In meal program for poor, ‘the faces change, but the story stays the same’

Tonight, the hall in St. Matthews Lutheran Church in downtown Kitchener will be empty for the first Wednesday night in many years.

The church used to feed dinner to poor and homeless people every week, plus breakfast the next day. Volunteers offered platefuls of comfort food like chicken and potatoes, pie and fruit.

There was a movie after dinner, and conversation, all in a calm, quiet place.

Sometimes, there would be a little something extra to take home, like a few potatoes or a can of chili.

Anyone was welcome, no questions asked.

Those meals continued long after the church decided to stop hosting homeless guests overnight.

But now the volunteers who cooked and served are getting tired. They’re taking the summer off, said Doug McKlusky, a retired educator who for the past five years had the job of locating free food and bringing it to the church.

Another group will take over soon, offering pizza and pop.

But even as he feels relieved to shed his burden, McKlusky worries. “You wonder what these folks are going to do,” he said.

In the past year alone, McKlusky figures he transported 12,000 pounds of food in his car. Most of it came from the Food Bank of Waterloo Region. Sometimes, after special occasions like Easter, stores would give away chocolate they hadn’t sold.

“That’s a huge hit” with the folks at the church. McKlusky said.

He got to know some of the regulars. There was the man who worked as a chicken catcher, cycling to his jobs on the farms. There was the soft-spoken woman who carried everything she owned in plastic shopping bags.

“The faces change, but the story stays the same: homelessness, loneliness, lack of belonging.”

Sometimes, if there were slim pickings in the cooler at the food bank, McKlusky would feel disappointed he couldn’t pick up treats for the guests, like individual tubs of yogurt.

Once, he remembers, “I lucked into a flat of nectarines.”

He brought them to the church, where one man “told me it had been years and years since he had had one.”

Last week, for the final dinner, there were hotdogs and salad and desserts. Sixty-two people were there, and 50 more came for breakfast the next morning.

The church volunteers ask visitors for their names, but only to keep track of the number of meals served. A guest could write “Pierre Trudeau” and no one cared. That matters, because homeless people often avoid bureaucracy and government.

For many years, churches took turns offering overnight shelter to the homeless, in a program called Out Of The Cold. It ended because of volunteer burnout. St. Matthews had taken Wednesdays.

This past winter, the government-funded shelters were so full, some homeless people were being sent to motels on the outskirts of town, which was expensive for government and isolating for guests.

So a temporary shelter returned to St. Matthews. But its rules were different. Guests couldn’t just show up. They had to go to the official shelter on Charles Street first, register, then be sent to St. Matthews if the main shelter was full.

McKlusky isn’t a churchgoer. But he appreciates the importance of faith-based organizations.

Their members want to help make a better world, they figure out how they can help, and they do it.

“That has really hit home for me,” he said.