Archie Nadon

About Archie Nadon

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woman standing in her yard behind a small garden box

Nov 29 2018

First in our Where does your food come from? series

Where does your food come from?

First in our Where does your food come from? series Here is our first video in the Where does your food come from?series, which will be 30 second glimpses into why food is important to people, other than the obvious survival sense, of course.

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Comic page about Jill Van Horne

Jun 19 2017

A Comic About Jill Van Horne

Our first comic. These will be published as part of our work on whatever we’re doing at the moment. This is about our video profile of Jill Van Horne, Network Development Coordinator for Our Food SENB. You know, the person who took Aaron Shantz’s place.


We are adding a new feature to our work that should see us publishing more. Our original goal of long form text and now video take us a long time to publish and so we disappear for long periods of time.We will now work simultaneously on comics of what we’re doing.

I’ve long been a fan of comic journalists like Joe Sacco (Palestine) and Harvey Pekar (American Splendor). Their work is engaging because it takes you into the story from a different angle.

Although my drawing is not ready for primetime yet, I can produce fun stuff like you see here. It’s a mix of Photoshopped photos and screen grabs and hand drawn textures and inked lettering.
They will be chronicles of our reporting, behind the scenes shots, sneak peaks, as well as invitations to engage readers.

Elaine and Jill looking at a computer

 

Elaine Mandrona and Jill Van Horne at a Community Food Mentor gathering in 2017

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Kate Doyle being interviewed in Moncton

Oct 11 2016

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

 

At the dunk tank station for a charity fundraiser one Saturday morning in August, Kate Doyle was squatting on the sidelines with her partner, Eric Babineau, and their three-year-old daughter, Annette. They were watching spectators toss practice balls while Kate waited to be the first celebrity dunkee. Then a big guy stepped up, drilled a wild pitch high, hit a steel support causing the ball to ricochet past Kate’s little family and close to Annette. And a look somewhere between a poised rattle snake and an angry Rottweiler came over Kate’s face. The guy didn’t apologize, didn’t even look her way because, I think, he was embarrassed; but he must have felt it, that look of someone who was not offended, but guard-dog pissed that someone almost hit her little girl.

If you don’t know this reflex-to-protect side to Kate, or if you think it’s limited to staring daggers, then I don’t think you know Kate Doyle at all. But let’s rewind.

Lots of opinions

Kate says, “I’ve always had a lot of opions.” Perhaps her boss at the United Way volunteered Kate while she was on holiday to be a celebrity dunkee, she hoped all those opinions would translate into a lineup of people prepared to pay money to dunk her.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security
Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Gardens, and Shine Theory

My wife, Elaine Mandrona, and I were interviewing key players in the Moncton area food movement and Kate came to us via Aaron Shantz of Our Food SENB. Kate’s employer, the United Way of GMASENB, sponsors his organization, and he and Kate work closely out of the agency’s office in the Community Peace Centre on Church St. Kate is the Community Impact Manager and, among other duties, works with people applying for funding.

She’s keen to ensure conversations are two way, even if it is her is being interviewed, so it’s no surprise to hear she swears by Anne Friedman’s Shine Theory, which embraces collaboration over competition. “When you shine, I shine,” she said. “It’s related to feminism. It really resonates with how I work with people.”

Except for us, Oak Lane was deserted and quiet that morning and we chatted about food, the food movement, children and gardens — her garden, in particular.

We only learned about her Roller Derby career later, but we’ll get to that.

 

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Moncton's Oak Lane

We interviewed Kate in Oak Lane, downtown Moncton. On a summer morning, there could not be quieter spot.

It always starts with a small box

 

“We’re going to start with a small box,” Kate told Eric, announcing her foray into gardening four years ago.  Eric said, “Oh, OK. A small garden box.” A four-by-four box was made. The most recent expansion plans (four times that box)  were hastily sketched and fired off in an email to Eric from work with the question, “Can we amp this up?”  meaning the garden. Eric, ever supportive,  said, “OK” and took a couple of vacation days and made it for her.

The garden also began expanding into potted tomato plants and herbs along the deck, and now that Annette is more helpful, Kate said, “I would love to see it take up the whole yard.” After all, she pointed out, there is a  playground nearby if Annette needs to play. We think she was joking, and she may think she was joking, but you never know about gardeners.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security
Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Eric Babineau Kate's partner

Kate and Eric met through music. Kate often had bands crash at her place in Fredericton and Eric had left behind the triple-extra-large t-shirt he had bought at a concert. He connected to Kate via MonctonLocals.com (pre-Facebook message board) but for the life of her she couldn’t remember anyone at her place who was anywhere near big enough to wear a 3xl t-shirt. Eric is a small, or medium at most. He went over to retrieve his shirt, they got talking and the rest is history. He’s never worn the shirt.

Snap peas, tiny tomatoes and feeling full

We arrived at 9:00 am on a Sunday in July to photograph this garden and to meet Annette and Eric. The mid-summer sun was shining harshly making it all the more evident that the garden was sparse and struggling. (We were warned.) But seasoned and committed gardeners know this is how gardening goes, and that in July the game is far from over. When we returned in August it was lush.

However, a snap pea and cherry tomato harvest was never going to happen with a three-year-old loose and feeling entitled because, after all, she helped plant them from seed. For small children, snap peas and cherry tomatoes are too perfectly sized and positioned to imagine they aren’t growing just for them.

This year Annette reached the age when children become aware of a garden’s magic, that it can turn playing in the dirt into real food. Kate hopes this magic will parlay itself into a life-long, healthy relationship with food. Kate said, “We’re taught to be thin and beautiful instead of being healthy and full.” What she wants is for Annette to believe: “‘I can make my own food. I can be proud of what I eat. I can eat things that are good for me and make me feel good.’”

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Snap Peas Magic for 3-year-olds

Snap peas are so magical they’re just sitting there waiting to be eaten by three-year-olds. Annette helped buy seeds as well as planted this year and really knows her way around the garden. Kate hopes gardening at this age helps Annette develop a natural and healthy relationship to food.

Where do gardening bugs come from?

 

The gardening bug, on Kate’s side, skipped at least one generation. She remembers picking strawberries with her family, but there was no agricultural tradition despite living on PEI, where farming is everything. On Eric’s side, though, there is an uninterrupted gardening tradition, including a sister who homesteads. Kate’s garden evokes Eric’s memories of raiding his mother’s garden, “pulling carrots out, wiping them on the grass, and eating them right out in the yard.” And last fall the three of them joined the Babineaus in picking a million apples — with Kate, everything is measured in millions, tons or hot minutes — processing some of them into apple butter that she slathers on pork chops.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Counting Tomatoes

Kate and Annette’s potted tomato plants. Annette loves tiny tomatoes and loves to count them. Of course, if you keep eating them, counting is less of chore.

Food for the Millennials

 

Food was simple for Baby Boomers because the food system was largely hidden: buy food at the grocery store; eat it; throw the scraps away.  Millennials like Kate, though, felt the repercussions of the “invisible food system” and grew up feeling compelled to examine their habits and choices more closely.

Kate always thinks things through, usually by talking them out with friends both on- and offline and has been doing this since adolescence on PEI. “I always had a lot of opinions,” she said. “I tend to take a very hard stand on a lot of things.”

One of those stands was on eating meat. In her teens, Kate committed to being vegan as a protest, not against meat, per se, but against how industrial farms mistreated livestock and their keepers. She only gave veganism up in her late twenties when she became pregnant because she felt she couldn’t balance her and her baby’s nutritional needs with the time constraints of being a working mom. Still, eating meat brought up the same concerns about mistreatment. It was local farmers like Murray Bunnett, who raise their animals humanely, that helped her find balance, ethically and nutritionally.

And she’s comfortable with that decision — to begin eating meat again — because she has examined other assumptions about food. Concerning a brand of tofu she loves: “You think in your head tofu is healthy and is a good thing to eat and you’re being ethical because you’re not killing an animal. But I was thinking, Ok, hold on, this tofu came from China: How was it produced? Who is producing it and what conditions are they living in? Is it any more ethical to be buying this because it’s not killing an animal versus me supporting a local farmer who is treating his animals fairly with love and kindness and compassion? Where’s the balance there?” For Kate, the key to navigating the myriad issues around food is to strike that balance, a good stand for anyone who must work with people in the local food movement.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Kate at Home

Kate lives with her partner Eric and their daughter Annette in older house in Moncton core that’s been redone. It’s one of places where there is more building than lot. Still, Kate would like to make the most of it with as much garden as possible.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Four Year Gardening Veteran

Kate has been gardening for four years, now. She said the first year was terrible because she was too timid about

Kate and the food movement

“It’s a lot like roots,” Kate said of the movement.  “It’s happening underground. It’s really incredible how people are collectively working through all these things.” But she, too, has become a player because she is the Community  Impact Manager for the local United Way. Kate estimated during this past summer that, with a food box program she worked on, she spent two days a week on food and garden-based projects. What’s more, she said, “A lot of the work I do may not be directly food related, but food is part of it.” She regularly meets with farmers like Murray Bunnett, community food workers like Janet Hamilton of the Mapleton Teaching Kitchen and homesteaders/activists like Aaron Shantz of Our Food SENB, so she can’t help but be steeped in all that is going on. And she is in awe.

“I think that Moncton has this really cool vibe happening right now. Things are literally growing,” she said.  There are the little things. “We walk downtown and we see planters with food in them. You may not notice, but you walk by Calactus (Café) and there’s little strawberries and grapes.  I know it’s small scale. I know it doesn’t address broader issues, but it’s really cool to live in a community that that is a thought people have: ‘I am  going to make sure there is food ripe for the picking.’” And there are big things, like how area food banks have shifted to a progressive food centre model like the Peter McKee Community Food Centre.  Kate feels that in Moncton “we’ve really embraced arts, culture and now we’re looking at food for social change which is important to me.” In fact, she claims, “I love Moncton, and I will fight anyone who says that’s it’s not the best place.” Which is tall praise from a woman who, just a few years ago, hated Moncton; hated it so much it took Roller Derby to change her mind.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Eve McQueen In the yellow helmet

Back in her Roller Derby days, Kate was a blocker, eventually a pivot, a special position that kind of directs strategy. She’s the one with yellow helmet. (Marc Henwood Photography)

Eve McQueen, because Katefrontation was taken

Understanding Kate is easier if you factor in Roller Derby. I put it in upper case because when Kate talks about Roller Derby, it sounds upper case, like the Roman Catholic Church or the House of Commons. She played for the Lumbersmacks.

“I was really strong and I was unafraid. And I hit really hard,” Kate said of her Roller Derby era, the era pregnancy and then a shattered knee ended.

Finding Roller Derby was about finding her squad, her crew. “I loved this being something started by women for women with no ulterior motives around it. It was a place all women could go, all women shapes, ages, sizes,” she said. “It’s not often that women are allowed to have a space and be proud of who we are and our bodies and what we’re able to do. So it was really cool.” It was a tight community. (Roller Derby was first played in 1935 and has waxed and waned in popularity. The Twenty-First Century iteration is largely dominated by women’s teams.)

Eve McQueen was her show name. “I wanted Katefrontation but it was taken.” The name was inspired by Eric because, “If you look at Eric, I feel there is a striking resemblance to Steve McQueen.”

Roller Derby dominated her life, but that is to be expected with Kate. “I’m an all or nothing kind of person. My whole social life revolved around it. I want to go back, but I can’t.”

She can’t because she returned too soon after having Annette. “I was desperate to get back. I needed to get out of the house. I missed my friends and I missed roller skating. I really loved it.

“The second night back we’re doing a scrimmage and I should not have been playing. I was still all loosey goosey from having a kid because your muscles are all messed up and I went to go in to hit somebody.” Eve McQueen was a blocker. There are blockers and jammers. Jammers do the scoring through holes blown through the opposition by blockers. “I hadn’t been on roller skates in a year and a half and I twisted the wrong way and twisted my knee and shattered the whole thing.” And it was over. Forever. Reconstructive surgery is an option for professional athletes, but, apparently, Roller Derby at the Lumbersmack level doesn’t qualify.

Annette

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

The shattered knee might have officially ended The Roller Derby era, but it had really ended the year before, more specifically, within five minutes of Kate finding out she was pregnant. In that five minutes, she informed her teammates that she couldn’t play. She lied to them, mind you, making some excuse because she was torn by her loyalty to them, but her baby immediately shot to the top of her list of priorities. Eric’s, too. Both had jobs involving a lot of travel or long hours, but both found jobs closer to home. Kate said, “Our entire life has revolved around our child this year.”

All the signs of great parenting are there: their obvious belief that their kid is the smartest kid, ever; “tons” of pictures on Facebook; the way they talk to her like she’s a fully functioning person, not a baby; the pride in her helping in the garden despite the episode of washing it out with the hose on the wrong setting.

 

A Fine Gardener

Annette demonstrating her garden watering skills. Now that she’s three, she is helping with some of the chores. Watering is a favourite chore and she is quite good at it, but one of her first efforts nearly washed the garden out because the hose was set to jet rather than shower.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security
Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

Annette is happy, confident, bright and independent. And she’s uni-lingually French. “We decided it was really important for her first language to be French. It’s not my first language, it’s my husband’s,” Kate said. Kate did French immersion in school, but said that despite understanding really well, she had no confidence in speaking the language. While the decision isn’t exactly unusual in Moncton, for me, as someone who has struggled for years to learn French with marginal success, it strikes me as courageous to put a language between you and your child and then expect to bridge that gap by the time the child can speak. Kate said, “It’s been a learning process for me to describe all these things in French,” but she made it. But that’s what I learned about Kate in our four meetings, that she commits to these things, unreservedly, wholeheartedly, no looking back — veganism, Air Cadets(see sidebar), Roller Derby, gardening, French for her girl.

But that Saturday morning by the dunk tank, what I knew about Kate Doyle was all gardens and Shine Theory. Watching her squatting with Annette and Eric, and Kate with that angry-Rottweiler look on her face, I was caught off guard, my camera dangling by my side, wondering what was going to happen. It was only later that day that she told us, “When I am loyal to something, I will do anything for those people.” And she hadn’t yet told us that she had been a bruising blocker for the Lumbersmacks, and that she “hit really hard”(present tense), and that despite not looking it, she was really physically aggressive.  I didn’t know the depth of her commitment to the things she loved and believed in and the lengths she’d go for them. If I had known that, I would have had the camera at the ready because with Kate Doyle anything could have happened.

Diana Gregory of the local Canadian Mental Health Association gives a sopping Kate Doyle a hug. Kate, in her typical thorough way, Googled all about the dunk tank; in particular, how do you get out. Turns out, there are steps in the tank.

Kate Doyle — From Roller Derby to Food Security

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la solitude

Aug 25 2016

La Solitude — a place of peace

La Solitude — a place of peace

Everywhere around the property are places to sit quietly and contemplate the beauty of nature.

I love this place, with its quirky buildings, meandering trails that surprise and might lead you to an open field with hammocks swinging in the breeze, or a view of the river cut through the sumac trees. Here you can feel the rhythm of the tidal river and the still point where ebb reverses to flow. But most of all I like the quiet. With silence my senses come alive, I relax, contemplate and feel creative.

Affordable Stay

The dedicated volunteers that run the centre make the experience affordable. It costs $40 per night for stays without a facilitator; and varied prices for full weekends with a facilitated activity from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. All stays include a simple cabin and simple meals.

La Solitude — a place of peace

La Solitude was founded by a Roman Catholic priest and on your walks you will encounter religious statues of, for example, the Virgin Mary. But all are welcome and everyone feels at home here.

La Solitude — a place of peace

Accommodations are these simple cabins. In winter, they are heated with wood cut and split on the property.

Facilitated activities might include art, meditation, or personal growth workshops that complement and deepen the experience there. Hilary Cantin and I have put on two art retreats here this year and found this environment allows the freedom to explore artistically and spiritually.

The vegetation is varied and wonderful to draw or just look at.

La Solitude — a place of peace

La Solitude was founded by Father Raymond Bujold, priest of the Holy Cross, in 1976, and directed by him until 2007. He was Roman Catholic, but all faiths and creeds are welcome. There is an atmosphere of acceptance, delight and reverence.

Editor’s Note: The Peace Beat is our third Beat. After a trip to take some photos and do some background on La Solitude, we felt that devoting time to exploring where and how people in the Greater Moncton Area find peace would fit with our mission statement.

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woman in front of large greenhouse

Jun 6 2016

Elaine Mandrona — Back to the Land Redux

Despite her misgivings, I decided to include Elaine Mandrona in this first issue of our Food Movement Beat because so many of the themes of her coming to New Brunswick echo those of many of the people we talked to in the last year, especially the young farmers.

She first came to New Brunswick from Connecticut via Wisconsin in the early seventies when she and her partner at the time visited expat friends who said this was the place to start a new life away from everything that was wrong with the world: war, social inequality, urban sprawl, crime, degradation of the environment.

New Brunswick was beautiful and pastoral, the people friendly and welcoming and the land was cheap. Really cheap. They had found a haven.

“And we believed change was imminent. We didn’t know it was still 45 years away,” she says.

Back to the land — Corn Hill

They first settled in the Corn Hill area. Elaine and her partner had a tough year of it when winter came. “We moved into a wreck of a house that should have been knocked down,” she says.  “I don’t know why we thought a cook stove could keep us warm over the winter in a cold and drafty farmhouse.”  A neighbor rescued them by giving them an old wood heater.

The idea that many of these young people had was they would go back to the very basics of life, back to the land, and live without the conveniences they believed were at the heart of all the problems they left behind.  Inspired by authors such as Helen and Scott Nearing and their book Living the Good Life, they engaged rural life in New Brunswick.

Of course, no book truly prepares anyone for reality and the hardships they endured are sometimes hard to listen to. Their neigbhours were friendly and helpful, but “I think they thought we were nuts to want to live without electricity when they had just got it in the fifties,” she says.

Back to the land — Cedar Camp

That relationship broke down and she started a new one and a new idea of an intentional community in Cedar Camp in the Waterford area not far from what is now Poley Mountain. Five hundred acres cost $40,000 then and the idea was that each person would build their own house and work the land together.

The first winter was a frigid nightmare again. “We lived in a cabin made from scrap lumber and tea box lids. We burned alders for heat.” The next summer Elaine built her house by a brook but her partner moved in, too.

“I built my own hexagonal tiny house, ten feet on a side. As a woman it was important for me to learn some simple carpentry skills and do that. My partner and I lived there off the grid for 10 years using micro hydro and solar panels. We ran lights, a radio and a small refrigerator. I figure that I earned a lot of green footprint credits living that way.”

Then the others in the community could not get enough money to make the community work so Elaine and her partner took over the farm.

They tried a market garden but there was no farmers market back then and organic produce was not valued in rural New Brunswick. The closest thing to a venue was selling off the back of trucks every Wednesday at the livestock auction in Sussex.

Eventually, the living off the land idea gave way to other ideas about how to earn a living and Elaine went into business for herself. “Being self-employed gave me a lot of satisfaction and independence. I ran my own stained glass studio and craft shop, Glass Alley (in Sussex), for 18 years and later became a massage therapist and nutritional consultant. I’ve been practising massage for 25 years now, soon to retire.”

Back to the land — Moncton

“Archie and I moved to Moncton in 2005 to start a different life, one in the city and close to our cottage in Cocagne,” she says. “We have a big yard and I felt bad that I was not growing any food.”

That desire to grow food again manifested in a couple of garden boxes that grew enough food to encourage her to build a few more. The more food she grew the more boxes she wanted. Starting on such a small scale without the desperation of having to make it pay or store it for winter made it more enjoyable. She also wanted to share the experience and invited people. A couple of young women took her up on it.

“Then I took a Community Food Mentor program and it opened my eyes to all that was going on in the area around food. The program also encouraged me to come up with my own program that could expand food capacity in my community. Now I have the City Farming Adventures group and am running an intergenerational and multicultural garden project with seniors in partnership with the Moncton Boys and Girls Club.”

There is no talk of a market garden, though. She’s in a different place now. “I don’t want to sell food. I just want to grow food with other people, especially children because they love it so much. People are coming back to the land. They’re realizing how important it is to connect with their food and how it is grown.”

She says they’re coming back to the land. “It’s just 45 years later.”

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woman walking away from horse that is facing the camera

Jun 6 2016

Bernadette Goguen’s flock of causes

We are at the Marcel Goguen Farm in Cocagne at 11 am to meet Bernadette for a final time before press. Bernadette is not here. Marcel is working in the barn at the very top and must climb down two or three ladders to get to us. We haven’t met him before and we’re not sure if he’s annoyed at us for interrupting his work but it’s soon apparent that it’s important to him that he find out if she’s coming.

Apparently she is across the river at a meeting of Terroir Foods and Agrimarketing (TFA), a year old La Récolte de Chez Nous project Bernadette is involved in. The meeting has gone over and despite several calls to her cell, Marcel just gets some clicking on the phone and then it cuts out. He’s determined to get hold of her. We don’t want to take him away from his farm work but he insists he’s going over to get her and tells us he has to change vehicles anyway since she has the pickup.

Finally, we convince him it’s not a problem and that we’ll go for lunch and she can call us when she gets back.

Meanwhile their daughter pulls into the dooryard and she, too, seems anxious to assure us if we had an appointment for eleven then Bernadette must be on her way. Right then we see a pickup pulling off the road into the driveway at the bottom of the hill. Everybody seems relieved. When Bernadette arrives she apologizes for being late more than makes us comfortable because we know she also has lots of work to do.

As she leads us to the house she mentions off hand that “the kitchen is a mess” (which it turns out really is a mess) but there is none of the concern like there was about being late for our meeting and during the interview we get a sense of her priorities and why everyone around her knew making our meeting was important to her. Near the top of the list is being reliable. “If I say I am going to do something, then I do it.” Her not being there to meet us really was a big deal to her.

A few endeavors

What we wanted to get from this last meeting was a clear idea of all the things she was involved in. We had casually asked Marcel while we were waiting for Bernadette, but apparently it was a perplexing  question for him. We may as well have asked How many leaves are in the orchard right now?

Even after an hour of interviewing her, we were still not sure of the extent of her involvement in the community – we suspect she wasn’t either – but we had covered the big ones.

The Cocagne Gang

There was her ten years at the 15 year-old Groupe de développement durable du Pays de Cocagne (GDDPC) — an intimidatingly long Francophone name destined to be shortened to something silly by Anglophones, like The Cocagne Gang. It’s an umbrella group for many past and ongoing projects and programs concerned with the Cocagne River Watershed.

One project intriguing to her is the green funeral project which, if she has her way, has her destined to be buried in cardboard box, sans toxic chemicals, and sans anything else that can’t be composted back to nature as quickly as possible. “We have a meeting coming up and have 30 people interested in coming,” she says.

Then there is the Transition Cocagne program. “Cocagne is the first official Francophone one in the country,” she says, obviously proud of the how forward thinking her community is. The Transition Town concept came out of initiatives in the U.K. Basically, it is about increasing self-sufficiency for when the oil gives out, when the Internent collapses, and when the four New Brunswick seasons become one long summer. But it’s really about a lack of complacency. They try to answer questions like: How would we feed our community?

The food hub

But the really big project right now is the Terroir Foods and Agrimarketing or the TFA food hub set up by the farm cooperative La Récolte de Chez Nous. The food hub’s goal is for local farmers to supply food to all the schools in the Francophone Sud and possibly Anglophone East districts. They would also like to supply any other organization or business that wants good local food.

This project is vital to the co-op as an entity and to the ideals of the food movement generally, namely because it means good food for children and supporting local farming and all the good things that come out of that. “It has the potential to be a key player,” she says. “It is the most important thing I’m working on now because it’s going to create jobs. It’s going to create awareness about local food. I can market my stuff and my neighbour’s stuff through CSAs through the TFA. It’s a way to promote and keep our lands in production and interest young people into farming.”

This project is getting a lot of her energy because it matters. In fact, she gave up her board involvement in La Récolte to be on the food hub board. If it succeeds then it means work for local farmers, possibly more farmers coming into the system and saving yet more farmland.

It was a nearby farm being turned into a gravel pit that got her going many years ago. “All of that (topsoil) pulled out and sent into town to grow lawns, topsoil being stripped from land that could produce food,” she says, which to her is a travesty that should move anyone to action. “I’ve been worried about this stuff way, way, way before it was the style.”

A Gallery of Photos of Bernadette Goguen's World

woman in front of her house
The farm has been in the Goguen family for seven generations. She married into the family and says she feels she has been privileged to have been able to help care for it.
woman in front of her house
woman in winter coat front of cob oven
sheep behind fence
woman examining apple tree late fall no leave
woman examining grape vine in late fall with no leaves
woman at kitchen table

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ben macmichael standing in a corner of the West End Food Bank

Jun 6 2016

Ben MacMichael has a big mouth

Which is what it takes to change a culture as negative and engrained as food banks

 

“You never know what someone has been through,” Ben MacMichael says, and that is what guides his treatment of everyone who comes through his door. They are people first and everyone has a right to food. Ben is the former manager of the West End Food Bank and now manager of the new Peter McKee Community Food Centre on St. George St. in Moncton.

“I have a big mouth,” he tells us,  meaning that he’s an articulate advocate for the poor, loves to talk with everyone, exchange ideas and engage the media. But it also means that he is willing to say what is wrong with the system and keep saying it until things change.

A few years ago when the area food bank system obviously needed an overhaul — apparently there was a lot of infighting and many weren’t speaking to one another,  Aaron Shantz, Our Food SENB’s coordinator who was tasked with getting everyone in the same room, said Ben took over the task. Aaron said, “Ben wrote a really long, mouthy letter telling them that if people wanted to raise old issues or just argue they weren’t welcome at the meetings.” The new food centre run by the Food DEPOT Alimentaire is the end result.

That Food Centre is part of Ben’s ministry and exactly where he wants to be.  “I want people to leave here holding their head a little higher,” he says.

Agonizing over enough

He strives to provide good food for the clients of the food bank, as much fresh produce as he can and the best quality staples he can lay his hands on. “I will never put an item in the basket that I wouldn’t eat myself and I never hedge on baby food.” However, daily he is faced with the same dilemma every food bank manager who is dependent on donations must face. Sometimes you just have to give what you’ve got. People have to eat and a processed meal is better than no meal at all. He says, “The only time I ever agonize is when I know there should be two more bags to this order.”

The secret to keeping volunteers

Ben has no problem attracting and keeping committed volunteers which attests to his leadership skills, something he is proud of. There were many volunteers at the West End Food Bank the day that we visited and many of them, if not all, moved over to the new Food Centre on St. George. He said the secret is to put people in positions where they will succeed.

He has volunteers from all walks of life like a former nurse who was interested in promoting good nutrition and a young man who was there to get experience with people to put on his work resume.  They were working happily and efficiently with little or no supervision and the whole operation seemed to run like clockwork. In fact, in the last six weeks of the West End Food Bank’s life when he was tied up with organizing the new place, Ben confides that the volunteers kept the place running smoothly. “They didn’t even need me.”

The big leagues

Although the new Food Centre opened its doors in May, it will not officially be opened until September. Back in March the plans for the new Food Centre were nearing completion and Ben was excited which was obvious in the way he sketched out the floor plan for us. But time and again he mentioned how many more clients he would then have to serve.

We also noted his personal connections with his clients and that he often refers to them as my people or my families. We wondered if he was going to be able to keep all these new people in his head. “I’m not good with names,” he said, “but I’m usually good with faces. I can usually remember something about them from a conversation when we were carrying on.” The layout of the new Food Centre was designed to play into that. He has a window onto the main floor and there will be a designated space where there will be coffee and snacks and chairs so he will be able to sit down with people at least a few times.

Normalizing the experience

Normalizing the food bank experience for people living on low incomes starts with humanizing the system, says Ben. He already knows that treating his people with respect comes naturally to him. “All the inclusive stuff, the people stuff, I feel that is the gift God gave to me.” The trick is to build it into the culture.

They have introduced appointments over the traditional drop-in format. He says this helps everyone including his families who know they have a spot reserved for them when they get there.

He also insists that equality is a given. “Everyone who comes in will be treated the same,” he says, meaning no favouritism. “The food bank staff shouldn’t have to like you for you to get an even share.”

But there is still a certain decorum that must be present for everyone to feel it’s their centre, whether they are clients, staff or volunteers. On the day we visited the new centre — a huge space with an immense amount of light coming in the windows and the walls painted beautifully bright colours — he told us how he had already had to set a client straight. The client who had been a patron of another food bank was letting off a string of “f-bombs” in the waiting area. Ben explained that that language might have been alright elsewhere, but it wouldn’t be here. Ben admitted that he wondered how the confrontation was going to play out, but the client accepted it and the new culture began to take hold.

Everyone welcome at the new centre

The first stage of the new Food Centre will be the basics — food bank and thrift store and a community garden and places to chat and drink coffee — but the next will be tearing out walls from the huge gym bathrooms to make a teaching kitchen where courses that anyone can attend will be held.  Absolutely everyone will be welcome.

Ben said his dream is that when you see the people waiting at the new bus shelter the city will be building outside the centre, you won’t know why they’re there. “They could be there for the food bank, they could be there for the thrift store, they could be here for the community garden, they could be there taking a cooking class,” he says. It will all be just a centre built around good food.

 

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alya in her hydroponics tent

Jun 6 2016

Alya Nourasri’s love of food, teaching and volunterring

 

“Exuberant, creative, bright-eyed, smart and beautiful in so many ways, Alya Nouasri loves to organize and work to advance the social good, like organizing a Community Food Mentor program, which is where I first met her.”— Elaine Mandrona

Last June (2015) Alya Nouasri and the Mapleton Teaching Kitchen’s Janet Hamilton facilitated the first of their Community Food Mentor (CFM) programs. The CFM program is where participants learn about food security, safety and nutrition, plus grant writing for community food action, and group cooking.

Alya was bent on feeding us the best of food and went out of her way to purchase fresh veggies and goodies from Dolma Food (now resurrected after a January fire) and kept us supplied with vegan almond cookies — always in demand.

Love for good food is from family

Alya’s love and respect for good food come naturally to her. “My grandparents have always been into gardening. My parents have always been into gardening. So it’s always just been in the family.”

Originally from Whitby, Ontario, she says the richness of the soil there meant there was always lots of wonderful produce. “I remember when I was young buying bushels of peaches with my grandmother and canning peaches at our kitchen table and bushels of tomatoes at the end of the growing season and canning tomatoes. So the connection with the growers and the canning process has always been natural.”

When the family moved to New Brunswick, that connection was lost, but now, through her gardening, her volunteering and her workshops, she is helping reconnect people with growers and good food.

Passionate about hydroponics

Alya says that she got involved in hydroponics as a kind of therapy. “I found that during the summer when I was outdoors and gardening — specifically more flower gardens than anything — I was really happy and then I would work in the winter and I would have no garden and it caused a lot of seasonal depression and so the solution was this tent.” This tent is a 6 x 6 x 6 Mylar tent with reflective walls inside.

Alya said they started off with soil but switched because with hydroponics things grew faster, stronger, better.

Since then she has become a serious hydroponics gardener, and educator and grows tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant and peppers. Her dream is to create a huge hydroponics system in an old warehouse or abandoned building that potentially could help feed many Monctonians.

Always a teacher

But growing food is just one of three prongs to her dream. The second is an educational component complete with a teaching kitchen, school tours, whatever it takes to share their knowledge with the community. Sharing knowledge is a reflex for Alya. Ask her a question and you will never get a one-word answer. You’ll get, at minimum, a tip, or more likely, a short lesson. For example, at the Garden Cities Project box-making bee, we asked her how they were holding the layers of the boxes together and we got a quick demo of “toenailing.”

Sharing knowledge

If there is one constant about people in the food movement it’s their generosity, whether it be giving vegetables, time or their hard-earned experience. Alya’s third prong is a prime example.

“The third prong,” Alya says, “is we’d like to be able to share our knowledge with, say, Fredericton or Saint John so that they can replicate what we’re doing here. So it’s like this huge castle but we have to work on it piece by piece.”

And then there are the chickens

And then there are the chickens. She has four chickens — the maximum allowed by law in Moncton — and to listen to the degree of detail she knows about each of their personalities, you’d think she was the parent of four adopted children. But these children supply lots of fresh eggs.

A Gallery of Alya Nouasri

Alya with her chickens
Another obsession she has is her chickens. The law always four in the city. She'd have more, for sure.
Alya with her chickens
alya with egg plant
Elaine pouring seeds into alya's hands
alya in her outside garden

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Mar 7 2016

This is Aaron Shantz

Note: The link takes you out of our site, so be sure to come back. This story was done with a free app from Adobe called Adobe Slate. We’re always looking for high quality ways people can get their message across. We’ll review Adobe Slate soon.

This is Aaron Shantz

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