Weather prevents clients from accessing services at Sault soup kitchen

While the shelves have been restocked, Mother Nature has kept people away from the Sault's Soup Kitchen Community Care Centre.

This past weekend, the Sault Ste. Marie detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police held its 15th annual Stuff a Cruiser event at Rome’s Your Independent Grocer benefitting the Soup Kitchen Community Centre.

“It was the best one yet,” said Ron Sim, the soup kitchen’s general manager.

“I was quite surprised (that) two weeks after Christmas that people are still so very generous … We’re hoping now that we’re going to have enough to get us through to March and April, because from now until then, it’s been our busiest time of the year.”

Despite this usually being the start of that busy time of year, the soup kitchen has seen far fewer visitors in the last two weeks.

In a typical day, the charity would serve 120 patrons, but lately it’s only had half as many visitors. Sim said Mother Nature is partially to blame.

“Our numbers have dropped considerably,” he said.

“But it’s because sidewalks aren’t plowed. It’s very cold out there. Nobody gets bus passes. And when you’re living on either ODSP or OW, you can’t afford a bus pass.”

He’d like to see the city provide people on the Ontario Disability Support Program, or Ontario Works with free bus passes.

“They cost over $70 per month -- no one who’s barely scraping by can afford that,” Sim said.

“The buses come this way anyway.”

The Soup kitchen would be significantly busier if Sim was able to reopen the building for dine-in lunches, rather than the bagged lunch pickup they’ve been doing since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a lot healthier in the long run, a lot cheaper for us,” he said.

“And it’ll help to build community. We’ve tried a few different Sunday night practice runs with Saint Veronica’s church and those have been well received.”

To run the dine-in service, Sim said they would need to bring in 50 new volunteers.

Rollande Powley, almost 89 years old, has been volunteering at the soup kitchen for 18 years.

“When I first came here, I had never heard of the soup kitchen,” Powley said.

“And I got to meet the people and I got to learn how to love these people and how to understand these people -- to talk to them, to get them to smile because everybody has a problem and it’s up to us to see to it if we can help in any way.”

She misses the days of welcoming the community in for meals, or even just to be around one another.

“They’d like to come in, sit down, have a coffee, socialize,” Powley said.

“They look forward to socializing because a lot of our elderly people are all alone and they would like to have someone to talk to.”

Sim is aiming to bring back in-person dining at the soup kitchen by early March.

Those looking to volunteer can visit the charity’s website or give them a call.