Some northern Manitobans forced to choose between shelter or food, friendship centre exec says

You can still help Harvest Manitoba and CBC to Make the Season Kind:

1. You can make donations online until end of day Sunday.
2. You can also drop off food items at Harvest Manitoba, 1085 Winnipeg Ave.

With food prices continuing to rise, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak says its food bank in Thompson is serving a growing number of clients.

Catherine Helgason, the supervisor of the food bank, says it can be difficult to keep up with community demand because there's so much food insecurity the north. 

"It's not only affecting our lower-income families, it's affecting our middle-class family and high-end families as well, just because the price of everything has gone up," Helgason said.

MKO, the advocacy organization for First Nations in northern Manitoba, says its food bank serves around 100 to 150 visitors a week.

So far in 2023, it has helped more than 880 different households, ranging from one person to multi-generational families. They also hope to give away around 400 hampers for Christmas.

There are just under 4,700 households in total in Thompson.

The food bank serves two different client lists. MKO provides food every two weeks to First Nations people registered to a First Nations band but living in Thompson. With help from Harvest Manitoba, it also started providing food to non-Indigenous clients once a month in May 2023. 

The monthly donation from Harvest can be a truckload of anywhere from five to 15 pallets of food.

Those deliveries consist mostly of frozen meat, some dry goods and some frozen fruit and vegetables, Helgason said. The food bank also recently started getting fresh produce from Harvest.

Local donors include community members and grocery stores.

"Sometimes the shelves aren't always full. We don't always get the stuff we need in town," Helgason said.

Pierre Sinclair, who works at the food bank, says he sees more and more people use it every year.

"We do get donated items, but yeah, keeping this place stocked is pretty hard," Sinclair said.

The need for food banks in Manitoba has never been greater, a report from Food Banks Canada said in October. 

Almost 50,000 people used a food bank somewhere in Manitoba in March and nearly half were children, Harvest Manitoba CEO Vince Barletta said.

Those needs are felt even more strongly in the north, Harvest says.

The food bank network's latest Harvest Manitoba Voices report, released this week, says the province has the highest prevalence of poverty among Indigenous people in Canada, at 30 per cent.

'Grocery prices are outrageous up here'

Rochelle Blacksmith is one of the hundreds of people who visit Thompson's food bank each month.

The single mom of a four-year-old often spends around $800 a month on groceries and $1,200 on rent.

"Prices are very high here," Blacksmith said. "Sometimes I don't have enough to cover it all."

A food hamper lasts Blacksmith and her son about a week. She worries her family would go hungry without the food bank.

Food security is one the greatest challenges Thompson faces, said Tanika Beebe-Brand, assistant director of Ma-Mow-We-Tak Friendship Centre, a non-profit organization that provides programs and services to Indigenous people in the city.

"Being in the north … we always face additional challenges," she said. "Our grocery prices are outrageous up here."

Beebe-Brand said she's fortunate her family of six can afford the $400 a week they spend on groceries, because many families can't.

Many low-income families face a choice between shelter and food, she said.

"I feel for our families, and that's why we do everything that we can" to help, including hampers and a meal program, Beebe-Brand said.

"Any relief is a little relief."

The friendship centre's biggest rollout of hampers happens at Christmas. This year, it expects to create around 200 hampers for families and elders.

The hampers have a range of things to help families celebrate the holidays, including food and gifts for children, Beebe-Brand said.

While the Christmas hamper drive is its largest program, the centre tries to help with food security year-round.

Its New Beginnings program — also known as the Aboriginal Head Start Program — provides two or three hampers a year to its clients. The program also runs a hot meal program for kids.

Beebe-Brand wants to see grocery prices stabilized so people in northern communities worry less about inflation chipping away at their income — especially with the high costs of rents.

"Make it more affordable for families," she said.

Dee Chaboyer, the executive director of the friendship centre, said food security is intertwined with housing affordability.

"It becomes a cycle. They stop paying their rent and then they get evicted or they don't eat healthy food," she said.

The centre worked to make sure its transitional housing program had enough funding to offer three hot meals a day, so residents don't have to choose between eating and living in a warm place.

"It's a human right to be able to eat and to live in a safe, quality, affordable home," said Chaboyer.