20th Anniversary Spotlight: Founding the Kawartha Lakes Food Source

Memories from the founding of the Kawartha Lakes Food Source, shared by Rohan Wijesinghe

”I was the minister of Queen Street United Church from 1997 until I retired in 2008. The Outreach Committee of this church had a history of attempting to address social needs of the community.

Every year there would be about eight or nine people who would tap at the church doors looking for some help. Suddenly, in my third year there were thirty eight people.  I shared my concern with other members of the Ministerial Association. Several other Pastors had also noted the sudden increase of people who were in need of help.

We set up a coalition that included Women’s Resources, Mental Health, Community Care, the Fire Department, The Lindsay Police, and A Place Called Home.  Together, we identified specific groups facing poverty issues.  A group that we observed to be of particular concern was the elderly. The Community Living Group described how, often, when their workers made visits to the homes of seniors they didn’t have enough food in their kitchen to prepare a meal.

Upon further investigation, we discovered that poverty was a rapidly growing concern in the town of Lindsay. In order to address this problem, our coalition, relying upon the leadership of the Rotary Club of Lindsay, in particular their President, Will Gilbert, formed the Kawartha Lakes Food Source.

Ten years later, thanks to the hard work of early contributors like Betty Brennan, Lawrie Watson, and Peter Milner, the KLFS was serving an average of three thousand people through seventeen outlets. At that time, the Central Food Cupboard, the largest outlet of the KLFS, was feeding about one thousand people each month.”