Food bank secures downtown location

The former Royal Canadian Legion building on Alexander Street will become the city's first food bank, with plans to open the facility in the new year.

The former Royal Canadian Legion building on Alexander Street will become the city’s first food bank, with plans to open the facility in the new year.

“Our hope is to start early in the new year,” Stephen Robertson, treasurer of the Food Bank of Whitehorse Society, said in an interview Tuesday.

The group is partnering with the former Legion building’s owner, L’Association Franco-Yukonnaise.

The agreement will see the society use the office space in the building for free until the end of the year.

In the meantime, a lease agreement for the use of half the building will be arranged for 2009. After that, food bank officials hope to be in a position where they can either buy or rent the space over the long term.

“They’ve really been so generous and supportive,” Robertson said of the association, adding part of its mandate beyond its cultural role is to serve the broader community.

The city already has two emergency food programs between the Salvation Army, which operates five days a week, and Maryhouse, operating as a food source once a week but planning to shut down when the food bank opens.

The facility is proposing to provide not only non-perishables as the emergencies services do now, but also fresh produce, meat and dairy products in an effort to help clients eat healthy foods.

There would also be an education component with information provided on nutrition, how to shop and cook with limited resources and cooking for health issues such as diabetes.

The service would also be non-denominational and serve the working poor as well as those not working.

Currently, the emergency food programs are open during traditional business hours, making it more difficult for those with low-paying jobs to get food, Robertson said.

While the francophone association would have likely been generous enough to let the food bank society use the entire space it will eventually have until the end of the year, Robertson noted it would take that long to get all the other things needed in place for the for the food bank’s start-up.

That includes gaining charitable status for the society, receiving start-up money for the food bank and then hiring a staffer to work at the site.

The process is underway for both the charitable status and a Community Development Fund application. If that money comes through, then work can start on finding someone to fill the position.

The group’s first $75,000 application to the territorial Community Development Fund to get started wasn’t successful.

The proponents have submitted another providing the further information the government was asking for, including letters showing the need for a bank from groups that deal with potential food bank clients.

Groups like the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of the Yukon, Kaushee’s Place (the local women’s shelter) and others wrote to the government about the need for the service, Robertson said.