The box was empty.  More than 300 visitors had come into the church to look around during Doors Open Ottawa (DOO), but by the end of the afternoon not a single can of beans had landed in the box by the door.  There was nothing to give to the local food bank. While disappointing, this should perhaps not have been unexpected. When it is 22 degrees Celsius at 10 a.m. and you plan to visit the French Embassy, Rideau Hall and other nearby buildings on foot, who wants to carry around a can of beans or two, let alone a bag of flour or 2 kilos of sugar to drop off at St. Bartholomew’s Church? This was in 2023. That year, DOO had determined “Food” to be the event’s theme; participating buildings had been encouraged to incorporate this into their planning, if possible, with DOO offering to promote this in their media materials in return.

Little did we realize at that time that this initial disappointment would evolve into an established partnership with the Rideau Rockcliffe Community Resource Centre (RRCRC) over the next few years.  Soon after the Doors Open weekend in early June 2023, St. Bartholomew’s reached out to the RRCRC to determine how we might be able to support the needs of the Community Food Bank in our city ward. Located in the former Rideau High School on St. Laurent Boulevard, the centre provides many and varied services for those most in need in Ward 13 (www.crcrr.org).  From monthly and special food drives initially, two tote boxes are now permanently left out at the church for drop-off of non-perishable items any day of the week.  And it is rare that they are empty!

The relationship with the RRCRC has grown and expanded in different ways.  Once a year, the church now helps the centre provide back-to-school backpacks for high school students. It is a mad dash along the aisles in early August as volunteers fill their shopping carts with school supplies and then stuff the backpacks in the parish hall. The packs are blessed a few days later in the main Sunday liturgy before being distributed to the youth by the RRCRC in mid-August.  Some staff members from the centre always join us for the filling of the back packs and bring their van to take them away following the blessing.

Another exciting development happened earlier this summer.  While helping with meal preparation for the Community Fridge at the RRCRC one afternoon, I was shown the centre’s 40 recently-installed cedar raised planters and was offered two for the church.  Being able to accept them required a quick check with the rector and wardens after our 10.30 service two days later.  Within the week, volunteers from the RRCRC had not only brought over the locally milled cedar but also assembled the two 8’ x 4’ planters on the front lawn of the church for us.  This generous gift had coincided with a recently expressed desire at the church to plant a Three Sisters Garden.  This companion planting method originates from Indigenous agricultural traditions, where corn, beans and squash are grown together in a symbiotic relationship.  The crops support each other, enrich the soil, deter weeds and provide shade for the roots of the other plants. At St. Bartholomew’s, one raised bed has now become a Three Sisters Garden, serving as a reminder to the community that we live on the ancestral territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin, who have acted as stewards and guardians of this land. The other raised bed is being used to grow vegetables that will go to the RRCRC Community Food Bank — assuming we can stay ahead of the squirrels. The planters were blessed by the Rev. Canon Catherine Ascah on June 21, National Indigenous Day of Prayer.

We cannot help but be reminded of the parable of the mustard seed as we look back over the past three years.  We trust that God will continue to guide, develop and strengthen the partnership between St. Bartholomew’s Church and the RRCRC in the years ahead so that together we may support those in greatest need in our community.

Judy Wiesinger is a parishioner at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Ottawa.

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He and parishioners at St. Albans, where he is the incumbent priest, were inspired to create some pilot projects on campus serving meals to students over the last few years. They began by serving meals at one of the student residences where students who didn’t have meal plans lived.

Throughout this past academic year, St. Albans teamed up with the student union, which has its own food insecurity initiative “Fed up.” They moved their program to a central hub area on the main campus and served three lunches and a dinner each semester. The meals were cooked by St. Albans’ parishioners with student volunteers on campus, and to encourage students to cook nutritious and low-cost meals for themselves, the team handed out recipes for the dishes they were serving.

Not surprisingly, the free meals have been a big hit with the students. Garner reports that they served a burrito dinner for their last meal of the semester in mid-April to 385 students. The students are grateful, and Garner says the volunteers often hear that the meal is the only one some students will eat that day.

Students have enjoyed the opportunities for social connections the meals create. Encouraged to sit down and eat and talk together, students offered feedback that the project has had a positive effect on their health. Aside from the food, they benefited from the social connections and a greater sense of belonging.

St. Albans volunteers also made efforts to take a break and sit down to eat and talk with students. Garner was pleased to hear that the students appreciated the opportunities to connect with the adults from the parish. Although, he expected that it would be most appealing to have student peers serving the food, feedback from the student union included comments that the students valued opportunities to have conversations with the adult volunteers from the parish. They appreciated having an adult ask how they were doing, how their day or semester was going, and the sense that these adults cared about them.

The St. Albans group has sought and welcomed partners from other parishes, denominations and faith groups to bolster their efforts in whatever capacity they can contribute. Even if a group can’t take on providing a whole meal, contributing to part of a meal is a valuable way to get involved and support the project. For example, Garner said, a number of United Churches got together and offered to donate dessert for the final meal of the term in April. Initially, they estimated they could provide about 150 servings. However, their bakers participated enthusiastically, and they ended up bringing more than 500 servings. “It was this overwhelming amount of food. That just created such joy…. It was great,” he recalled.

“My hope is next year to continue to cultivate relationships with churches and other groups who can provide supplemental things, like baking biscuits when we were doing soup and that sort of thing. I’m looking for all sorts of ways to lower the barrier to entry to churches and other groups,” he said, suggesting that sometimes people feel overwhelmed by a big problem like student food insecurity and feel that they can’t do anything. “I think the real power of this is that there are smaller ways to …come and be involved.”

Garner acknowledges that the meals can’t solve the problem of food insecurity on campus, but he was pleased to see that highlighting the problem and advocacy work seems to be spurring some action on the issue. The president of the university created an initiative to write an action plan for food security for the whole campus. Garner served on the committee with one of the deans in medicine and St. Albans was included as an external partner.

Pilot project aims to counter students’ social isolation

The Rev. Michael Garner has seen that students at the University of Ottawa, like many people in the broader society, have more communication tools at their fingertips than humans have ever had, but many are socially isolated. He says that loneliness is sometimes described as an epidemic in our digitally connected society where people need more time and real connection with other people in person.

Garner has worked closely with the U of O Student Union on issues of food insecurity, and one day ran into Meredith Kerr, the executive director, in Costco. “What are we going to do about loneliness on campus?” she asked him.

He says his first thought was “I have no idea.” But it was immediately followed by, “I know exactly what we are going to do.” Peg Herbert, a parishioner at St. Albans had come to mind.

“She’s a remarkable woman,” he said. Among the many cool things she has done is starting an organization called Chosen Grandma, which pairs retired women who don’t have grandchildren, or don’t have grandchildren in the city, with single moms, single parent families, creating this connectedness. The idea has caught on and Chosen Grandma has been featured on the CBC news. Garner noted that Herbert is developing this charity even though there are additional legal challenges because there are minors involved, but the point is to give children a “chosen grandma.” He realized that Herbert had all that valuable experience creating connections in a safe way.

So, while standing there in Costco, he thought, “‘We’ll just take Peg’s idea and apply it on campus.’ And that’s what we’re doing,” he told Perspective.

Room Enough is a pilot project will match 10 students with 10 families or households in the next academic year. “It’s really about facilitating the need of students, the desire of these households to connect … and support each other and learn from each other,’ he said. The pilot for this academic year will be a test run to see how this works, see what doesn’t work. They will track participants’ feedback on their mental health, the connection between the students and their matched households. “If we have a positive outcome and we have some data, we’ll go to the university to look at scaling it up for more people to participate in the next year.

The diocesan Future Fund awarded the project a grant of $10,000, which Garner says will help hire a student to be a part-time co-ordinator for the program.

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