By Joe Mancini
Published September 2023
As St. John’s Kitchen prepares to return to St. John’s Anglican Church, it is fitting to reflect on our long journey together. For 21 years between January 1985 and July 2006 a continuous free weekday meal was served at lunchtime in St. John’s gym. During those years, every weekday between 100 – 200 people came through the church gym.
The Working Centre had started using the St. John’s gymnasium two years earlier in January 1983 for the St. John’s Unemployed Workers Centre. The project was part of a worker adjustment program aimed at supporting unemployed workers laid off from the auto industry.
The Unemployed Worker Centre project helped to teach us the reality of long-term unemployment. We realized quickly that those who came to the gym despaired for the possibility of work. Underneath family breakdown, physical injuries, lack of skills, or addictions, as a group they understood they were not the winners in the labour market.
The St. John’s Unemployed Worker Centre became a refuge during the day for coffee and friendship. The space was always busy. The total attendance at the end of August 1984 was 9277 visits. The report on the project’s ending described the learning:
“The people of St. John’s Unemployed Worker Centre are the refugees of the economic crisis. Many have lost hope and are highly disillusioned[…] We are quite aware that money for this type of program is scare, but we also know how important the program is and how deep the need is[…] Where can funding come from to provide this important service? Who else is prepared to respond to those most deeply affected by the stagnant economy?”
The answer appeared less than six weeks later at a meeting of the Core Area Ministry Committee, when it was announced that the Ontario Progressive Conservative government would allocate project funding to community-based food projects. It was agreed that The Working Centre would work with the churches to establish a place for a daily meal and drop-in centre. We quickly went back to St. John’s Anglican Church and met with the wardens and Archdeacon Cy Ladds who agreed they would host the project in the church gymnasium, building on the recently closed Unemployed Worker Centre.
By November 1984 we had a name – St. John’s Kitchen, we had secured funding and we had joined the newly established Foodbank of Waterloo Region. The only hold up was complying with building and fire code regulations. Everything was cleared up by the time we served the first meal on January 15, 1985.
Long before we moved to 97 Victoria N in July 2006, St. John’s Kitchen had developed its daily rhythm of opening at 8:00 am while the meal was prepared in the open kitchen. Most importantly, St. John’s Kitchen was dependent on the effort of so many giving of their time and energy to ensure a free daily meal was served. The last 15 years has seen increased responses to on the ground mental health and homelessness issues.
In the fall of 2019, a marked change had taken place in the community. For the past few years more and more patrons of St. John’s Kitchen had no choice but to live on the street in the face of precarious housing options while at the same time there was an overwhelming level of mental health and addictions issues. The last three years through the pandemic has been the most challenging as we have adapted to primarily serving the homeless community while distributing takeout meals from the SJK garage.
Many changes happened during the pandemic when we were no longer able to produce the meal on-site in the open kitchen. We started by cooking in the evenings but quickly shifted and upgraded the commercial kitchen on Queen Street South, where 700 meals each day are prepared for distribution, including for St. John’s Kitchen.
In our 40th year, we are embarking on another change as the 97 Victoria campus undergoes a dramatic renovation with a new ground floor home for St. John’s Kitchen, the addition of 44 units of housing and a dedicated medical area for primary care, mental health, addictions and counselling support.
We are deeply grateful that St. John’s Anglican Church has welcomed St. John’s Kitchen back to the church gymnasium during our year of construction. We come back under substantially different circumstances, so much of our community has changed over 40 years. Yet the gym at St. John’s Church is still there, ready to welcome the people of St. John’s Kitchen.
*SJK at St. John’s Church offers drop-in, coffee, meals and snacks, hamper goods, harm reduction supplies, washrooms, health care and community connections. SJK at 87 Victoria offers washrooms, showers, laundry, and an observed use room.
