THURSDAY, november 22, 2018 Vol. 75, No. 47
Serving Fort St. John, B.C. and Surrounding Communities
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It was a delightful medley of music at Whole Wheat and Honey on Nov. 17, 2018 as Karli Harrison played her final set — for now — in the Peace Region. Harrison (right) was joined by her Mostly Mayer/Scarlet Sway bandmates Daniel Smart, Ben Norris, and Aaron Marchuk, as well as Lorissa Scriven and Amber Busche (at left), who opened the evening’s show. Harrison is moving on to new adventures, and warmer weather, in Kelowna, where she plans to continue playing music.
Food recovery program gets $115K upgrade matt preprost editor@ahnfsj.ca
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The coolers and freezers at the Salvation Army food bank in Fort St. John are bursting at the seams with grocery store donations, and the agency is getting a much needed grant to keep up with demand and capacity — all it needs now are more volunteers. Foodbanks BC has granted the Salvation Army $115,000 to support its growing perishable food recovery program, which puts fresh produce, meat, and dairy in the mouths of the city’s most needy. We’re pretty excited about that. For our community to have that size of a grant is pretty substantial,” said Cameron Eggie, executive director. Since the program launched in June, the Salvation Army has been collecting an average of 10,000 pounds of good, surplus
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Salvation Army volunteer Conrad Zunti unloads a delivery of fresh, leftover grocery story food for the food bank, Nov. 16, 2018. Zunti volunteers as a driver Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
food otherwise destined for the landfill each month. The grant will help the Sal-
vation Army buy a Dodge ProMaster cargo van that will cut the number of trips needed
to pick up all that food from grocery stores in the back of a small pickup truck. Work has also started on building a walkin freezer and cooler, and new washing station at the food bank. The more capacity the food bank has, the more people in need can be helped with a healthy, wholesome diet, Eggie said. There’s so much food coming in — some days it’s crates of steaks, others it’s buckets of apples — that the food also being used to support the Salvation Army’s community meal program at the Northern Centre of Hope shelter. “We like to see people get meat, dairy, and produce, rather than boxed food that’s maybe not so healthy,” Eggie said. “We’re able to give a better diet to folks.” See FOOD RECOVERY on A12
NEAT looks to grow local food economy in Northeast B.C. matt preprost editor@ahnfsj.ca
Farming in the north can be a tough row to hoe as it is, and tending to a sustainable local food economy is a whole barnyard of another problem. So how do we build and maintain that economy, especially when regulations over the decades have slowly eroded one that used to flourish?
That question is on the mind of the Northern Environmental Action Team, which has launched a new branch of its work called Northern CoHort to find answers and address food security issues in the region. The group will meet with farmers in Dawson Creek on Nov. 22 at KPAC from 5:30 to 7pm, and Hudson’s Hope on Nov. 29 at St. Peter’s Shared Min-
istry also starting at 5:30pm. Food producers in the region are operating in silos, and face mounting challenges with time and manpower, marketing and infrastructure, science and research. Legault hopes the Co-Hort can help mitigate those problems by fostering a collaborative working environment among farmers, and help create a one-stop shop that can
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take some of that work off their hands. “The vision is to work collaboratively; the vision is trying to reduce the number of hats each farmer has to wear themselves,” she said, noting the biggest challenge is marketing local products to local consumers. “It’s a big hat to wear,” she said. See FOOD ECONOMY on A5
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