Ave.
During the past few weeks, staff and volunteers have been moving boxes into the building that used to house the Antico Martini restaurant, just east of Cavendish Blvd.
“People are waving through the window because we are right on the street and coming in to say hello,” said Bonnie Soutar, the depot’s director of development. “One woman said we had already brought a light to the neighbourhood.”
The depot served its free community meal on Tuesday and clients who were already registered were able to use the emergency food basket service.
New customers can register for the food basket service on Oct. 12.
The new location has an industrial-sized kitchen that will allow the organization to expand its services as a community hub.
Those services include cooking workshops, serving more than 200 meals a week and distributing up to 1,000 emergency foodrelief baskets every week. More than 5,000 people participated in depot programming in 2016.
The new location is in the densely populated northwest sector of N.D.G., where some residents lack access to fresh fruits and vegetables because of high prices, low incomes or lack of mobility.
Many of those residents live in the Fielding/Walkley area, which has been designated a “food desert” by the Montreal Public Health Department. About 40 per cent of households in that neighbourhood are living below the poverty line, according to the depot.
Many residents can’t afford to shop in the high-priced grocery stores or smaller fruit-and-vegetable stores in the neighbourhood, Soutar said.
“There is a large population of elderly people with reduced mobility or people whose incomes don’t allow them access to fresh fruit and vegetables,” she said.
And many of its customers can’t afford to use public transportation, so the new location means they will be able to walk or bike to the depot.
The depot had to leave its previous location at Trinity Memorial Church on Sherbrooke St. after the building was sold. It lost its 20-year home four years ago when the owner decided to build condos.
The food depot’s new address is 6450 Somerled Ave.