Good Food Bus coming to town
Local initiative aims to provide affordable nutrition to CBRM residents
SYDNEY — A new food bus may soon be on its way to Cape Breton, but it won’t be offering fries, burgers or pizza slices.
On Tuesday, CBRM council was informed that the proposed Good Food Bus aims instead to improve access to affordable nutrition for people who may otherwise have trouble accessing such food, said project co-organizer Claire Turpin, manager of New Dawn’s Meals on Wheels program.
“We’re trying to improve access to affordable nutrition whether it’s a financial barrier that people are seeing, a transportation barrier people are seeing or a mobility issue that people are experiencing,” Turpin told council.
The collaborative initiative also involves the Ecology Action Centre’s Jody Nelson, who is already involved in many other foodrelated projects including the Cape Breton Food Hub, an undertaking dedicated to making it easier to get locally-produced food from grower to consumer.
“We are working on a healthy, affordable food market on wheels that can access different areas around the CBRM that are struggling with access for various reasons,” said Nelson.
“It’s a complex problem and a lot of the underlying problems are related to a lack of, or unstable, income – this model not only tries to make healthy food more affordable and easier to get, but it also deals with some of the transportation barriers that people may be facing here in the CBRM.”
The project is based on the Mobile Food Market that is up and running in the Halifax Regional Municipality. But to go forward, the initiative requires a bus and organizers are looking to the CBRM in hopes of securing use of a decommissioned Handi-Trans vehicle.
“The Halifax bus is actually a much larger bus and is only taken out of commission for a few hours, so their retrofit is a more precise because they have to fit everything over the seats and that needs to go in and come out quite easily,” said Turpin.
“We need something more stationary and probably not as costly because we can build our own (food) stalls, but those details will need to be worked out.”
Once a bus is obtained, the group behind the project will get back to the local grocery store it has been talking with to negotiate a supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. And, if everything comes together, they hope to launch a 16-week pilot project that will run from August to November in yet-to-be determined communities across the CBRM.
The initiative, championed by Sydney councillor Eldon MacDonald, also drew rave reviews from other elected representatives like Kendra Coombes and Amanda McDougall.
“Food and security is top of mind around here – like food banks they are necessary but shouldn’t have to be, so we only want these projects until they are not needed anymore and when that day comes it will be very welcome,” said Coombes.
Added McDougall: “It’s super inspiring and wonderful to see the joy that something so simple as bringing food into a community can bring, so I think it is a fantastic idea and I hope we can exhaust every opportunity and option within the municipality to support this.”
The next step in the process, that also involves CBRM Transit, CBRM Recreation, Nova Scotia Health Authority, United Way of Cape Breton and the Island Food Network, will be a public information meeting that will take place on June 5 from 6-8 p.m. at the YMCA in Sydney.