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Yum.

“It costs $6.50,” the receptionist said. “There is no other place like it. It is the best deal in town. And don’t even get me started with the Northern Store [the local grocery store], where a five-pound bag of potatoes costs, what, eight bucks?”

Gina Beaulieu, a local resident, told CBC News that the hospital cafeteria is a magnet for some Churchill residents eager for a good, wholesome meal, and buffeted by grocery store prices — try $12 for four litres of milk — that have long been a boondoggle for residents living in isolated northern burgs.

The hospital’s staff dietician, responsible for managing the menu, was not available for an interview, though a spokesperson informed me that the current rotation of meals at the cafeteria features “hot lunches” to compensate for the -31C weather outside.

Toasty and tasty though the food may be, the happenings in Churchill apparently do not herald a nationwide trend. A food flap recently erupted at a veterans’ care facility in Pictou, N.S. The menu was changed. The veterans mutinied.

“You just don’t know what it was that you’re eating,” veteran Joe Currie told a reporter. “Not by the look of it and not by the taste.”

Anybody who has spent any time in a hospital, either as a patient or a visitor, understands that the first rule of hospital food is to avoid eating the hospital food. After my wife gave birth to our daughter 18 months ago at a Toronto hospital where the care was impeccable and the food, well, somewhat alarming, the saddest-looking grilled cheese this side of Vancouver showed up at her bedside. We both laughed.