The Hidden Hungry

Millions of Canadians can’t afford groceries.

- Raizel Robin

It’s 9 a.m. and the coffee’s on at the Bayers Westwood Family Resource Centre. The narrow, two-storey building is nestled in the middle of a public housing project in the west end of Halifax. The front door opens into a crowded sitting room.

A number of single parents have come for the cooking classes and are dropping off their kids at the free child-minding service. Other people are here for company. But a larger group is looking for something they struggle to find on their own: a bite to eat. One of the centre’s main draws is a small counter where coffee, tea, and a plate of day-old muffins and bagels are served — regular donations from the charity Feed Nova Scotia. Across the hall is the Trading Post, a small room stocked with packaged foods clients have received from their local food bank but that they can’t, or don’t, use: cans of Campbell’s soup, Aylmer diced tomatoes, Heinz baked beans, and Zoodles line the floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Not all of it is nutritious. Everyone understands that. But it’s something. And when you have a community to feed, you do what you can. The predicament weighs on the centre’s hands-on, energetic executive director, Donna Sutton. “People come in the morning for a bagel and coffee,” Sutton says. “They come back in the afternoon for a muffin. That’s breakfast and lunch. Then they just have to worry about dinner.” With meager earnings and no access to credit, many of Sutton’s clients are facing cold truths. Some weeks, stopping off at Sobeys means there might not be enough left to buy medication or pay rent or put gas in the car to get to work. Because groceries are often the only flexible item in a tight budget, they are what families tend to sacrifice first. Families that have to make these kinds of trade-offs are called food insecure.