Every little bit helps with the food bank

Inmany ways, walking through the food bank doors was the demise of her ego.

It took weeks for Nadiyah Gonzales to work up the nerve to go to Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold. During Christmas 2012, the idea of turning to the food bank, of asking for help from strangers, left a sour taste in her mouth.

“I didn’t want to do it at first,” Gonzales said. “I had always been an independent woman who supported herself and my son. It was really hard.”

Reality, however, is often indifferent to pride. Gonzales wasn’t working. She couldn’t afford to say her in home. And her son Kalel, then four years old, had leukemia. She needed help. Her mother had suggested Community Care as an option and put Gonzales in contact the agency’s CEO, Betty-Lou Souter.

“It wasn’t easy, but I had to do it for my son. That was my focus,” she said.

Walking through those doors were the first steps in turning her life around, Gonzales said now.

“Community Care helped me find an affordable apart- ment geared to income,” said Gonzales. “It made all the difference.”

When her son was diagnosed, Gonzales had a good job working at Bank of Montreal. But the stress of caring for her son — including multiple trips a week to Hamilton for cancer treatments — while he battled cancer contributed to the onset of depression, which eventually led to her going on long-term disability.

“It was a real adjustment, but in time we managed,” she said. “The key thing was, when I went to Community Care for the first time, they didn’t make me feel ashamed. They didn’t look down on me. They made you feel comfortable and that they were there to help you.”

Having a home she could afford was the start of a long climb for the mother and son. Gonzales is now a Niagara College student in a business program and Kalel is looking forward to his second Christmas cancer-free.

“He is amazing,” she said. “I still worry, of course. But he says to me, ‘Don’t worry, Momma, the cancer isn’t coming back.’”

It’s taken three years for Gonzales to truly find her footing again and says it wouldn’t have happened but for the support of Community Care.

Her story is a happy one, but the need in this city remains as acute as it was when Gonzales first arrived at the food bank.

I’ve written a few times recently about the higher than normal demand on Community Care this season. The food bank reports a host of new pressures, including people working multiple part time jobs that don’t pay all the bills, to the return of past clients who have fallen on hard times again. Trends are hard to spot, but as the numbers grow, some clues are starting to emerge.

“We’ve been looking at our numbers, and we are also seeing a lot of single men looking for assistance,” Souter told me Thursday.

Community Care isn’t the only one seeing the trend. The St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Alfred’s church, which works closely with the food bank, in St. Catharines is also seeing a lot of single men looking for help. Denise Kelly of the society told me it handed out more than 200 boxes of food to people this week. Moreover, each Monday morning the society — working with local grocery stores — gathers bread to distribute it to the needy.

“I’ve asked the ones who come how much money this saves them, and they tell me is about $15 or $25 if it is a family,” Kelly said, noting 15 to 20 people will arrive for the Monday breadline. “That is a lot of money for someone on (Ontario Works) or a limited income. It is just a Band-Aid, but we do what we can.”

That’s right. In 2015, in St. Catharines, we have breadlines, just like they had during the Depression.

If that doesn’t bespeak in the need in our community, I don’t know what does.

So please give what you can. Even a little bit can put bread on the table for a family, or help put a mother and child in a home.

I’ve asked the ones who come how much money this saves them, and they tell me is about $15 or $25 if it is a family. That is a lot of money for someone on (Ontario Works) or a limited income. It is just a Band-Aid, but we do what we can.”

Denise Kelly